TechComputers & PCsLaptopsThe best Chromebooks are getting this brilliant free upgradeIf you’ve got a Chromebook with cellular connectivity it’s about to get a whole lot more usefulWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
TechComputers & PCsLaptopsThe best Chromebooks are getting this brilliant free upgradeIf you’ve got a Chromebook with cellular connectivity it’s about to get a whole lot more usefulWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
If you’ve got a Chromebook with cellular connectivity it’s about to get a whole lot more useful
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Acer)
(Image credit: Acer)
If you have one of thebest Chromebookswith mobile data, it’s about to become an even better mobile device: a forthcoming Chrome OS update will enable you to use your Chromebook as a Wi-Fi hotspot for your other, non-cellular devices. It’s essentially the same thing you can do with thebest Android phones, but as a Chromebook has a much bigger battery it’s better suited for the role of device hotspot hub.
How Chromebooks' mobile hotspot feature will work
Given that there’s already a personal hotspot feature inAndroid, you don’t need to have incredible psychic powers to predict how it’ll work in Chrome OS: we’d expect it to be in the Settings app with a toggle to turn it on and off and, presumably, the ability to give your hotspot a name. It’s something the Chromebook hardware is perfectly capable of delivering; allGoogleneeds to do is switch it on.
That’s easy for me to say, though: I’m not the one actually coding this stuff. And given the fairly sketchy evidence of the new feature so far, it’s clearly not going to arrive in the coming weeks: when it comes, it won’t be until much later this year.
I know this is a fairly niche feature, because chances are that if you have a Chromebook you’ve also got an Android phone with hotspot capability. But if you’re already using mobile data on your laptop it’ll enable you to deliver the same hotspot features without having to worry about the drain on your phone’s battery: as someone whose phone is often used as a hotspot for the kids' tablets, I’m painfully aware of the effect it has on even thebest phones' batteries. Not everybody will need this new feature, but the ones that do will be very glad when it arrives.
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