Ipad 3 tethering question

[z28black98]

I plan on picking up an Ipad 3 (will be first one) when they come out. I am currently on the unlimited data plan on my iphone with AT&T. My question is, should I just pick up a wifi ipad3 and tether to my iphone which means upgrading to the 5gb plan or buy a wifi +3G ipad? What are the pros and cons? I always have my iphone on me so I dont foresee a problem there. I have read several posts on here where using your iphone as a hotspot drains the battery pretty quickly. For whats its worth, I have a 16gb iphone 4S.

Thanks for any advice guys!

 

[MajorTCS]

I used the tether feature last summer on vacation. It works fine, but, really drains the battery. I am going to spend the extra$ for at least a 3G Model this time. The 3G, possible 4G, will be easier than the tether routine.

 

[Menel]

1. wifi+3g iPad
cons: More up front cost, heard hassle stopping and starting service

2. iphone tethering
Use app to switch between tether/non-tether plans, minimal effort
Uses some batt., minimal in bluetooth mode, little more using wifi. Didn't impact me negatively in any way.

-----
For tethering: bluetooth is always on and more persistent and creates a more seemless experience. But is only about 1-1.2mbps.

WIFI you get full 3-9mbps ATT service, but phone often falls asleep in moments of inactivity to conserve battery, then have to wake it up, unlock to initiate a reconnect between the two.

Dedicated 3G in iPad would eliminate having to make that decision trade off. But that was with iPhone 4 BT2.0EDR. BT4.0 in 4S and assume in iPad 3. Might be really really nice. *shrug*

 

[danderton]

I was in the same boat as you are when i brought my first iPad. I Decided on getting the 3G and never looked back. Cost per month was the same for me for the data plan. Tethering is good if you wont do it often, but if you intend on using the iPad whilst commuting for example a 3G iPad is a no brainer.

 

[sammich]

If you use location on Personal Hotspot it's just not as fast to lock, or is it fast enough to track your location (I had a wifi iPad and tried the updated TomTom app on it, just doesn't work well enough).

Also, if you were to travel overseas, you can buy a local sim and use cheap local data on the iPad, instead of being chained to the iPhone's roaming.

 

[brand]

Its also worth mentioning that the 3G iPad has A-GPS and the wireless iPad does not.

 

[deeddawg]

1. wifi+3g iPad
cons: [...] heard hassle stopping and starting service

Can you substantiate this?

My experience: starting / stopping service is trivially easy on AT&T. Can be done from the ipad in a couple steps. I suppose it might be more complex if you don't own a credit card.

I have also heard it can be tricky for to set up service on a local SIM when travelling to a foreign country, but from what I've read it has to do with the carriers not wanting to take a foreign credit card)

I don't know about Verizon, maybe they're difficult to deal with.

 

[Menel]

Can you substantiate this?

My experience: starting / stopping service is trivially easy on AT&T. Can be done from the ipad in a couple steps. I suppose it might be more complex if you don't own a credit card.

I have also heard it can be tricky for to set up service on a local SIM when travelling to a foreign country, but from what I've read it has to do with the carriers not wanting to take a foreign credit card)

I don't know about Verizon, maybe they're difficult to deal with.

I was told with iPad month to month data plans, have to call an ATT rep to activate/de-activate service. I could be wrong...?

Vs. on phone it's matter of using the ATT app to switch between different dataplans.

 

[deeddawg]

I was told with iPad month to month data plans, have to call an ATT rep to activate/de-activate service. I could be wrong...?

Perhaps they're thinking of the post-paid plans like how most phones are set up. I remember reading that some people opt for that choice, but don't recall the reasoning (unless it had to do with FAN discounts).

With the standard normal prepaid plans it is very easy. Here are the instructions so you can judge for yourself:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4157

The caveat is that the default is the plans are set to autorenew; you can turn this off if you wish and also cancel the remainder of a month's data also -- again right from the ipad, no phone calls needed.

EDIT: Also, just to clear any misunderstanding, you do NOT have to activate a dataplan on a 3G ipad, at least not with AT&T. You can go for months without a dataplan and only turn it on if/when needed. So unless you need data you don't have to pay for it other than the cost for the 3G device vs wifi only. The GPS functionality DOES work without a dataplan in place, but of course no dataplan means no downloading maps while away from wifi -- which is where navigation apps that predownload maps are handy.

 

[z28black98]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B5141a Safari/7534.48.3)

Thanks for all the info guys/gals!! 32 wifi plus 3G/4G it is!!