In certain situations a mobile hotspot can be a lifesaver. Hotspot mode turns your phone into a temporary portable WiFi router. While it can be a lifesaver in certain situations, the technology is not powerful enough to replace your home broadband connection.
What is a mobile hotspot?
A mobile hotspot uses a mobile phone to convert cellular data (4G or 5G mobile internet) into a local WiFi network. Using your normal phone, or an old phone you keep in the back of a drawer, you can create a handy WiFi access point in just a few taps.
Your hotspot works like any other WiFi network. You can set up the network name and password in your mobile devices settings. Then, turn it on from the network and internet settings menu. Your network name will appear in the available WiFi networks list of nearby devices and you’re ready to get online.
When is a mobile hotspot useful?
A mobile hotspot really comes into its own when you are out and about and need a short term internet connection for a device that can’t get online itself. If you’re travelling with a laptop and need to quickly open a document or you want to login to an account on your tablet, quickly connecting to your phone's mobile data is a great solution.
However, your phone’s hotspot is not powerful enough to replace your home WiFi router. Mobile broadband can support everything from online gaming to working from home, but for that you need a dedicated mobile broadband router - not just a mobile phone.
The drawbacks of using a mobile hotspot
There are multiple limitations to hotspotting off your phone that means it isn’t a permanent internet solution. Here are a few:
Data caps and ‘fair usage’
When you hotspot from your phone, the data you use is taken from your regular mobile plan. Home internet usage is data hungry, and you can quickly burn through your allowance and incur additional charges.
Not only that, many mobile plans have specific restrictions on mobile hotspots, either limiting how much data you can use through your hotspot each month or restricting speeds under their ‘fair usage’ policies. For home internet usage, you need a plan with truly unlimited data.
Power drain
Hotspotting from your phone is incredibly energy intensive, and will quickly drain the battery. Be sure to turn your hotspot off when not using it, or plug your phone in before turning the hotspot on.
Thermal throttling
‘Thermal throttling’ is an inbuilt protection in your phone that limits performance. Overheating can cause permanent damage to your phone’s processor, and running a mobile hotspot is so demanding on the phone’s hardware that it will quickly cause it to heat up. When this happens, the phone will protect itself from permanent damage by restricting its data speeds, or even turning off the hotspot automatically.
As your device heats up, you’ll notice a marked drop in performance and loading times across the hotspot WiFi network.
Device limitations
How many internet connected devices do you have at home? I would guess that it’s more than one or two. Mobile hotspots are handy for connecting a couple of devices across a limited range, but the more the network is used the slower and less stable it gets. If you want a WiFi network you can connect your laptop, games console, smart speaker, TV and other devices too, you need a more powerful router.
Picking up signals
Modern smartphones pick up mobile signals through microscopic antennas embedded in the body of the device. The technology is incredible, but if you’ve ever held your phone out of a window to get a signal you’ll know it’s not always able to effectively find and connect to mobile networks.
Dedicated mobile broadband routers have much larger and more powerful antennas that allow them to pick up mobile signals consistently and reliably, even indoors, giving you a home broadband connection you can rely on.
