Apple’s new Verizon iPad can serve as LTE hotspot for more than 24 hours:
The highly-technical Anand Lal Shimpi over atAnandTechrecently revealed that his tests of the new Verizon iPad found that it could act as a mobile hotspot by sharing its LTE connection with other devices — such as a notebook — forapproximately 25.3 hoursunder the proper conditions — namely that the device’s display remained turned off. That’s roughly 5 times longer than the 4 hours and change of popular LTE MiFi hotspots from Novatel and Samsung.
(Via www.appleinsider.com)
My limited experience with using my new Verizon iPad as a hotspot suggested to me that it was far less of a battery hog than when I used to use my iPhone as a hotspot. I was lucky to get an hour or two of use out of my iPhone4s as an AT&T hotspot for my laptop. With the iPad, I didn’t notice any battery drain at all after a few hours.
This research backs up my conclusions. Awesome news.
I’ve never been in the camp of those who suggest paying more for the cellular iPads “just in case” you might want to use data. I still think if you’re pretty much always going to be in WiFi range when you use your iPad, you can save yourself the money or spend less cash on the extra storage space. But if you do plan on being in places with no WiFi coverage at least once in a while, the new LTE iPads (and particularly the Verizon ones with the free hotspot feature) are an even better deal than they used to be.
