If you have a wifi Package onboard can you hotspot your Phone

[rkmw]

If you purchase a wifi package onboard with your IPad can you hotspot your phone

you would need your flight mode on your phone and if you have your personal hotspot on and would it work 

[OzKiwiJJ]

24 minutes ago, rkmw said:

If you purchase a wifi package onboard with your IPad can you hotspot your phone

you would need your flight mode on your phone and if you have your personal hotspot on and would it work 

No, or at least it doesn't work on my Android phone. A hotspot is where you use your mobile phone signal to provide a WiFi connection to another device. You can't connect while you are using WiFi on the host device.

 

You should be able to connect the phone to the WiFi package directly. No hotspot needed 

[lissie]

Probably - but why bother - just connect the iPad . The speeds will be pretty slow so hot spotting will be glacial . You need  fight mode and wifi turned on to hotspot 

[OzKiwiJJ]

BTW if you're wanting to use the phone as a phone you need WiFi calling enabled on the phone, then connect it to the ship's WiFi.

[rkmw]

11 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

BTW if you're wanting to use the phone as a phone you need WiFi calling enabled on the phone, then connect it to the ship's WiFi.

I wanted to connect the iPad to the wifi and the other person  connect the hotspot to their phone   so we both can use the internet at the same time if it’s possible

Edited April 30, 2023 by rkmw

[d9704011]

12 minutes ago, lissie said:

Probably - but why bother - just connect the iPad . The speeds will be pretty slow so hot spotting will be glacial . You need  fight mode and wifi turned on to hotspot 

I believe the purpose of the question was to avoid having to pay for more than one wi-fi account; multiple users connecting through the hot spot.

[arxcards]

46 minutes ago, rkmw said:

If you purchase a wifi package onboard with your IPad can you hotspot your phone

you would need your flight mode on your phone and if you have your personal hotspot on and would it work 

Pretty much covered, and for a cost saving - the answer is a resolute no.

 

Setting up your phone as a wi-fi hot spot only works when you are connected to a cellular network. When you connect to a cellular network at sea, it is via satellite roaming, not the ships wi-fi network.

 

My understanding is that when you go to flight mode, you disconnect from all cellular networks and no longer have a personal hotspot to share.

 

Option one, to save money. Disconnect your phone then connect the ipad, and vice versa - taking turns to share a connection. 

Option two, buy a second connection.

[rkmw]

8 minutes ago, arxcards said:

Pretty much covered, and for a cost saving - the answer is a resolute no.

 

Setting up your phone as a wi-fi hot spot only works when you are connected to a cellular network. When you connect to a cellular network at sea, it is via satellite roaming, not the ships wi-fi network.

 

My understanding is that when you go to flight mode, you disconnect from all cellular networks and no longer have a personal hotspot to share.

 

Option one, to save money. Disconnect your phone then connect the ipad, and vice versa - taking turns to share a connection. 

Option two, buy a second connection.

Geoff the question was asked on FB and I wanted to know if anyone else knew and this person made a comment

 

Well I was able to hotspot from my Samsung phone to my son's iphone. I was connected to the ship's internet and turned on mobile hotspot and my son connected to me and shared my internet at the same time. He was able to stream the cricket live while I was facebooking. Note I don't ever put my phone on airplane mode, and I believe that's why I could do it.

I never use airplane mode when I travel. I turn off data roaming and before leaving Australia I divert all incoming calls to voicemail, which is also set to convert my voicemails to a text message. I update my voicemail message to tell people how to contact me. This way I still get important messages and text messages (which are free to receive overseas with my carrier). For various reasons I need to be contactable when I cruise and this works for me.

Edited April 30, 2023 by rkmw

[arxcards]

18 minutes ago, rkmw said:

Geoff the question was asked on FB and I wanted to know if anyone else knew and this person made a comment

 

Well I was able to hotspot from my Samsung phone to my son's iphone. I was connected to the ship's internet and turned on mobile hotspot and my son connected to me and shared my internet at the same time. He was able to stream the cricket live while I was facebooking. Note I don't ever put my phone on airplane mode, and I believe that's why I could do it.

I never use airplane mode when I travel. I turn off data roaming and before leaving Australia I divert all incoming calls to voicemail, which is also set to convert my voicemails to a text message. I update my voicemail message to tell people how to contact me. This way I still get important messages and text messages (which are free to receive overseas with my carrier). For various reasons I need to be contactable when I cruise and this works for me.

Oh well Bob, go with the FB answer then.

Edited April 30, 2023 by arxcards

[arxcards]

Bluetooth tethering to share a wifi signal might be possible, but you would need to be pretty much sitting at the same table.

[SinbadThePorter]

Don't know about iPads, but as far as I know mobile phones cannot act as a router for anything other than the mobile connection. In other words they cannot transfer data between wifi networks.

 

A Windows 10/11 laptop has no trouble doing this. You can also get proper mini routers that will do the job for about $30.

