I just got an email letting us know that the wifi at school will be down tomorrow. Wired ethernet works, but will be plugged into the painfully slow HP laptop provided by the school that I use only to drive the TV in my classroom. I’ll take the nexdock because the easiest way to use my cell data is directly. I have a SIM for my Pro X, but I find it’s unreliable and comes just enough out of the slot that it tells me to insert a SIM after the slightest bump. Fixing it requires the tool to open the door and reseat the card. I currently have the SIM in my Tab S6 lite, but the screen is smaller than the nexdock. Tethering would be the last resort as that’s limited by my plan and it requires having an extra thing running and draining battery.
What do you do when the wifi goes out? Do you prefer a direct LTE connection? Do you not mind tethering for extended periods?
I was about to cancel my data SIM line because I hardly ever use it, then stuff like this happens and it makes me think it’s worth the backup option. But I’m also to the point where nearly all of my regular needs are covered by Dex and I can fall back on the nexdock and my fold when the regular internet goes out.
After years and years of tethering, I finally went with built-in LTE. I love it. Not only does it feel faster and smoother than my tethered connection through my Note Phones, I have found that the battery life on my phone and Go2 are not linked and depleting at the same time. Result = greater overall battery life on the road. My next tablet will have built-in 5G.
Your last sentence may be saying it all - looks like you have the solution in hand (pun intended). For me, I tether to my iPhone because our AT&T plan has 15gb/month tethering.
I’ve wanted to do this for years, but it’s not the devices that have been the problem.
It’s the carriers. They want all the money they can get for you and refuse to implement multiple SIMs using the same data ‘pool’ wherever I have lived.
And no, the family plans are not an answer. They’re just somewhat discounted full plans in a bundle.
In temporary situation like short outage or idle time on the bus, my choice would be a phone mobile hot spot. I have cheaper 1 year 4g package on my phone, but it would be a waste to invest it on a tablet that almost never leave wifi areas.
Long term solution? Buy a portable 4g/5g wifi hot spot device and pop the 1 year 4g sim in there.
No, I never expected them to. Ever since I got my first mobile phone (yes, I am still a young-un) I could see they were trying to get every penny out of me they could.
Geez, I blew through credit just texting. And that one time I tried out WAP… I blew through my entire top-up.
Last month I lost 20$ from 200 mb used in 3 days because I forgot to replace the expired 4G sim, so it eat data from my celcular sim (dual sim phone). And that was a post-paid plan, so there wasn’t even any limit. I’m glad I found out about it early or I would get a horrible surprise at the end of the month.
