Question from Evan:  I have a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G that keeps turning the Wi-Fi on all by itself. I can go into the settings and turn it off, but the next thing I know the Wi-Fi is enabled once again. I’ve had this phone for a long time and it only started doing this about a month ago. Can you tell me how to fix it? It’s driving me bonkers!

Rick’s answer:  Evan, this is a fairly common problem among Sprint Android phones, and it isn’t limited to your particular model. The culprit is a pre-installed app called Sprint Connections Optimizer.

Sprint’s stated purpose for this app is to automatically connect your phone to any available Wi-Fi connection that you have used previously whenever it becomes available in order to speed up your data service. But I believe the real reason for it is to keep you off the Sprint data network as much as possible, freeing up available bandwidth for other users.  [Read more…]