Use Xfinity Mobile on a Pixel phone? You may be getting a Wi-Fi Speed Boost
- Xfinity Mobile’s WiFi PowerBoost lets your phone access Wi-Fi speeds in excess of the internet plan you’re paying for.
- So far it’s supported iPhones and Samsung Galaxy flagships and mid-rangers, but not Android phones at large.
- New settings for “Xfinity Speed Boost” in Google’s Adaptive Connectivity Service app suggest availability could be improving.
Going online with your smartphone over a Wi-Fi connection can offer a lot of advantages compared to a cellular connection. But ultimately, what you get out of Wi-Fi is limited by the internet connection feeding it; if you’re only paying for a 300Mbps plan with your ISP, you’ve got no hope of your Wi-Fi speeds surpassing that, right? You’d think so, but thanks to the existence of companies that offer both cellular and wired home internet service, there’s a special edge case where this isn’t necessarily true — and we just spotted something that points to Pixel phones getting access to this trick on Xfinity.
Xfinity Mobile offers a feature for its users called WiFi PowerBoost. Basically, when you connect your Xfinity Mobile phone to a compatible Wi-Fi router that’s using Xfinity as its ISP, the router will automatically raise speeds to up to 1Gbps, even if subscribed to a slower plan. That doesn’t even have to be your home router, either.
