REPRODUCIBILITY: Always
OS VERSION: Sailfish OS 5.2.0.17 (Finlayson)
HARDWARE: Jolla Phone 2026
UI LANGUAGE: Czech
REGRESSION: Unknown, device shipped with SFOS 5.2
DESCRIPTION:
Wi-Fi throughput on my Jolla Phone 2026 appears to be significantly lower than expected.
PRECONDITIONS:
Wi-Fi throughput on my Jolla Phone 2026 appears to be significantly lower than expected.
The phone is connected to a Wi-Fi 6 access point on 5 GHz / channel 52.
wpa_cli confirms that the connection is using Wi-Fi 6:
bssid=58:04:4f:04:3a:6e
freq=5260
ssid=KITTIE
wifi_generation=6
key_mgmt=SAE
wpa_state=COMPLETED
However, “iw dev wlan0 link” normally reports RX/TX PHY rates around:
480.4 MBit/s
iperf3 tests against a wired LAN server give approximately:
Jolla → server:
~397 Mbit/s
server → Jolla:
~359 Mbit/s
There are no retransmissions during the test.
Disabling Wi-Fi power saving makes no significant difference.
The same iperf3 server and LAN infrastructure reaches approximately
900 Mbit/s with another Wi-Fi client, so the wired network/server is
not the bottleneck.
The AP and the Jolla PHY both advertise support for 802.11ax / HE,
80 MHz and 2 spatial streams.
This raises the possibility that the current MediaTek WLAN driver /
firmware is negotiating or using only one spatial stream, or otherwise
limiting the PHY rate.
The WLAN driver is the MediaTek platform driver:
readlink -f /sys/class/net/wlan0/device/driver
/sys/bus/platform/drivers/wlan
Kernel logs show the MT6858 / ADIE6631 connectivity stack.
STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
Connect Jolla Phone 2026 to a 5 GHz Wi-Fi 6 access point.
Verify connection:
wpa_cli -i wlan0 status
Check PHY rate:
iw dev wlan0 link
Run iperf3 against a wired Gigabit Ethernet server:
iperf3 -c -t 10 -O 3
iperf3 -c -t 10 -O 3 -R
EXPECTED RESULT:
A Wi-Fi 6 2x2 / 80 MHz connection should be capable of a significantly
higher PHY rate and LAN throughput under good signal conditions.
ACTUAL RESULT:
PHY rate stays around 480 Mbit/s and TCP throughput around 360-400
Mbit/s.
MODIFICATIONS:
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Wi-Fi power saving ON/OFF does not affect the result.
“iw dev wlan0 station dump” returns no station data, so MCS/NSS cannot
currently be verified through the standard nl80211 interface.
Is the JP2026 WLAN implementation currently limited to 1 NSS, or is
this a driver/firmware issue?
What real-world results are you getting with what other devices?
I have honestly not seen anything, including laptops, do much beyond this sort of speed anyway.
(I have seen higher phy rates, but not much higher actual speeds).
fast.com reports 330/230 Mbps on Jolla 2026 and 600/470 on Xperia 10 III when I do the test from the exact same position (both tests ran from built-in Browser). However, I also see that Jolla uses WiFi 6 1x1 connection, while Xperia uses WiFi 5 2x2.
For example, the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G achieves around 930/930 Mbit/s without any problems in exactly the same location, connected to the same TP-Link EAP723 AP.
I would expect the Jolla Phone 2026, with a Wi-Fi 6 chipset capable of 2 spatial streams, to achieve comparable throughput. Instead, it appears to be limited to a PHY rate of about 480 Mbit/s and real-world throughput of around 400 Mbit/s.
Thanks, this is very useful and matches exactly what I am seeing. My Jolla also reports a PHY rate of around 480.4 Mbit/s, which is consistent with a Wi-Fi 6 80 MHz 1x1 connection.
The interesting part is that iw phy phy0 info on my Jolla advertises support for 2 spatial streams (HE MCS 0-11 for NSS 1 and 2), so the hardware/driver reports 2x2 capability, but the actual connection appears to use only 1x1.
This may therefore be the actual cause of the throughput limitation.
Update after today’s Sailfish OS Community Meeting:
Jolla confirmed that the Jolla Phone 2026 uses 1x1 MIMO for Wi-Fi.
This means the ~480 Mbit/s PHY rates observed in testing are expected and are not caused by a driver, firmware or configuration issue limiting a 2x2 implementation.
I also asked whether the 1x1 limitation comes from the SoC, RF/antenna design or another part of the hardware, but Jolla could not provide further details during the meeting.
So the mystery is solved: the phone is physically implemented as 1x1. Thanks to Jolla for the clear answer.
I think the bigger story here is the reduced coverage stemming from using only one antenna.
I couldn’t care less if i get 400 or 800 right by the router - but i do care about how well it works on the other side of the house. It’s not exactly problematic, but it is not great either.
480 Mbit/s itself was never really the main concern for me.
The question was whether the phone was physically designed as 2x2 but for some reason operating as 1x1 due to firmware, driver or configuration. Jolla has now confirmed that it is a 1x1 design, so that question is resolved.
The practical difference is potentially more interesting under less ideal RF conditions than in a speed test next to the access point. That said, 1x1 does not necessarily mean literally one physical antenna, so actual coverage still depends on the antenna and RF design.
My carrier and my plan gets me about 1.5 gigabit speeds on average almost everywhere I happen to be around the city.
It’s kinda nice to have virtually instant updates in multiple apps no matter the size, no delays whatsoever in browsing, email, downloading audio/video from IM apps, checking and scrubbing through 4K videos instantly, crystal clear video calls, high quality music streaming, multiple things at the same time without any slowdowns and the list goes on and on.
At this day and age where most plans, carriers and phones support these speeds for years, and you can do (or have to do in some cases) everything with a smartphone, i find it very odd to ask this question.
To be honest for about a quarter century now I hear the same question just with different numbers since the introduction of EDGE.
I wonder if evolution stopped when the first few people said “who needs 400+ kbits on a phone?”.
I also don’t care about max speed. Yet I do care about average speed in my home. I’m not that lucky and my device never has line of sight to an access point. The more antennas it has, and thus spatial streams, the merrier…
If I would get on average 200-300 mbit everywhere in my home, I would be perfectly happy… Which I have with pretty much any other station…