Edited April 30, 2023 by SinbadThePorter

[OzKiwiJJ]

13 hours ago, rkmw said:

Geoff the question was asked on FB and I wanted to know if anyone else knew and this person made a comment

 

Well I was able to hotspot from my Samsung phone to my son's iphone. I was connected to the ship's internet and turned on mobile hotspot and my son connected to me and shared my internet at the same time. He was able to stream the cricket live while I was facebooking. Note I don't ever put my phone on airplane mode, and I believe that's why I could do it.

I never use airplane mode when I travel. I turn off data roaming and before leaving Australia I divert all incoming calls to voicemail, which is also set to convert my voicemails to a text message. I update my voicemail message to tell people how to contact me. This way I still get important messages and text messages (which are free to receive overseas with my carrier). For various reasons I need to be contactable when I cruise and this works for me.

It would be interesting to know where that person was cruising and what mobile service provider they were connecting to. Because as far as I know that would not work unless that person was connected to their regular network. I have a Samsung phone and if WiFi is connected I cannot use the phone as a mobile hotspot, I have to turn off WiFi and take the phone out of flight mode, and there is no way I'm going to do that on a cruise! Of course my phone is a few years old now. Maybe newer phones allow pure WiFi hotspotting.

[cruise_critical]

Yes it works.

 

No idea on iphones or ipads. But it does at least work perfectly on most Samsung Galaxy phones. (at least on the S series phones such as S20, S21, S22 etc. that has dual band WIFI)

 

My friends and I do it all the time and even did it recently in our Ovation cruise last month. Heck, we used our phones as a hotspot to get the Amazon Firestick that I hooked up to the TV to watch Netflix/Disney+ on the TV. Works very well.

 

Basically, the phone will use different WIFI frequency for each WIFI connection. (e.g. 2.4ghz for internet, 5ghz for hotspot) So yeah, you connect to the cruise's WIFI, then you can enable hotspot on your phone and it will act as a WIFI hotspot to other devices sharing your device's cruise WIFI connection.

 

Most Windows laptop (or a Windows tablet such as the Surface) can also do this btw, so you can use a laptop as a hotspot for the entire room to share the single WIFI connection to the ship's WIFI. (if your laptop only has 1 WIFI band, you will need to get a cheap USB WIFI dongle to allow for dual WIFI capability)

Edited May 2, 2023 by cruise_critical

[OzKiwiJJ]

That explains it. Mine is a Galaxy Note so I guess it doesn't have the dual WiFi capability. It's about five years old. I don't think the S series was available then. It would be very useful for connecting my Kindle to though.

Edited May 2, 2023 by OzKiwiJJ

[cruise_critical]

Oh I see. Yeah, it would depend on what Note version you have, and if you have the latest OS update installed etc. But I would have assumed a Note (which is also top-tier of Galaxy series) woud be capable. Maybe they only released this feature on more recent phones / SW updates...

[OzKiwiJJ]

21 minutes ago, cruise_critical said:

Oh I see. Yeah, it would depend on what Note version you have, and if you have the latest OS update installed etc. But I would have assumed a Note (which is also top-tier of Galaxy series) woud be capable. Maybe they only released this feature on more recent phones / SW updates...

Possibly. I tried using it as a hotspot last year and it politely told me I couldn't do that with WiFi on. It's a Note 9 so very old in mobile phone terms but it does everything I want except hotspot through WiFi so not worth buying a new one yet. 

[yarramar]

11 hours ago, cruise_critical said:

Most Windows laptop (or a Windows tablet such as the Surface) can also do this btw, so you can use a laptop as a hotspot for the entire room to share the single WIFI connection to the ship's WIFI. (if your laptop only has 1 WIFI band, you will need to get a cheap USB WIFI dongle to allow for dual WIFI capability)

Edited 11 hours ago by cruise_critical

I didn't know this, thanks. My last cruise on RCCL I brought a mobile router which worked while in our cabin. I was able to connect 2 phones, an iPad, watch, my Surface PC and camera. I also took my firestick but forgot the remote and couldn't work out how to use it without. Had to stream using the PC.

[cruise_critical]

On 5/3/2023 at 10:14 AM, OzKiwiJJ said:

Possibly. I tried using it as a hotspot last year and it politely told me I couldn't do that with WiFi on. It's a Note 9 so very old in mobile phone terms but it does everything I want except hotspot through WiFi so not worth buying a new one yet. 

 

Hmm. I have an old Galaxy S9 Plus (released 6 months before your Note 9) and just tested it out. While I had it connected to my home WIFI, I could create a hotspot, and was able to get my other phone to connect to it and work no issues. (I even turned off mobile data to make sure it was sharing its WIFI internet) It also did initially warn tha it was going to share my wifi connection by enabling the hotspot.

 

So your Note 9 should work also unless it has some regional software feature locking or if the OS is not up to date. Can you go to Settings -> About Phone -> Software Information and see what version / patch level you are running? 

 

My S9 Plus has following for reference: (Australia stock)

One UI version

2.5

Android Version 

10

Kernel Version

4.9.118-23733710

Thu Jul 21 2022

Android security patch level 

1 March 2022

Edited May 5, 2023 by cruise_critical

[Kellyansapansa]

Yes it works, except when it doesn't. 🤔