GoKawiilMegan Ellis / Android Authority
It’s no secret that I love using mobile hotspots and my mobile router to connect multiple smartphones to a single data connection. I mostly do this for privacy, but it also gives me flexibility when I’m traveling between places with no Wi-Fi.
I do this while traveling for work, but also when playing Pokémon Go. But after using this setup on a limited data plan on a few recent trips, I realized that I was using a lot more of my monthly cap than I intended.
Do you use specific settings to save data on your mobile hotspots and routers? 7 votes Yes (Let us know which ones). 29 % No. 71 %
Hotspots are treated as Wi-Fi, creating a usage problem
Megan Ellis / Android Authority
When you set up a hotspot on your smartphone or use a mobile router with a data SIM, the devices connecting to it usually treat this as regular Wi-Fi. This means that all the data-saving settings reserved for mobile networks often go out the window.
I had been sharing my mobile connection between devices for a few months, but this never really presented a problem until a trip in February. I simply hadn’t noticed because my previous hotspot instances lasted about 3 to 5 hours, while these work trips lasted closer to 24 hours. On my previous outings, my phones had never used more than 200MB at a time.
Using a mobile router and hotspots resulted in my data cap running out much quicker than usual.
However, this picture looked vastly different during my overnight trips. Suddenly, my S23 Ultra would blow through my 3GB monthly limit in a single evening. The first time this happened, I attributed it to an inconveniently timed system update. On the next trip, I disabled automatic updates, but again the phone used up the additional data I had bought.
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