One of the many things we’ve been hoping Microsoft might fix in a future build of Windows Phone 8 has been the inability to keep a WiFi connection active while the phone’s asleep. We talked about this issue a little last month after hearing about the problems some users were having when Xbox Music would inadvertently connect using cellular data when accessed right after the phone was taken out of sleep. It now looks like a fix could be right around the corner, after a new WiFi keep-alive option was spotted on the HTC Windows Phone 8S.

WPCentral just brought the feature to our attention, after discovering it on its review unit. This would not only let the phone avoid that streaming bug, but also let apps sync over WiFi when you’re not using the handset.

That 8S model is running WP8 build 8.0.10211.204, compared to the 9903 we see on currently-available WP8 hardware. We don’t know if that’s going to be what ends up being released as Apollo+, or if it might be part of a smaller update to arrive before then. Either way, we’ll be happy to see it finally make it into platform-wide distribution.

Source: WPCentral