If you aren't bothered about new, just buy one from Gumtree. I'm sure I was able to tether back on my Galaxy s5. Should be able to pick a S series up for about £50-70
If it is JUST for tethering then £25 for a Moto G 4G/LTE Unlocked with 2 year warranty: uk.webuy.com/pro…nlc
or get a MiFi device specifically designed for that, £28 and 24 Month warranty: uk.webuy.com/pro…unl
If you want to use it as a phone too, then you'll want to get something more recent. An IMO Q4 from Tesco Outlet for £43.69 Should do the trick for the basics: ebay.co.uk/itm…168
And if you want brand new, then the Alcatel 1 is the absolute cheapest Android phone I can think of right now. (edited)
I spent ages looking into this as it was my initial plan for my campervan. I ended up sniping a Huawei mobile hotspot on ebay for a great price, which has the antenna ports so i've got great signal.
Of course itf thats not what you're after then a phone will do great, but if its in the budget, even a mifi box with no antenne will do way better than a hotspotting phone
If it will be constantly used as a tethering device to replace home broadband then I would consider a decent device. Tethering can take a lot of processing power and it will have to be constantly on charge because it kills the battery.
Annoyingly I wrote a long message here and it's disappeared when I pressed send. The gist was:
- As others have said, unless you really need the phone functionality, go for a mifi instead - They work better and work more consistently over longer periods - I tried to use a phone as a long-term internet solution in my house and was plagued with bad connections and phone overheating. - You should be able to get a good MiFi dongle for around the same price as a cheap Android - Worth remembering that with a phone you also have issues surrounding Android updates and older security etc especially if the phone is particularly old.
This is £25 for example (locked to Voda but there's loads of others like it). Even the absolute worst phone will cost around this much: ebay.co.uk/itm…BwE
I am a pedantic so-and-so I know, and I might have this wrong but I always though it was the SIM combined with the OS and provider which gave the tethering capability - not the phone as such. I belong to a club which has access in the building to public wifi but occasionally it is not available. When this happens we fall back on a little mifi router which has a cheap Lebara SIM card in it allowing many users to access it. It only has 15GB per month but serves our purposes.
You're right to an extent. Your provider and the plan you choose dictates whether you have the network allowance to forward your data to another device(s), but without the hardware then it wouldn't be possible to transmit the data to another device even if your data plan supported it.
8 Comments
sorted byuk.webuy.com/pro…nlc
or get a MiFi device specifically designed for that, £28 and 24 Month warranty:
uk.webuy.com/pro…unl
If you want to use it as a phone too, then you'll want to get something more recent. An IMO Q4 from Tesco Outlet for £43.69 Should do the trick for the basics:
ebay.co.uk/itm…168
And if you want brand new, then the Alcatel 1 is the absolute cheapest Android phone I can think of right now. (edited)
Of course itf thats not what you're after then a phone will do great, but if its in the budget, even a mifi box with no antenne will do way better than a hotspotting phone
Tethering can take a lot of processing power and it will have to be constantly on charge because it kills the battery.
- As others have said, unless you really need the phone functionality, go for a mifi instead
- They work better and work more consistently over longer periods
- I tried to use a phone as a long-term internet solution in my house and was plagued with bad connections and phone overheating.
- You should be able to get a good MiFi dongle for around the same price as a cheap Android
- Worth remembering that with a phone you also have issues surrounding Android updates and older security etc especially if the phone is particularly old.
This is £25 for example (locked to Voda but there's loads of others like it). Even the absolute worst phone will cost around this much: ebay.co.uk/itm…BwE
I belong to a club which has access in the building to public wifi but occasionally it is not available. When this happens we fall back on a little mifi router which has a cheap Lebara SIM card in it allowing many users to access it. It only has 15GB per month but serves our purposes.