If you didn’t already know, you can actually share your phone internet with your friends! It’s quite simple thanks to your phone operating system.
Your Smartphone can act as a wireless hotspot providing an internet connection wirelessly for up to 15 devices (depending on the type of smartphone) or using your phone USB cable. With Just your smartphone, you can actually access internet from say another phone or laptop without using a 3G USB modem or wireless internet router.
Here are the ways you can turn your Android smartphone into a Hotspot. These will vary depending on your device and the version of Android its running. In later versions of Android like Jellybean and Kitkat you can turn on the HotSpot from the notification panel that you slide down from the top of the screen while in other versions you can go the traditional way via the settings menu.
To turn on the HotSpot feature by going to Settings >Tethering and HotSpot >On. You can also share your internet via Cable (USB tethering) or via Bluetooth if you don’t want to drain your battery and are not sharing your connection with multiple users.
In order to use your Windows Phone as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot and share your internet connection, simply go to Settings > Internet sharing > On. If you own an Apple device, open settings > Personal hotspot > On.
Before you turn on your hotspot, check for the following;
– Charge your phone so that the battery is full — you may even consider leaving it on charge while the Hotspot feature is on especially if you are going to keep it on for long — This is because WiFi tethering chews a lot of battery.
– Also make sure you have the right APN settings to enable the data connection (This is usually automatic but sometimes the APN has to be manually input)
– Load your preferred red Data Bundle from your service provider so that you have enough data to share
– Set up your HotSpot by Naming it and giving it a password to avoid freeloaders. When you turn on the HotSpot, let the recipient devices turn on their WiFi and input the password you give them so as to connect to your HotSpot. Remember “12345678” isn’t a secure password!
