Why is my home Wi-Fi speed so much slower on mobile?

Hey everyone.

I’ve been digging into this for a while now and I can't figure out where the bottleneck is, so I figured I’d ask for some input here.
The issue is that when I connect two different phones to my home Wi-Fi, the speeds are drastically different. My internet plan is roughly 50Mbps. On my laptop, Ookla shows 50Mbps, which is fine; on my iPhone SE, I also get 50Mbps, but on my iPhone 12, it drops down to about 8Mbps. When I visit my brother's place where he uses fiber, his iPhone SE hits 245Mbps, yet his iPhone 12 only manages 20Mbps.

What am I missing here?

The issue clearly stems from the iPhone 12 itself, whether it’s tied to specific software settings or some kind of hardware limitation.

Yeah, looks like it's stuck on a fixed 802.11g setting instead of being set to auto-select, even though it’s got dual-band support for 802.11a,b,g,n,ac.

It is honestly exhausting having to revisit this topic again, but here I am dealing with my iPhone 11 and the constant, infuriating inability to connect to public Wi-Fi networks that require those annoying captive portal authorizations. I’m talking about places like Shell stations, local bars, and various other spots where you just expect things to work effortlessly.

I have been led to believe the culprit is a static MAC address causing the handshake to fail?

wearymason4 said:Yeah, looks like it's locked into 802.11g mode instead of using auto-select, even though it’s a dual-band setup supporting 802.11a, b, g, n, and ac.

Is there a way for me to verify this and switch it back to auto-select?