For many people it is normal to use the smartphone hotspot as a router, so you can surf using the phone’s connection and without the need for cables in between. The hotspot in fact makes available the data connection of the smartphone with other devices through a wireless connection, thus transforming the phone into a router to which you can connect other devices such as computers, tablets, or other smartphones themselves. The hotspot is also widely used in cases of emergency, in fact, let’s say that you have a problem with the ADSL and you have to do something important from your PC, but you do not have the line to surf, with the hotspot you overcome this problem when you will be able to connect with your PC to the internet network of your smartphone, making use of its data connection to surf. Sometimes, however, the hotspot may not work, so in that case, how can you solve it? We have collected several solutions in this guide that will explain what to do if the hotspot does not work on Android.
More and more people, given the phone, offers richer and richer in gigs that there are for mobile devices, decide to use the phone as a router through the hotspot, so you can use your smartphone as a router and connect to it to surf with other devices, all at quite low prices, since now the offers with hundreds of GB per month are costing even less than 7 euros per month and in addition, there are also unlimited calls and texts. However, the hotspot may sometimes stop working on your Android smartphone, so how should you proceed in such a case? If you are experiencing problems with the hotspot of your smartphone, I suggest you continue reading the solutions listed below to solve the problem.
Make sure that the hotspot connection is properly configured on your smartphone
If your carrier didn’t configure the hotspot automatically when you first inserted the SIM in your phone, you’ll have to do it yourself through the APNs. You will then need to search for the hotspot configuration for your carrier and follow all the steps it indicates to enter the necessary data for configuration. Usually, if the APNs of the hotspot has to be configured manually, the data connection will not work either.
Make sure you have correctly activated the hotspot
To activate the hotspot on an Android smartphone proceed as follows:
- Pull down the notification curtain by sliding your finger across the screen from top to bottom
- Press the Hotspot icon and you should see an icon appear in the status bar
- At this point, if you need to connect for example with a PC to the smartphone’s hotspot, the computer will start scanning and at that point, once it finds the name of the phone’s connection, you can connect to it.
Also make sure that if the hotspot has a password, it has been entered correctly on the computer or on any other device you need to use to connect to the hotspot. To find out the name of the password, just follow these steps:
- Go to Settings on your Android smartphone on which you have the hotspot enabled
- Go to Mobile Network
- Tap on Personal hotspot
- Next to Password, you can read the password you used to connect to the network.
Restart your phone
Is the hotspot not working on your Android smartphone? If the problem occurred suddenly and everything was working fine until the day before, restarting the mobile device might be enough to make the hotspot connection work again. Restart your Android smartphone and see if you can connect to the hotspot again and use the phone’s connection to surf the web. If you are still having problems, please proceed to the next solution.
Make sure you have enough gigs available
If you don’t have gigs available on your phone because you’ve used them up, obviously the hotspot won’t work. Check with your carrier’s app or website to see if you have enough gigs available to surf the web. If you notice that you’ve run out of gigs, obviously you won’t be able to surf and you won’t be able to use the hotspot. The solution, in this case, is obviously to renew your Giga offer.
Make sure there is a good signal
If you’re very far away from the phone acting as a router or if the data connection is very weak, the hotspot might give you problems and not work as it should. Make sure your smartphone has a good signal and don’t stand too far away from your phone when you have the hotspot on and connect to it.
Turn off power saving
Power saving allows an Android smartphone to save battery power, however, especially if the battery charge is very low, the system may start to act on app consumption, closing background app processes that you are not using, to limit power consumption and make the remaining battery charge last longer. Power saving mode, if active, might also interfere with the hotspot connection, which is why it would be better to disable it if you notice any malfunctions. Here’s how to proceed to turn off power saving on Android:
- Go to the Settings of your Android smartphone
- Now go to the Battery section
- Select Energy Saver
- Tap the Disable button
Make sure you haven’t set a data consumption limit for the hotspot
The hotspot can be set to not exceed a limit of data not to be consumed. By setting a data limit for the hotspot, when this limit is reached, the hotspot connection will be turned off automatically. The data usage statistics will then be reset to 0 each time it is enabled. The data limit can be set as follows:
- Go to Settings > Mobile Network > Personal Hotspot > More.
- Then go to Data Limit
- If you haven’t set a limit on data usage, you’ll see the words No limit.
- If you have previously set a data consumption limit, you will see a limit consumption of:
- 10 MB
- 20 MB
- 50 MB
- 100 MB
- Custom
- If you don’t want any limit for data consumption when surfing in the hotspot, set No limit as it was originally.
if you use a VPN, disable it
The hotspot connection may be affected if you are using a virtual private network (VPN). If you experience problems with the hotspot on your Android smartphone, I recommend that you deactivate the VPN before activating the hotspot. Proceed as follows to disable a VPN:
- Go to the Settings of your Android smartphone
- Then go to Network & Internet > Advanced > VPN and remove irrelevant VPN profiles.
- Now, activate the hotspot from your mobile device and try connecting other devices to your Android phone to see if everything works now or not. If there are any problems, then move on to the next solution
Try changing the Wi-Fi band of the hotspot
Newer Android smartphones, unlike older ones, can support both 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz Wi-Fi bands. If the receiving device can only support the 2.4 GHz band, but the smartphone is set to 5 GHz, the receiving device will not be able to detect it and will not be able to connect. To fix it, just follow the steps below to change the Wi-Fi band on your Android smartphone:
- Go to the Settings app on your Android device
- Then go to Mobile Network > Personal Hotspot > More
- Now tap on AP Band
- If the 5 GHz AP band is selected, select the 2.4 GHz AP band instead.
- Try to see if the hotspot connection now works when you try to connect to it.
Conclusions
The hotspot is a very useful feature as it allows you to turn an Android smartphone into a router that can be practically connected to multiple devices using the same data connection. Often the hotspot is used in emergencies to connect other devices, but some now use the hotspot normally to browse the internet for example from a PC or a tablet. If you are experiencing malfunctioning problems with your hotspot, through the solutions seen above you should be able to solve it, as they are the most common solutions that can occur in case of malfunction. Of course, a software problem with the phone that doesn’t make the hotspot work could happen, but in this case, it could probably only be solved with a reset to factory status or an OS update with the bug fixed. See you next guide.