Portable Hotspots, Etc

I recently purchased an iPad mini and have found myself wishing I bought the LTE version at times. It's only maybe during 10% of the time that I use it, because I don't really take it out too much.

I thought about purchasing a mobile hotspot or maybe getting AT&T's plan to turn my iPhone into a personal hotspot.

Anyone with experience with this stuff have an opinion?

Which would be better?

I probably wouldn't use a terribly large amount of data. I don't particularly want it to stream anything. Just to be able to download an app when i'm out and about and possibly use Tapatalk to access this forum and do some browsing on the internet.

Apple's mobile share plans seem pretty unreasonable and I really know nothing about this facet of technology beyond general knowledge of wireless connections, etc

Thanks for any help

GoSooners said:

I had purchased an iPad 2 with 3G when it came out. With the iPad 4, I went the hotspot route because not only can you use it for your iPad, it can be used for your Apple laptop (since Apple has no room for 4G chips like Dells and other laptops). The only downside to this is it's 1 more device to carry around (which I did forget on the plane once).

I don't remember the data tiers available now for the iPads but I know there are many plans availabile with Verizon.

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Yeah, I think I just decided that I may pay to be able to use my iPhone as a personal hotspot. I think it's more expensive, but as you mentioned, i'd rather not have another device to carry around.

I always have my phone with me, so forgetting the hotspot won't be an issue.

Thanks

bt22 said:

My daughter has an iPhone and does not use any data. So we just recently switched to an AT&T shared plan which enables your phone to be a hotspot. I currently still have the 1st gen iPad and I tried this feature for the first time the other day. It worked good and could see us using this feature when we travel. I also plan on using IOS 6 maps and turn by turn, which works great for me. I may have to increase my shared data plan, as we only got the 1 GB. It will cost me some additional money, but I think we will enjoy having the additional data on a monthly basis.

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I went today and got the personal hotspot service. It added $25 to my bill monthly and I now have 5 GB of data to split between my iPad and iPhone. I will probably use 1-2 GB.. But it's good to have extra.

I am sending this firm my Mini connected to my iPhone right now. Works well, but I noticed it automatically turns off if it isn't used for a couple minutes, which is nice if you forget to turn it off, but not s'much when I have to walk away for a moment. Then I have to reconnect when I get back.