That was my impression too, but after playing around with it for a while I think that either we misunderstood or it's not quite functional yet. Right now I can go into the wifi settings on my iPad and select my phone's personal hotspot and it will connect (some of the time) and use data from my phone without having to enter a password and without hotspot being enabled on my phone, which are both new and convenient features. However, I couldn't get it to automatically connect to my phone when the iPad didn't have any other connection. I'm hoping that will come with a future beta.
I don't think this was advertised.
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-gains-intelligent-instant-hotspot-feature/Apple aims to take this functionality a small step further in iOS 8 with Instant Hotspot, a new feature where iPads and Macs intelligently discover when an iPhone is nearby and automatically list the device under Wi-Fi networks in Settings. When an iPad is no longer using your iPhones cellular network, it intelligently disconnects to save battery life.
mine doesnt list unless i manually go into the iphone and turn it on for it to be discovered
The iPad to iPhone Instant Hotspot feature does connect with WiFi, correct? Even if it needs bluetooth to setup the connection, once connected, does it use WiFi for the data transfer?
I ask because I have found iPad to iPhone over bluetooth was just slow enough to make me switch over to WiFi. I would like the higher speeds to make use of Instant Hotspot.
Get a new carrier. Tmobile & ATT are in most cases faster than WIFI in NYC with the exception being Google Starbucks and Verizon FIOS.
The instant connect featured actually worked for me. It's just that once turned on I couldn't get it to stay on even though it was showing that it was on with my mac. My iPad has it's own LTE connection so hotspot is of no use to me with it. I will say that overall the iPhone BETA is way more stable than the iPad beta versions of the app.
The iPad to iPhone Instant Hotspot feature does connect with WiFi, correct? Even if it needs bluetooth to setup the connection, once connected, does it use WiFi for the data transfer?
I ask because I have found iPad to iPhone over bluetooth was just slow enough to make me switch over to WiFi. I would like the higher speeds to make use of Instant Hotspot.
I would assume that it uses wifi as you still connect to it through Settings | Wi-Fi, but I'm not absolutely certain and I'm not sure I can come up with a good way to test it.
Get a new carrier. Tmobile & ATT are in most cases faster than WIFI in NYC with the exception being Google Starbucks and Verizon FIOS.
Actually, I did come up with a good way to test it. I simply connected to my personal hotspot, then disabled bluetooth on my ipad. The connection remained functional, so I think it's pretty safe to assume that it uses wifi.
Tethering by bluetooth from the iPhone is limited to around 1.5mpbs I believe, regardless of carrier/connection etc.
Awesome, thanks, that sounds like the ticket.
I think this will allow me to drop my iPad data plan. Having to mess with the iPhone every time I restarted tethering was enough of a pain I stopped using it. I think this will be easy enough. Could save me $13/month!![]()
Ive measured and its never been limited to 1.5mbps
I've measured it too and it is. Tether your iPad to your iPhone first with bluetooth, and then with WiFi. Run Speedtest.net and you will see it.
I've got another question... once you've established a WiFi connection with Instant Hotspot, will it reconnect automatically later, or do you have to manually select it each time?
Specifically, if say I put my iPad to sleep for 20 minutes, and come back and wake it up, does it act like a normal WiFi connection and auto-reconnect?
How does this new fandangled hotspot feature work?
I thought if my ipad and iphone both run ios 8 and the ipad has no connection it would auto pick up my iphones hotspot and activate it?
Am i misled?
I've measured it too and it is. Tether your iPad to your iPhone first with bluetooth, and then with WiFi. Run Speedtest.net and you will see it.
From my quick testing, it looks like you will need to select it each time after a long break. I connected to the personal hotspot, then put my ipad to sleep. I woke it up again about 3 or 4 minutes later and it did reconnect, so I thought that was good. I put it asleep again and didn't wake it up for another 30 minutes or so. At that point it did not reconnect. So it looks like there's a little grace period there, but at some point it gives up and you need to reconnect manually.
That might be your service, not ios