Google is slowly adding new features to Android Oreo. The company on Monday announced that the users with devices running Android 8.1 will now be able to see a speed label for public Wifi networks before connecting. This will help you in avoiding poor public networks as well as in deciding between multiple public Wifi networks.
The speed label feature was first spotted last month, but it is just seeing the expanded roll-out.
“Public Wi-Fi can be spotty. For the first time, #AndroidOreo 8.1 lets you take out the guesswork & see the speed of networks before you hit connect,” Android team wrote in a tweet announcing the feature.
What are Wifi speed labels?
According to Google, it will be classifying the public Wifi networks into four categories – Slow, OK, Fast, and Very Fast.
The Slow speed label shows up if the overall speed is below 1Mbps, OK is for 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps, Fast is for 5 Mbps to 20 Mbps and Very Fast is for Wifi networks with over 20 Mbps speed.
The speed label appears right below the name of the Wifi network. It won’t show up for protected networks. If you don’t want to see network speed, you can go to Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > Wi-Fi Preferences > Advanced > Network rating provider > select None.
Since the feature has just started rolling out, it might take a while before reaching all users. It is also not clear if the feature will be available globally or just a few countries.
To remind you, Android 8.1 was officially launched in December, 2017. It is not a huge update, but brings a number of improvements and tweaks. You can read more about Android 8.1 in our launch report. At this point, Google Pixel and Nexus phones are the only devices running Android 8.1 officially.
