How to use Data and Wifi at same time

[Tristanm22]

I recently bought the Kingston wireless lite. Basically its a external hard drive that connects via wifi to play music videos or what ever. It has a bridge mode which allows you to connect the device to a wifi network while your connected to the device streaming music. This works great. Now I ride the bus alot which means I'll never be connected to a wifi network. So when I'm streaming music from this device( via wifi) my phone becomes completely useless because Its trying to get data over the wirelesslite even though it has no network.

So my question is. is there a way to have wifi and data on at the same time?

 

[sonyboyj]

no the phone can only use wifi or the phone network at one time.

 

[UncleMike]

Why would you connect to the device directly when it's connected to a Wi-Fi network which you can also connect to with your phone? Wouldn't the device and your phone both be connected to the Wi-Fi network, and connect to each other via the network?

 

[mikedt]

Why would you connect to the device directly when it's connected to a Wi-Fi network which you can also connect to with your phone? Wouldn't the device and your phone both be connected to the Wi-Fi network, and connect to each other via the network?

Think what the OP is saying, the Wireless Lite with built-in hard drive is making the WiFi network that the phone is connecting to. It's working as a WiFi access point. It's able to stream music to the phone ok, but the phone is also trying to access the Internet via the Wireless Lite's WiFi, and of course it can't. And because the OP is on a bus, there's no other WiFi network available and has to connect to the Wireless Lite directly.

When a phone connects to WiFi it just assumes it's going to have Internet access and so stops using cellular data. Don't think there's any way to enable both at the same time. Only way I can see around it would be to carry a MiFi type device, and connect both devices to that.

 

[UncleMike]

Somehow I missed the part about the bus, or forgot about it after reading the rest of the thread. Of the streaming device can connect as a wireless client, you could setup the phone as a Wi-Fi hot spot - maintaining its cellular data connection and having the two devices connected over Wi-Fi - but I'm not sure the two devices would be able to talk to each other. Even if they could, this would be a battery hog on the phone.

 

[BigRedGonzo]

Trist,

This is just a wild shot, but you didn't mention which device you have and its not in your profile, but some Samsung phones have a Direct WiFi mode that you can use to connect to other phones locally for data transfer. I have used it between my phone and my wife's and it operates fine and leaves Carrier Data enabled. I wouldn't even begin to guess whether it would work with your WiFi Lite device, but it the option is available on your phone, that might be something to try.