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iPad Air Continues to Offer 24-Hour Battery Life as LTE Hotspot
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For all you know he's taking his kids on lots of educational field trips and they like to use the iPad for an hour to learn more about what they just spent a whole day experiencing.
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I think you meant planet...
In any case, this isn't true - by a long shot.
1) there's plenty of fallow spectrum - huge swathes go unused. Allocations for military use, for one example, are huge.
2) re-use of spectrum, either by use of geographic dispersement or simply by using low power is easy to achieve these days.
Have a look at white spaces - that's the right idea and real products should be showing up fairly soon.
Sometimes said kids have to spend lots of time in the car traveling and eventually get bored of looking out the window... Or get bored of sitting in the school pick up line waiting for siblings. How many kids do you have?
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Where do you get it for "a couple extra bucks". AT&T wants to charge me $10 extra per device. With 4 people on our plan we have 4 iPads and 2 iPad Mini's that can be used outside of WiFi. That would be $60 per month to allow any of them to be used without tethering. I am now waiting to order the new iPad Mini's. I am planning to get the Cell Version because I want the GPS but still plan to use tethering to get around the extra $10 per device. If it was really only $2 (couple of dollars) per month per device I would do that instead. But I really think there should be no per device charge since you are paying for the amount of data. Also, iOS should really pass the GPS Signal to the tethered device. I think there is a Android App that does that.
Sorry if that has been already answered, but mass transit commuters would be prime users of this.
Since most iPad users have a smart phone and already paying for data, I don't see why to get a cellular enabled iPad as well. You can setup the phone as a hotspot just as easily and access the internet thought it, without paying extra for the cellular hardware. But that's just me.
Convenience is the keyword here. It's one more reason to love iPad. It's a mini router whenever and wherever you go. No electricity required, and it stands 24 hours by itself. Isn't that lovely?
But yeah, it's not wise to use an iPad purely for LTE router. $629 is a bit steep for merely a hotspot.
A few reasons:
First, GPS. Although not used often, it is a pleasant feature to have and is only provided with a cellular device.
Second, Those moments when no WIFI is available (even some airports that charge a crazy fee to hook up with their network!).
Third, In purchasing an iPad brand new I don't favor buying a crippled device right out of the gate- with features missing.
Fourth, tethering- as I too have done before- is a hassle and LTE is a dramatic improvement over previous 3G cellular iPads, so why not take advantage of it?
He was probably saying that most people just tether to their smart phone so they don't have to pay for two data plans.
I doubt many, if any, people would buy an iPad solely to let it serve as a hotspot 24x7. However, in an emergency situation or when power is out, it's nice to know that in addition to having an iPad, you also have a hotspot for laptops for ~24 hours.
Any current ios product, iphone 3gs and above, can be used as a hotspot. It's built into the operating system.
My cellular iPad only costs me $10 more a month than tethering, and is so much more convenient.
I tried tethering my iPad 1 instead of using it's 3G connectivity. Even though my speeds were a lot higher using my Phone's 4G speeds, I opted to go back and use the native 3G connectivity. If I were just to start tethering on my phone, connect to my iPad, and then sit there and use it the rest of the day, it would be easy enough. But it's not that simple. I take my phone everywhere, by iPad sits on my desk. When I get up to go to the bathroom, tethering is lost, got to do it again. My iPhone's battery drains when tethering - gotta leave it plugged in now. I have this blue bar distracting me when using my iPhone while tethering. I get a phone call, I lose tethering. When I'm in my car, it's a pain to set up tethering instead of quickly surfing something when at a light.
If the cost was like $30 a month, then I would tether, but the $10 is worth the convenience.
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Yeah, but will I have to pay more to tether? I currently pay $29 a month for my unlimited data plan for my iPad mini. Yeah, I was an early adopter. So, would I have to pay anything extra to tether an iphone to it?
depends on your plan. With an idividual verizon plan, they charge an additonal $20 to use as a tether. If you are on a share plan, they waive the charge.
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Depends on network, network demand and your location to it. Sometimes my data flies, other times it's horrible. Can't blame the ipad for that.