How to turn your old Android phone into a Wi-Fi repeater
How to turn your old Android phone into a Wi-Fi repeater
https://www.howtogeek.com/you-can-use-your-old-android-phone-as-a-wi-fi-repeater/
Publish Date: 2026-02-09 12:00:00
Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com
If you’ve noticed a Wi-Fi signal blind spot in a corner of your home, you’ve probably thought about buying a Wi-Fi repeater to fix it. But did you know that the old Android phone sitting in your drawer could actually help bridge the gap? It’s a super-easy way to extend connectivity without spending a cent.
Many old Android phones can share their Wi-Fi signal natively
In the early days of Android smartphones, your device could only turn into a Wi-Fi hotspot if you first enabled mobile data and used your cellular network’s plan. In fact, enabling a hotspot often meant that Wi-Fi would turn off automatically. You couldn’t share your phone’s Wi-Fi signal via a hotspot.
So, if you wanted to share your Wi-Fi signal with someone else because their phone couldn’t catch it or the network was already congested, you were out of luck.
However, this changed with Android 9, which added the framework for STA/AP (Station/Access Point) concurrency, allowing a phone to stay connected to Wi-Fi while also running a hotspot.
Credit: Justin Duino / How-To Geek
It’s also worth noting that some smartphone manufacturers started adding this capability with even earlier versions of Android.
For instance, one of the Samsung Galaxy S7’s most underappreciated features was Wi-Fi Sharing, which was available all the way back in 2016.
Keep in mind that your old phone still needs a…
