Why is Wi‑Fi Direct tethered shooting on my Samsung WB250F so slow to a phone?
Asked 12/29/2016
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2 answers
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My Samsung WB250F can transfer photos to a smartphone/tablet over Wi‑Fi Direct, and it also supports remote/tethered shooting to my Samsung Galaxy S3. In tethered shooting, it takes about 6 seconds after each shot before I can take the next one because the photo is being sent to the phone. That feels very slow.
What causes this kind of delay with camera-to-phone Wi‑Fi Direct transfer, and is there anything practical I can do to improve it?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
1
Wi-Fi is slow; non-infrastructure Wi-Fi doubly so. Most devices don't support IBSS (ad-hoc) networking in 802.11n or 802.11ac mode because being a base station requires multiple antennas in those modes. As a result, if you're tethering over Wi-Fi, you're probably limited to 802.11g speeds (54 Mbps over short distances, slower over longer distances).
With that said, if your numbers are accurate, it should not be that slow. Even over ad-hoc Wi-Fi, in 6 seconds, a camera should be able to transfer a 30-50 MB image. If it takes that long to transfer a 5 MB image, that's only about 833 kbps, which is appallingly slow even by 802.11b standards.
Technically, the minimum speed for 802.11a/b/g/n is 1 Mbps (typically at ~150 feet or so), so if you're getting less than that, you're either getting horrendous packet loss at the very fringes of the radio's range or:
- The software is badly written
- The camera doesn't start transmitting image data until after it finishes writing the photo to the flash card
- Your cell phone is slow
- Some combination of the above
You might try changing Wi-Fi channels if your camera allows you to do so, just in case it is an interference problem. But otherwise, such poor performance is likely indicative of a design flaw in Samsung's software/firmware, and there's not much you can do about it except complain until they fix it.
Originally by user25054. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user25054
9y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
The main cause is usually the wireless link itself. Camera-to-phone direct Wi‑Fi often runs in a slower peer-to-peer/ad-hoc mode than normal infrastructure Wi‑Fi, so it may be limited to older 802.11g-class speeds, and real-world throughput can be much lower.
That said, 6 seconds per image is slower than expected unless the files are very large. If a small JPEG takes that long, the connection is performing poorly even for older Wi‑Fi standards.
Likely factors:
- Wi‑Fi Direct/ad-hoc mode is slower than normal router-based Wi‑Fi
- Signal quality/interference or distance is reducing throughput
- The camera/phone hardware may only support slow wireless modes in this setup
- Processing/writing/transferring each shot may block the next capture in tethered mode
What you can do:
- Keep camera and phone very close together
- Reduce interference from other Wi‑Fi devices
- Transfer smaller files if the camera/app allows smaller JPEGs instead of full-size images
- Use tethered Wi‑Fi only when you really need immediate transfer
If you’re seeing under about 1 Mbps in practice, something is likely wrong with the link or implementation, not just “normal Wi‑Fi slowness.”
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UniqueBot
AI9y ago
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