How do I get online from my PAYG Vodaphone mobile?

[ulrichburke]

HI!

Hokay, very dumbass NOOB user alert, please be gentle with me. 

I've got a generic Chinese smartphone, one of those things that tries to look like the Samsung Galaxy but cost £35 from Wish! I've got a PAYG Vodaphone card in it which I've topped up with £10, when I did that it told me how much data I had (can't remember how much it said now but it told me I had some) and how much airtime. 

I've never been online using the phone so I've still got all my online time, must have, haven't used any of it.  And I must still have most of my calltime as well, haven't called many people.  But in SETTINGS there's nothing obviously saying 'Vodaphone WiFi' in the list of WiFi providers, all of which are padlocked with passwords, and I don't know how to get online with Vodaphone.  There IS one saying 'BT (British Telecom) WiFi without a padlock but underneath it says it tried to connect, couldn't do it, wasn't going to retry and I don't know how to force it to retry if it is the right one. 

Please, when all you experts have stopped laughing like horses, can SOMEONE talk me through actually getting online with this thing? I mean I'm indoors now, so could use my computer router to go online with it, but it slows my computer internet down too much and I couldn't do that outdoors anyway!

Can anyone help?  If anyone needs screenshots, my computer doesn't have a camera so they'd have to tell me how to make a smartphone do a selfie of its screen! Sorry I'm so bad.

Yours hopefully

Chris.

[AnnS]

Hi @ulrichburke 

You are going to need the correct Vodafone settings, this can be done by texting WEB to 40127, to configure the APN settings and update the SIM on the network, you also need to select pp (pre paid) from the connection settings.

As far as your WiFi is concerned, you will need to enter the password or use the WiFi key on the side of your router to connect to your home broadband connection.

Unfortunately, as this is a Chinese copy phone, it won't be supported by Vodafone but you should still be able to connect to the internet, if this does not work, it will be due to the phone having different frequencies.

If you have topped up, you should be on Vodafone 1, see here PAYG 

[BandOfBrothers]

Can you share the phone make and model number ?

It'll be in any About Phone section in the phone's settings.

Added to @AnnS detailed reply @ulrichburke you can manually key in Vodafone Apn settings for Vodafone Payg to get online using mobile data.

How-to-manually-enter-vodafone-apn-settings. 

Also make sure mobile data is turned On in the phone's settings.

A person wanting to use their phone on their Home Broadband Wi-Fi needs to key in the code exactly.

wikihow.com/Connect-to-a-Wireless-Internet-Connection.