Edward Swift - Personal Hotspots

Have you been out shopping for a new tablet, and have been looking at the slightly more pricey 3G + WiFi models? There’s a reason you don’t have to fork out a bit extra on that model as well as any extra mobile data charges. It’s called a personal hotspot.

A personal hotsport is when you turn your smartphone into a personal WiFi network. You can connect your PC, laptop or tablet to it and it will use the internet from your phone, helping you save a bit of money and not worrying about having two mobile data bills at the end of the month.

“But wait Ed, creating a brand new WiFi network on my phone? That sounds very tricky.” Actually, it’s incredibly easy to do. Each phone will have a different way of setting it up and if you do want to know how to do it for your specific phone, just search for 'Personal hotspot (your brand and model of phone)'. In today's Life article, I’ll explain how to do it on one of the most common mobiles – the iPhone.

Setting it up

If you want to set this up on your iPhone, you’ll need to make sure that you have an iPhone 4/4S running iOS version 4.3 or later, or an iPhone 5 running iOS version 6.0 or greater.

Find your settings button and tap it. Firstly, you need to make sure you’ve got mobile data turned on so in settings, tap ‘Cellular’ and then make sure ‘Cellular Data’ is turned on (the switch should be green if it is). Also you should enable 3G. While it will use a little bit more battery life, it will make the mobile internet on your phone much faster.

We also need to check that your WiFi is turned on. Tap ‘< Settings’ in the top left corner of the screen and then tap WiFi. Once again, make sure WiFi is turned on with the switch on the right hand side being green.

Once again go back to the main settings menu and tap ‘Personal Hotspot’. Tap the switch next to ‘Personal Hotspot’ to turn it on. If you want to change the password, tap ‘WiFi password’ and change it to whatever you want (but don’t use a password that you use for other logins – see the third tip of Five Tips to Keep Your PC Secure).

Then to connect your laptop to your newly created WiFi network, follow the instructions at the bottom of the screen.

Having issues?

Sometimes you may find that you’ve followed all the instructions, but sometimes your tablet is not connecting to the hotspot. Firstly, be patient – while things should in theory be instantaneous, sometime it can take time to connect. Wait a minute for the devices to find each other.

If after a minute, things aren’t connecting, you can try a few things:

• Turn the Personal Hotspot off, wait 10 seconds and turn it on again.
• Turn the WiFi on your phone off, wait 10 seconds and turn it on again.
• Turn the WiFi on your laptop/tablet off, wait 10 seconds and turn it on again.
• Change the Personal Hotspot password and then try reconnecting.