Automatic Internet Sharing

[Jealy666]

Not sure if this is well known or not (I certainly had no idea), but I thought this was a brilliant feature and needed to share it!

So I Bluetooth paired my Surface 2 with my Lumia 920 and I noticed that on the Surface my phone was showing in the Wi-Fi list whilst Internet Sharing was off on the phone - so I hit connect and noticed that on my phone the Internet Sharing automatically turned on and connected my Surface to its data.

This means that I can have my phone in my pocket and just quickly jump on and off my data plan with my Surface with no hassle whatsoever. And Internet Sharing "will turn off automatically if it's not used for a few minutes." which is just brilliant!

Thanks Microsoft!

 

[HeyCori]

I believe you need both 8.1 and GDR3 to get this to work.

 

[Jealy666]

I probably should have mentioned my setup in more detail but yeah. 8.1 (obviously, Surface 2) and GDR3 is what I'm running.

 

[Patric.Z]

Thanks for sharing. I didn't know this and this is really useful. One thing to note, after the initial connetion, bluetooth icon on my phone does not show they are connected even though they are as I can turn on Interenet Shareing on using my Surface. Anyone know if this works with iPhone as well? Also, does this share GPS location like the iOS devices?

 

[Jealy666]

Thanks for sharing. I didn't know this and this is really useful. One thing to note, after the initial connetion, bluetooth icon on my phone does not show they are connected even though they are as I can turn on Interenet Shareing on using my Surface. Anyone know if this works with iPhone as well? Also, does this share GPS location like the iOS devices?

I think it only connects to push the internet sharing information.

I tried it with my boss's iPhone last week and it didn't work.

 

[etphoto]

Not sure if this is well known or not (I certainly had no idea), but I thought this was a brilliant feature and needed to share it!

So I Bluetooth paired my Surface 2 with my Lumia 920 and I noticed that on the Surface my phone was showing in the Wi-Fi list whilst Internet Sharing was off on the phone - so I hit connect and noticed that on my phone the Internet Sharing automatically turned on and connected my Surface to its data.

This means that I can have my phone in my pocket and just quickly jump on and off my data plan with my Surface with no hassle whatsoever. And Internet Sharing "will turn off automatically if it's not used for a few minutes." which is just brilliant!

Thanks Microsoft!

I am not sure I follow. Are you saying you do not have WiFi so you connect (using your surface) to the internet via your phone's cellular service?

 

[Jealy666]

Yeah, but the point is that I don't have to "enable" my internet sharing on my phone every time I wish to go online with my Surface. It enables it for me and then disables after a few minutes when I'm done with it, meaning I don't even need to take my phone out of my pocket.

 

[luv2skipow]

Very useful. Thanks for "sharing".

 

[gwinegarden]

I am trying to understand why I would want to use Bluetooth tethering rather than WiFi.

 

[jhoff80]

I am trying to understand why I would want to use Bluetooth tethering rather than WiFi.

It's not Bluetooth tethering. The PC (or Surface) quickly connects to the phone via Bluetooth, which triggers WiFi connection sharing to turn on and the PC connects to the internet via WiFi.

 

[gwinegarden]

It's not Bluetooth tethering. The PC (or Surface) quickly connects to the phone via Bluetooth, which triggers WiFi connection sharing to turn on and the PC connects to the internet via WiFi.

But, I can connect my Surface to my phone via Wi-Fi so why use Bluetooth when it is slower?

 

[jhoff80]

Again, the Bluetooth connection is only temporary. It's a quick trigger to automatically turn on the WiFi Internet Sharing. It's a quicker method of turning on the same feature.