Help Hot spot no longer shares internet after OS update

[BrianHart]

My Galaxy A51 installed update to One UI 5 (Android 13) a couple of weeks ago, and ever since then, my Hot Spot will not allow internet. That is, I can still connect my laptop to the hot spot on the Galaxy, and it correctly provide a DHCP IP address to my laptop, but the laptop says No Internet anc cannot access the internet while connected to the hot spot.

The Galaxy still has internet access, and I have been through many, many general online posts suggesting things like turning Airplane mode on/off and even went as far as Reset, which, among other things, reset the Hot Spot configuration to default settings. Still no internet through the Hot Spot, and it is critical now because I have an out-of-town trip that will require me to work from the vehicle while en route.

It seems clear that the failure is tied to the update, and my only theory is that there might be somewhere that the HotSpot app needs to get permission to use the internet. But I cannot find HotSpot under Apps to look at that or clear its cache. I am very loathe to do a factory reset, since then I would have to redo everything from scratch.

Ideas on how to get my hot spot to actually provide internet again?

 

[Windroid]

Have you tried connecting another computer to your hotspot? Maybe this is a problem just between your specific laptop and your hotspot.

 

[BrianHart]

The same thing happens when I connect my iPad to the hot spot: the hot spot serves out a DHCP IP address but does not provide internet access.

 

[BrianHart]

But the hot spot does provide internet access when I connect it to WiFi and tick the WiFi Sharing option to allow the hot spot to provide internet to my laptop when the Android is connected to WiFi. Just not when connected to mobile data. But the Android itself has access to mobile data even when not on WiFi; it has internet access in its own right via mobile data.

 

[ocnbrze]

Try putting the phone in safe mode. If it is still happening then it's not a 3rd party app doing this. It's something within the system os. And I would take it in to your carrier and see if they can help you troubleshoot it. It could also be a hardware issue.

 

[James_Watson]

I am not sure whether there is some similar configuration web for your phone hotspot. For a wireless router, in general, we can access its configuration web such as http://192.168.1.1 with a web browser to view the router's settings. If there is a web portal, access it to check which WiFi option has wrong value.

If the above workaround does not work, as you suspect that the problem is caused by the latest update of One UI, you may contact Samsung Customer Service to report the issue and ask for help.

 

[BrianHart]

Sorry about the late post back here. The problem still exists, but I finally called the provider who told me, "You don't have a hot spot plan--only a data plan." I objected on the basis that it worked that way for three years, but their tech support was not helpful and just kept repeating that I did not have a hot spot plan, despite my request to have them explain how it worked for three years.

But I can read between the lines, and the fact that the hot spot worked for three years, simply counting hot spot minutes against my data plan , and then quit providing internet access abruptly after an OS upgrade strongly implies this: that the prior version of the OS masked hot spot usage from whatever app manages data usage so that hot spot packets were just so many more packets on the data plan.

And I rarely use the data plan for anything except hot spot; in fact, this is just a phone for me except that I need a way to use it to connect my computer to the internet so I can get RDP access to any of the many servers I manage while mobile. And I need that perhaps once per month for a few minutes and perhaps for an hour or two once per year when I need to work while in the car.

So it is not like I ever went anywhere near the data plan limits. Does anyone know how to undo an OS upgrade or configure the system to pool all data usage under data rather than segregating it out in a way that my provider can double-dip by forcing me to pay for a hot spot plan when I was never even using my data minutes?