I have a Samsung galaxy J3 (2016) which i want to use as the router for for my flat. There is only 4G in the area from one network as an option for connecting to the internet at home.

I have turned Mobile hotspot on, in More > Timeout settings i have set it to never time out, however after 15 minutes or so the connection will drop for every device. The J3 will still say that the hotspot is still on. Devices that were previously connected don’t show the J3 network as available, other devices cant see it either.

I have 5 phones, and around 7 other devices trying to connect at any one time, Windows devices cant connect without restarting the hotspot and connecting before iOS devices. I guess that that might be too many connections for such a useless phone. As a solution i tried to connect a repeater bridge to the J3 hotspot to reduce its connections to one continuous, then run a tplink router off the ethernet connection on the bridge. this worked for 5 minutes and was really fast, i thought it was solved but gradually slowed down and then stopped after 10 minutes, same problem, the repeater lost connection to the J3 yet the J3 showed the hotspot as on. Also the J3 only shows some devices as connected in the “connected devices”, when i know for a fact there are more connected.

i had been using a better xiaomi android phone as the router but the battery expanded and it seemed like it wanted to set fire to the flat, so it needs to be replaced, now my housemates are now moaning at me for spoiling the internet.

i cant use the simcard in a 4G to wifi adapter apparently according to the 4g network salesman, i dont want to spend another HK$ 900 to find that doesn’t work either.

is there anything im missing on the J3? im feeling frustrated by it and so rageful i might throw it into the sea.