Mobile Hotspot on 950 XL

[MichaelLopez]

I went to Cricket Wireless to setup a new account and was about to add in the mobile hotspot add-on but the lady at the store told me that the mobile hotspot might not work on their network. She said that since the 950XL is unlocked and not from Cricket that there is a low chance of it working. Can anyone verify if unlocked phones work with Cricket for the mobile hotspot feature.

 

[Soundtweaker]

Not even the 640 hotspot works on Cricket so the 950XL won't work anytime soon.

 

[snakebitten]

Cricket is a great LTE network if AT&T is a strong carrier in your area. But they don't make full use of the same features as AT&T, so it isn't an apples to apples comparison on monthly plan cost. Seems crazy that they actually sell the 640 (although they never stock it) but don't support hotspot with it. They guide you to the 635 for that feature. (512ram, instead of 1gig)

I love "flagship" phones and just concede to AT&T to get the most out of them. I even snagged a 40gig data plan a year ago for 50% of normal price. So AT&T cellular is my ISP at home and on the road. I average about 30 gigs use, so with rollover data I usually have 50 gigs available.

 

[tgp]

Not even the 640 hotspot works on Cricket so the 950XL won't work anytime soon.

Is that with an AT&T 640? Often the hotspot feature will work on a factory unlocked phone even if it is not on the plan, or the carrier does not support it. I used to use the hotspot all the time with my factory unlocked Nexus 5 on Net10. Net10 does not support tethering at all. It is not even optional.

 

[snakebitten]

Is that with an AT&T 640? Often the hotspot feature will work on a factory unlocked phone even if it is not on the plan, or the carrier does not support it. I used to use the hotspot all the time with my factory unlocked Nexus 5 on Net10. Net10 does not support tethering at all. It is not even optional.

Don't believe ANY 640 will support HotSpot on Cricket. I'm not sure how they control that feature, but I do know their motive for doing so. They sell a pretty robust 10 Gig data plan for about $60 ($55 with autopay) per month. And I suspect they have data that reveals that a non-tethering customer will not use nearly the average of that allotment as a Hot-Spot\Tethered customer will. So they want that extra $10 per month for those customers.

If Cricket actually sold larger (extreme) data plans for us rural folks, that have nothing but LTE vs Satellite internet, I would likely have gone with them, even with their silly device limitation. My brother uses a throwdown cheap Cricket Droid for a hotspot at his house. Leaves it in the window sill and never touches it. Works really well for his country hick ISP.

But I don't even have SAT or Cable TV. So it is OTA and Netflix at my shack. That HUGE AT&T data plan (on all devices) opened up a brave new world for my household.