There’s a lot of excitement around the MiFi ‘personal hotspot’ at the moment. In the mobile computing community at least, nearly everyone wants to get hands-on, test, and probably buy one too.
Phone Arena have got hold of the Verizon MiFi 2200 and have posted some pics and speed test results. Forget the speed test results because your mileage will vary wildly depending on where you are and who’s sharing the tower with you. Fingers crossed that it’s not someone with another MiFi! It’s rated for EVDO Rev 0 which means it supports the latest 2Mb/s+ theoretical download rates. The more interesting test would have been a battery life test but Phone Arena don’t mention any test figures. I’m guessing that Phone Arena have put up a quick first impressions test and will follow up with a more detailed article. They have confirmed, however, that the device can be used via USB. It’s supposed to charge via USB too but again, no word on that from the Phone Arena team.
As we found in CeBIT, it just works! “We found connecting to the Verizon MiFi 2200 very straight forward, and was up and running in only a few minutes inch What more can you say except, HSDPA flavor please!
There are more images in the article.
Update: Keep an eye on SlashGear. Apparently they’ve got one coming in today!
New article: Phone Arena are Testing a MiFi 3G/Wifi gateway. http://cli.gs/bG2sQU
Very interesting…
I may look into swapping my crappy Moto Q9 (the best I could get from my company) for a normal phone and one of these units for use with my N800, laptop, future devices.
If one is ok to carry such a device, why not just carry a smartphone and use it as a wifi router? For WM devices, WMWiFiRouter is free and works great. I heard such an utility available for Nokia phones too.
I bought a Cradlepoint PHS300 and a subscription and usb dongle from Millenicom (which I am currently using on a road trip as I type this).
I would have loved it if Millenicom had this, with their cap-less internet service, the mifi being smaller then an iphone, I could buy an ipod touch and get the skype app, or get a sky phone. As it is a rarely use my cell phone and am on T-Mobile to go paying $10 to $25 a year.
I guess the only downside is the battery life.
I wonder what does ‘standby time’ mean in a device like the mifi?
I just hope they make a model that works with NAM 3G (AT&T).