Anoop Verma
THE next time you are stranded without an open WiFi connection, you can try to get your work done by letting your laptop share your smartphone’s connectivity. Of course, mobile connectivity of decent strength has to be available on the location for you to use your smartphone to create a WiFi hotspot or engineer a wired connection for your laptop. You can hope to enjoy browsing of decent speed only if you have a 3G connection, a normal 2G connection may prove to be too weak for accomplishing any real work.
Also, you have to consider the data plan that you have subscribed too, because a laptop can consume a relatively large amount of data in very short span of time; if the data limit that you have subscribed to is too low, you might end up with a rather hefty bill. A WiFi hotspot or a wired connection is only suitable for smartphone users who have subscribed to 3GB data plan of more than 2GB.
Here is the list of steps you need to take to turn your Android mobile into a portable WiFi hotspot:
* On your mobile, go to Settings > More > Tethering & portable hotspot.
* Tap “Portable WiFi hotspot” to enable it.
* You can tap “Configure WiFi hotspot” to enter an ID and password so that you don’t have unauthorised connections.
* On a computer with WiFi connectivity, click the network icon on the system tray to identify and connect to the wireless network you set.
If you want to have the option of USB tethering through your Android mobile, then you have to take the following steps:
* Connect a computer to your Android device with a USB cable.
* On your mobile, go to Settings > More > Tethering & portable hotspot.
* Tap “USB tethering” to enable it.
* On the computer, click the network icon on the system tray to identify and connect to the wired network. The Windows system may take more than a minute to discover the network for Internet access.
You can also share your mobile’s connectivity with your laptop through the process of Bluetooth tethering. But for this the two devices have to be paired. If you are using the Bluetooth for the first time, you will need to spend few minutes in pairing. The distance between the devices should not be more than seven metres.
* Under Settings > Wireless and networks, make sure Bluetooth is turned on.
* Touch Bluetooth. Your phone will scan for the IDs of all available Bluetooth devices in range.
* If devices are available, the IDs will be displayed on the phone’s screen.
* If your mobile device stops scanning before your Bluetooth device is ready, touch Search for devices.
* Touch the ID of the Bluetooth device in the list to pair with it.
* Follow the instructions to complete the pairing. If you’re prompted to enter a passcode, try entering 0000 or 1234 (the most common passcodes), or consult the documentation that came with the device.
* Once the pairing is successful, your phone connects to the device.
In order to enable connectivity sharing through Bluetooth, you have to enable Bluetooth tethering. This can be
done by the following steps:
* Go to Settings > Wireless and networks > More > Tethering and portable hotspot.
* Check Bluetooth tethering.
However, the system will work only when your laptop is capable of sharing network through Bluetooth. You will have to configure your computer to share it’s network connection via Bluetooth.
