Ever tried tethering on a android phone and were not able to activate it because your carrier and android were working together to block it?
Changing the APN used to work, but has now stopped working for me.
Rooting the phone is an option but some might not want to do that for various reasons.
Neat trick I just discovered. Pop out the sim (don't need to remove it, just have it disconnect from the phone). On my Moto X Pure it is in a little carrier and just pops out 1/8 inch when you stick a pin in the hole. Have your phone on and at the settings menu where you turn on the tethering/wifi hotspot (already have the hotspot set up beforehand with password, etc). Push back in the sim and wait about 2 seconds, then activate the hotspot.
It seems that during this time where the sim is registering itself, android is not able to verify that your carrier allows tethering and yet still lets the hotspot turn on. The hotspot seems to stay on even after the sim registers on your carrier network and then you have tethering/hotspot active.
It is cheating, yes, but there are carriers where you buy the data and they still won't let you use the data the way you want. On unlimited plans it is kind of really cheating, but does seem to work. They may boot you but I bet they don't unless you use more than 100GB a month or so.
Changing the APN used to work, but has now stopped working for me.
Rooting the phone is an option but some might not want to do that for various reasons.
Neat trick I just discovered. Pop out the sim (don't need to remove it, just have it disconnect from the phone). On my Moto X Pure it is in a little carrier and just pops out 1/8 inch when you stick a pin in the hole. Have your phone on and at the settings menu where you turn on the tethering/wifi hotspot (already have the hotspot set up beforehand with password, etc). Push back in the sim and wait about 2 seconds, then activate the hotspot.
It seems that during this time where the sim is registering itself, android is not able to verify that your carrier allows tethering and yet still lets the hotspot turn on. The hotspot seems to stay on even after the sim registers on your carrier network and then you have tethering/hotspot active.
It is cheating, yes, but there are carriers where you buy the data and they still won't let you use the data the way you want. On unlimited plans it is kind of really cheating, but does seem to work. They may boot you but I bet they don't unless you use more than 100GB a month or so.
But you do bring up a good point about battery life: when no towers are visible the phone's constant "polling" for a tower is murder on a battery. In that scenario it is helpful turn on airplane mode until your location changes.
