this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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I've been considering using my phone only for tethering, and doing anything on the go on a ultraportable Linux laptop. If anyone is doing this already, I'd love to hear about your experience.
I'm working towards something like that. I'm hoping to ultimately drop the smartphone altogether, and I've set my current phone's end of life (2027ish?) as the goal.
I think the other thing that's necessary to keep the same sense of connectedness is a device to receive notifications, and I have an open source smartwatch I want to program for that. I've been working on a notification server too (kind of like Gotify), but at the moment it's a work in progress
I haven't committed to doing it full time, but I've had a GPD Win Max 2 for a few months now. A little 10 inch laptop that actually has solid new AMD internals. Love it so far
https://www.gpd.hk/gpdwinmax22025
I tether my GOS tablet. I currenly don't use a notebook privately, only a desktop.
You need a generous data plan, or never install system updates but on WiFi.
Honestly I do this a lot. Not a bad experience overall. Phone planes for hotspots suck in the US IMHO. Calyx's hotspot device was better, but I had device issues with them from time to time
Do any cell phone plans allow for unlimited Hotspot data? That's my largest issue with doing that, I use more than 50GB every single month.
Huh
Maybe it's different in other countries, but why would there be a different allowance for tethered/hotspot data?
Surely unlimited means unlimited and it makes no difference whether the ones and zeros go to a phone or something connected to it?
I've never had any problems
I think the logic would be that it's easier to use more data on a computer and while using multiple devices. On my phone I sometimes get full speeds while tethered, and sometimes get half a Mbps.
In the US it's typical to have to pay extra for hotspot privilege. There are ways around this by obfuscating the IP of downstreat devices, but by default the android "hotspot" feature places nice with carriers and will even fail to start if it isn't authorized.
Yes but they're like $60 a month
I'm no tech expert and I haven't done this for a while so don't know if that change but they were more packet loss/errors (not sure proper terms, not English native). For most files this isn't an issue but was for more sensitive ones like programs/iso...
Battery also suffered more from this used, keeping phone charged while tethering wasn't good due to battery management system. But things could have changed.
Last point is that bad weather does affect cellphone reception.