Depending on your definition of "hotspot", most of them can. Provided the phone has bluetooth, you can address it from your laptop as a data-modem through pppd

Depending on your definition of "hotspot", most of them can. Provided the phone has bluetooth, you can address it from your laptop as a data-modem through pppd. The cons are the setup, which may or may no be canceled out by the geek-cred from having AT modem commands whiz by. The pro is the usually longer battery life of a dumb phone which means you can be fully online, anywhere, for the duration of your laptop battery.