All today's smartphones can be used as a modem to surf the internet from your PC and this is a wonderful thing when you are away from home and lack a wifi connection. Using your mobile phone as a wifi modem for your PC is also useful as a backup connection in case your home or office ADSL has problems or restrictions that prevent us from navigating freely, so as not to suffer too much connection anxiety absent.
To transform an Android smartphone or an iPhone into a modem it is only necessary to activate the option called Hotspot, which should be free for all operators and included in the internet subscription of the phone (also for Vodafone from 2018 although perhaps not with all floors).
Of course you will have to keep an eye on the available traffic gigabytes, but if you don't download large files and if you don't see streaming video, normal browsing can be carried out without problems for a long time even for 3 or 5 GB rechargeable plans per month.
This cellular modem functionality is also much more useful than in the past, since in many cases phones can connect to the internet in 4G, which is an even faster connection than ADSL.
Depending on the smartphone model, there are three ways to use it as an internet modem for your computer or other devices : via USB cable, via bluetooth connection and then also via wifi, as if the phone became a wifi router.
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How to use a smartphone as a modem, Android and iPhone (therefore applies to all Samsung, Huawei and Honor phones, Nokia, LG, Xiaomi etc. and all iPhone models).
On Android phones, you can activate the Hotspot function by going to your phone settings, going to the Wireless and networks section where you should find the Tathering / portable hotspot option.
On iPhone you can activate the modem function from the switch located under Settings> Personal Hotspot .
There will therefore be three possibilities:
- That of the portable Wifi hotspot, which allows you to use your mobile phone as a full-fledged wifi router, creating a new internet network.
- That of Bluetooth sharing, if the PC has a Bluetooth receiver.
- That of USB sharing, which can only be activated if the phone is connected via cable to the PC.
To create a whole new wifi network to which other devices can be connected, just activate the wifi hotspot option.
In the hotspot configuration options on Android you can choose a network name, the type of encryption and the login password.
In some Android phones there are also advanced options to select the Access Point band, if 2.4Ghz or 5 Ghz, to choose the transmission channel, to give a time limit in case of inactivity, to give a data limit and therefore avoid consuming all available traffic and to limit maximum simultaneous connections to a certain number of users.
In the configuration screen you can also see the list of devices connected to the hotspot.
At that point the wifi network created with the mobile phone will be visible in the network scan to all computers and smartphones and just connect and enter the password to access the internet.
The important thing is, of course, that the 3G or 4G cellular network is doing well.
The bluetooth connection sharing mode is a little less convenient because it requires you to make a configuration on the PC that may not be so immediate.
In theory, there should be the option to connect to bluetooth via phone in the Bluetooth options of Windows or Mac and the new connection will be seen as if it were a normal wifi network.
In some cases, you may need to add your phone to the Control Panel> Devices and Printers> Add Device screen first .
Once the phone is added, it will be necessary to click on it with the mouse and choose to start a new connection on the Access Point.
The USB cable option, on the other hand, is easy to use because it works immediately as soon as activated.
The icon of the connected internet will appear on the connected computer next to the clock, as if it were connected to an ADSL network.
The only problem can be in case of connection error due to the driver of the network card called " Remote NDIS based Internet Sharing Device ".
In this case, keeping the phone connected, go to Control Panel> Device Management> Network Cards, uninstall the Remote NDIS driver and reinstall it.
In other articles you can learn more with the guides for
- Activate Tethering on Android to use it as a Wifi modem
- Activate the Hotspot on iPhone (wifi or bluetooth) to surf from pc or tablet
