Sprint Sierra Wireless Overdrive 3. G/4. G Mobile Hotspot . Now you can extend your 3. G and 4. G (4. G Network available in select cities) experience beyond your laptop to any Wi- Fi- enabled device such as cameras, music players and portable game consoles. And because it supports up to five Wi- Fi- enabled devices, you can share your high- speed connection with friends, family, co- workers and customers. GB of shared storage and no software or activation to fuss with, the Overdrive is a must have for work or play, home or away. Sign up and be notified when Sprint 4. G comes to your area. For small business discounts, shop here. Highlights 3. G Sprint Mobile Broadband Network and Sprint 4. G Network- capable hotspot Unique LCD screen displays signal strength, battery level and network connection type Key Features 3. G speeds where available Mobile Wi. Fi hotspot GPS Navigation enabled Web browsing capable Memory card slot Accelerated, Wi. Fi- like speeds on the 4. G Network Improves in- building wireless signal Supports multiple simultaneous users. Sprint Nextel is rolling out two devices that enable mobile professionals to carry a personal Wi-Fi cloud wherever they go. The Sprint Personal Hotspot PHS300S is a. GSM Unlocked Phones, Electronics, Computers and More
Mobile Hotspots: Which Are Fastest, Most Reliable? No one wants to have to purchase separate wireless coverage for every device- -wired or mobile- -they do their computing on. Sprint MifiConsumers want to buy a single connection to the wireless carrier’s network, one that will travel with them and connect any of their devices as needed. As wide- area networks (namely 3. G, 4. G) get faster and better at reaching inside buildings, users might be able to cancel their DSL or cable service and rely wholly on one multipurpose wireless connection. We’re not quite there yet, but consumers can at least use a mobile hotspot to supply Internet access to multiple mobile devices, including laptops, tablets, and e- readers. A mobile hotspot connects to the Internet via a cellular network, and then creates a Wi- Fi hotspot that can connect any Wi- Fi- enabled device within about 3. Mobile hotspots come two forms: as free- standing devices like Novatel’s popular Mi. Fi, or built into smartphones such as Samsung’s Epic 4. Sprint Hotspot turns your device into a Wi-Fi hotspot and shares your device’s data connection with as many as eight computers or mobile devices via Wi-Fi. The only advantage of having Sprint is unlimited data, but since that doesn't apply to mobile hotspot services, what's the point of having Sprint. G or Motorola’s Droid X. We wanted to know which sort of hotspot- -phone- based or free- standing- -performed the best in the wild. Testing Methodology. For three of the four major wireless carriers, we assembled a phone- based mobile hotspot and a free- standing mobile hotspot that each connected to the wireless networks of AT& T, Sprint, and Verizon. We used each device to provide Wi- Fi Internet access to both a laptop (a recent Mac. Book Pro) and a tablet PC (an Apple i. Pad). The one exception was the i. Phone 4, which cannot act as a mobile hotspot but can tether to a laptop using Bluetooth or USB cable. We went on a drive test, visiting six San Francisco locations and testing each viable combination of hotspot and laptop/tablet. We conducted three performance tests for each combination at each location using the FCC- approved Ookla mobile speed test, for a total of 1. We then averaged the results of those 1. The Results. Please click on the thumbnail to the left to view the full results. On average, the Verizon Mi. Fi delivered a download speed of about 1. Wi- Fi and with a USB tether. The Mi. Fi also delivered about the same connection speeds to the Mac. Book Pro as it did to the i. Pad. In general, the hotspots we tested could not connect a tablet as fast as they could a laptop. But the Mi. Fi produced a respectable 1. Apple i. Pad. How does Verizon’s phone- based hotspot compare? Not very well. The Motorola Droid X connected the Mac. Book Pro at download and upload speeds far slower than those of the Mi. Fi, and although the Droid X connected the i. Pad a bit faster, the speeds (download 1. Mi. Fi’s. AT& T currently doesn't sell a mobile hotspot (in fact, it seems to dislike the concept altogether), but you can insert an AT& T USB modem into a third- party hotspot- -in our case a Cradlepoint