„Within range of one network“ doesn‘t give you as much information as „all these networks are visible and here‘s how strong they look from where you are“
True, but is that precision worth the hit to latency... especially if you're trying to do a voice and/or video call? I doubt it's worth the tradeoff most of the time.
> opening up the WiFi connections list to hunt for other networks?
That's not the trigger. The trigger is location services scanning for networks in the background. So, if you have that enabled then it happens automatically while you're on a call.
Not just within range, connected to. Meaning you're close enough to have a strong signal. If it isn't a strong signal this can be detected and the system could scan in that case, looking for a better one.
