Comments on: Will iPhone’s Personal Hotspot Make the 3G iPad Irrelevant?

By: Wi-Fi iPad 2 Gets GPS With iPhone 4 Connection Sharing: Apple News, Tips and Reviews «

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:41:41 +0000

[...] 4′s Personal Hotspot sharing feature (and similar sharing on other smartphone devices) were making a 3G-capable iPad less of a necessity for users. Geoffrey Goetz recently pointed out that along with 3G capabilities came true GPS, a feature not [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 21:20:47 +0000

I asked the same question as the author and i think it’s shortsighted to not ask question like this!

Will Apple lock the iPad against the Personal Hotspot or will the personal Hotspot not accept a iPad client? I think these are very interesting questions.

Why? Because I don’t think that apple is one of the tec companies who don’t think before they do something. And even this “bug” works at the beginning so Apple will erase it with an update of one or both devices, when they are getting in trouble to sell 3G iPads.

By: PRETHOUGHT

PRETHOUGHT — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 14:41:49 +0000

Are we forgetting that the iPad 3G has a battery that will last 9 hours? Yeah go ahead and use any phone as a hotspot for the iPad and see how long that works out. There is no setup with a cell radio in an iPad. Do you really want to look like that much of a tool getting the hotspot thing going? It is a big inconvenience to do the setup when all you have to do is go with an iPad 3G.

By: Hamranhansenhansen

Hamranhansenhansen — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:51:57 +0000

No.

The main reason is battery life. My iPad 3G always arrives home with 40% or more battery left. My iPhone arrives home on 10% even without using it as a Wi-Fi hotspot. My iPhone would be dead all the time with the amount I use my iPad.

Another reason is you don’t save that much. Personal Hotspot is just Wi-Fi tethering. Tethering costs $20/month. My iPad 3G costs $30/month.

Finally, on a CDMA network, when a call comes in, not only would your iPhone be booted off the network, but so would your iPad.

iPad is a mobile PC. It wants its own data connection, same as a mobile phone wants its own.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:17:52 +0000

I imagine if you got the wifi only ipad a smart GPS app developer could create an app for the iphone to share its GPS data with the GPS app on the ipad. Or better yet, make sharing GPS data an iphone hotspot option. Then you really would make the 3G ipad irrelevant!

By: David

David — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:26:45 +0000

Some people dont have personal hotspots… so they need the 3g on the iPad.

By: Mark Fleser

Mark Fleser — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:20:13 +0000

If the 3G iPad gains the personal hotspot feature of the iPhone you could have a Verizon iPhone and an AT&T iPad (or vice versa) so that if you’re in an area where one or the other doesn’t have reception you will still be able to use both. If that’s what happens I’ll get one on each carrier so I’m not SOL if I’m in a dead zone. And the 3G versions have a GPS built in.

By: Nokia

Nokia — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:44:29 +0000

hot spots have existed in Nokia phones a long time.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:26:39 +0000

I would still look at a 3G iPad for a few reasons:

* iPad’s are unlocked so you can buy local sim cards (and pay-as-you-go internet) when travelling in Europe. (Of course without tethering most people have just jailbroken an iPhone and install MyFi or soon to be Wifi tethering)

* GPS and Google Maps or location aware Apps. Wifi location is okay, but limited and the iPhone screen looks so small after using the iPad.

If Apple decides outside the US to allow iPad tethering with Wifi, the iPad becomes a great MyFi device. Not as portable as other MyFi but you can also check email and surf the web without an extra device. Most non-Apple devices support this now like my old Nokia phone and most Androids. The lack of tethering was the sole reason I decided to wait for the iPad 2 to buy a 3G version.

* I have a friend with a simple flip phone who wants his phone to be just a phone and not a computer. This simple phone won’t have 3G or an access point so limiting teithering to just iPhones is like Blackberry limiting Playbooks to only use Blackberries. My friend will see the Android as a full featured tablet and the iPad as Apple-Crippleware

Last week I tethered my iPhone 3GS to my Laptop to share Wifi so I could so them Netflix on their TV through my Wifi only iPad (since the 3GS can’t send Netflix Video out like the iPhone 4/iPad). They loved Netflixs, worked great on 3G speed, but was mess to setup. Assuming the carriers allow it Wifi Tethering just makes demos like this much simpler. I had to use a laptop as a $2000 wifi doggle.

Funny thing will be to see if Apple will let people with multiple iDevices to use Facetime over Tethered 3G Wifi since you can’t do it directly on 3G.

But finally, after Steve had to ask 500 people to turn off MyFi at the WWDC I think Apple will be careful how many devices they will allow this on. Of course, the 500 devices must have been either non-Apple or jail broken. I wonder how many people use jail broken iPad 3G’s as MyFi’s already?

By: got2trythis

got2trythis — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:55:47 +0000

There are several reasons to why Apple will have the 3G iPad:
1. Not all iPad owners have iPhones or phones with hotspot.
2. 3G model has a GPS as well (huge reason to buy a 3G)
3. Battery issues when the phone hotspot is turned on. Have you used an Android 2.2 with hotspot turned on lately?
4. As someone mentioned here CDMA iPhones cannot access data during phone calls making your iPad unusable for online work.

I am sure there plenty of other reasons so NO the iphone hotspot will not make iPads 3G obsolete.