external wifi adapter for android

[Frank M]

One of the biggest issue with chuwi hi12 is the wifi connectivity. I know this problem varies from tablet to tablet. I only have wifi problem 5% of time where I have to reboot to get the wifi back, but it’s still quite annoying. It’s a bigger problem for the android side since it’s hard to add an external wifi adapter which involves quite a bit linux commandline hack according to this post:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1484339

However, I found this article which claims a compatible realtek usb wifi adapter works out of box on his android tablet:

http://tabletmods.blogspot.com/2012/06/external-wifi.html

The chuwi hi12 uses realtek RTL8723bs chip inside. so I managed to find a usb version of the wifi adapter with same chip model number

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FA4JK88/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

Hopefully it will work under android without messing with linux driver or whatsoever. I will report back once receive my order from China.

[Michael Vlassopoulos]

Would you be so kind to inform us:
– Have you receiver the usb adaptor ?
– Is it working with android ?
– Can you please give us a feedback android your opinion ?

Thank you for your time.

[Frank M]

It didn’t work in android. The android will only recognize the internal wifi chip. maybe you can try to disable the internal wifi through the method in one the above link, but i haven’t tried. It does work in windows out of box. but in windows you have a lot more better options. so this usb adapter is pretty much useless. oh, yes, i double checked usd adapter. It is RTL8723, the same as the built in one.

[BBaker]

Frank M wrote:

It didn’t work in android. The android will only recognize the internal wifi chip. maybe you can try to disable the internal wifi through the method in one the above link, but i haven’t tried. It does work in windows out of box. but in windows you have a lot more better options. so this usb adapter is pretty much useless. oh, yes, i double checked usd adapter. It is RTL8723, the same as the built in one.

There are LOTS of different versions of the RTL8723 – rtl8723be, rtl8723bs, rtl8723ae, rtl8723au, etc. They are not the same thing and may have different configurations and functioning. Know which one you have. Some of them may not have the driver in the Kernel you are using and so you may have to build it (for Linux, dunno about Android) from https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.

[Michael Vlassopoulos]

Thanks a lot. It seems it’s all complicated for my base knowledge. I’m thinking of trying to expand/enforce my home network as seems to be a rather more simple procedure.
Anyhow, thank you again for your help.

[Author]

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