PHS3. And that effect proved to be pretty impressive in our trials. The Cradlepoint/AT& T USB pairing created the fastest Wi- Fi connections of any hotspot in our tests, especially when we hooked up the Mac. Book Pro. The combo seemed to grab the AT& T 3. G signal and effectively turn it into Wi- Fi coverage while not sacrificing much speed at all. For the laptop, the Cradlepoint/AT& T USB combination delivered download speeds twice as fast as those of the Mi. Sprint Mobile InternetFi (albeit on a different network) and more than three times as fast as the Droid X hotspot. The Cradlepoint also connected our i. Pad faster than any other hotspot did, at about 1. Like the Cradlepoint device, the i. Phone 4 didn’t seem to throttle the speed of the AT& T HSPA network much at all. The i. Phone 4 lacks the Wi- Fi hotspot capability of the Droid X and the Epic 4. G, but it can connect a laptop via a USB cable or Bluetooth. Although it didn't hit the download speeds that the Cradlepoint produced, our tethered i. Phone 4 connected the Mac. Book Pro at a considerable 2. Cradlepoint on upload speeds. We had two potential 4. G devices with us, the Samsung Epic 4. G and the Sierra Wireless Overdrive, both on Sprint’s 3. G/4. G network. Despite rumors of some Sprint 4. G coverage being available in San Francisco, we couldn't find it- -so our testing did not include the potential upside of 4. G service for these devices. Sprint's Overdrive hotspot may rate higher when 4. G service is ubiquitous. Neither the Overdrive hotspot nor the Epic 4. G produced blazing speeds in our tests. More important, neither device proved clearly better at delivering fast 3. G speeds to our connected devices. The results, however, may be very different when a 4. G signal is in the air. Our earlier tests in 4. G markets showed that the Overdrive could connect to 4. G at much higher speeds- -and more reliably- -than the HTC EVO 4. G phone we were using at the time. You can expect substantial performance increases for all these networks over time as AT& T moves to HSPA+ (by the end of 2. LTE, as Sprint continues to roll out Wi. Max, and as Verizon begins to light up its LTE footprint (in the initial 3. HSPA+ and LTE hotspot devices are not yet on the market, though, and even Sprint’s 4. G service is not commonly available. Phone- Based Hotspots Not as Reliable. In addition to speed performance, we scored each hotspot device on its reliability- -that is, its ability to make a usable Internet connection. We ranked our test devices on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning . It is very annoying to see lots of . These devices often reset themselves or just stopped working, requiring a manual reset. Sprint’s Overdrive often powered itself down and then up during our tests, rendering the device almost unusable for longer sessions. Enabling/disabling the hotspot often solved those problems, but the less- than- stellar performance of these hotspots did little to make us forget the inconvenience. Even more annoying than having to manually reset the hotspot is to wait for a hotspot that resets itself. Conclusions. After all the testing was done, we couldn't escape the conclusion that there is no perfect hotspot solution. Free- standing devices like the Novatel Mi. Fi and the Cradlepoint PHS3. Phone notwithstanding), delivering both better speeds and better reliability. However, free- standing devices require us to carry around yet another piece of gear in our bag. Ideally, our smartphones, which we need for all kinds of other reasons, would also act as our mobile hotspot. Sadly, the smartphones in our tests offered less- than- impressive connection speeds, and often couldn't be relied upon to create an uninterrupted Wi- fi signal for the devices depending on it. The speediest performer in our tests, the Cradlepoint PHS3. AT& T modem card to connect to a network. However, there is word that Cradlepoint will soon be releasing a true hotspot device that makes its own connection to the WAN- -no USB stick required. But for now, of the stand- alone mobile hotspots we tested, we give the nod to the Verizon Mi. Fi for having the best combination of speed and reliability. Stay tuned. As new 4. G networks begin lighting up more and more markets, we're likely to see much better performance from both phone- based and free- standing mobile hotspots.
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