Because most people don’t need it.
That is absolutely an option, you can spec out multiple laptops with cellular radios. It isn’t standard because it costs extra and most people aren’t going to pay an additional bill for another cell line. Typically they’re more common to enterprise environments with people out in the field a lot.
Hotspots are probably still the more common option though, at least in my experience.
I really wish you could buy sim cards in like, packs of 2-3 and have multiple sims for your devices using the same plan / line.
So your phone, laptop, tablet, etc can all share the same data and potentially voice/text service if they have the right software.
This is why I just use my phone’s hotspot.
I do, too, but it is quite taxing on the battery, which sucks.
Just use the money saved by takin’ away my CD drive
But an extra SIM card with data is only like £6 a month on a monthly rolling account, all one would have to do is have one or two less lattes to make up for is and it’s all good.
I would love to see more connectivity options in our devices, including tablets!
Maybe where you live, some other places are much, much more expensive.
If you want one, you could probably find a decent refurbished Thinkpad on eBay or something. Just make sure the radio it has is compatible with whatever spectrums your carrier uses. Tablets also have options for cellular radios.
You can also just buy a new one, but refurbs are good deals if you’re on a budget.
This is a thing, but its not very popular outside of corporate machines as I would guess most people don’t want to pay for an extra phone data plan specifically for their laptop. It usually isn’t available to normal consumer line laptops though, like I said, its mostly only supported on business line laptops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_WAN
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832669623539.html
Yeah, most people don’t really need it because most people have Wi-Fi at home and most people use their laptops at home. Business users may actually need to use them on the go and potentially in places with no Wi-Fi. But even most business laptops only get used at the office, at home, or maybe on a train (those also tend to have Wi-Fi).
So it’s optional for business laptops and not even available for most consumer laptops because if a business can save 20 euros per device on a thousand devices every 3 years, they absolutely are gonna take that option and a lot of home users are already buying 200-300 euro laptops that are basically good for nothing. They ain’t gonna pay extra. Unless it’s a gaming laptop, but those are tethered to the wall at home 90% of the time too.
Really, the only people who really need it are those who have to go work in the field somewhere sometimes.
In Denmark, you can buy an additional “data sim” with the same number for your tablet or car. I don’t have it and never checked if you can just call but you can definitely use telegram or whatsapp for audio/videocalls
There are loads of laptops with mobile data. For calling its the phone company stopping it
Because not all use cases call for it.
If you are working in a city with wifi everywhere you don’t need a LTE module.
If you are a mobile worker like a field tech thn it makes more sense to have an LTE module.
At the ISP I worked at we did that. Office monkeys has laptops with no LTE while us field engineers did have LTE modules.
If you were using your laptop as your only communication device, you’d need it switched on all the time you were awake. Not convenient.
Regulation. Where I’m at, a device capable of making phone calls, must allow emergency calls by any user. Data is all you can get
That can’t be the reason. I feel like that would be pretty easy to implement. I can’t see manufacturers saying “well we could put cellular capabilities in laptops but if we also have to allow emergency calls then we’ll just not bother”.
It’s a lot of work and cost for something that is not a large market need. Instead people use their phone as Hotspot.
right, but that’s a different reason. I was specifically saying that I don’t believe the reason for not including cellular in laptops is because of the regulations requiring emergency calls, which is what I was replying to.
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PC with phone capability: this is already very much a thing.
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Desktop OS + mobile formfactor: this can be done, but I’m not sure how it’s any different from what we have right now, especially if you use Android.
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Because it costs extra for little benefit. LTE was a choice for my notebook. I just set my phone to wifi tether, saved me $200.
If you need internet on your laptop you can use this thing called a hotspot.
Or a dongle, or use the phone you already have on you as a hotspot.
I’ve got a little netbook from ages ago that takes a 3G SIM, I used it occasionally as phones didn’t really do tethering back then, no real need now I can tether.
Because it doesn’t fit in my pocket.
There are laptops that come with LTE chips… they’re just not popular. You’re right though, there is the increasing mentality of “always online” that some people just expect to have. I’m not one of them but I can see why the technical argument could be made. Broadband home routers are starting to show up with support for this already and so it’s only a matter of time. As another commenter said, it will drive up the price for artificially no reason…
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Voice calls via POTS isn’t a big thing via laptop. Most calls like this are now via apps. Hell, I despise using POTS any more, my phone SIM doesn’t even do voice, all calls are VOIP now via a service that interconnects with POTS.
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You can use a SIM dongle for laptops without a built-in modem. Though business class laptops have a cell modem as an option
There’s just little call for circuit-based voice calls any more. Those connections are more sensitive to network issues, and I’d bet most voice calls are some form of VOIP anyway. If you really need circuit-based calling, you can still do it over IP using a service like jmp.chat
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Pretty sure Linux supports eSims and some older laptops support Sim cards, you can add one to your PC as well. Personally I just use secure ways of communicating but it would def be useful when your traveling.
