AT&T iPhone Personal Hotspot

I'm guessing I need to check into this as a PLAN B thing... Especially if I get some free data out of it???

My MIFI plan works great but is limited to 3GB data for a month.. So you are saying I also have another way to run my wifi enabled devices by going thru my DROID X cellphone in HOTSPOT mode... hmmm interesting...

AS far as I know all of our TEXTING and downstreaming TV etc is all unlimited. This is a four- five year plan old we are on...

Roy Ken

RoyB wrote:
So you are saying I also have another way to run my wifi enabled devices by going thru my DROID X cellphone in HOTSPOT mode... hmmm interesting...

AS far as I know all of our TEXTING and downstreaming TV etc is all unlimited. This is a four- five year plan old we are on...

Roy Ken

Yes, if it's so enabled (and paid for). Texting probably, TV.. I doubt it. That's huge amounts of data.

This summer we were traveling in the mountain west and mainly used the hot spots on our AT&T iPhone 5s. I also have a Verizon MiFi 3 g card but didn't activate it this summer. In most places the 4g on the iPhones was fast enough for our needs. Especially if the service was 4g LTE as it was about as fast as our home service which runs on a fiber optic line. We get/buy a block of 10 gigs, shared by all our devices, for a month with any overage at $15 a gig or part thereof. In June we got our usage up to 9.85 gigs but never went over. My wife watched a couple of movies using her iPhone to hotspot for her IPad and it took about a gig and a half to watch a movie. We have 5 iPhones and a mini IPad that are usable as hot spots for the other 4 iPads the family has that are wifi only.

The worst service we found all summer was in Colorado Springs at the Garden of the Gods campground. Cell service was so weak we couldn't make voice calls but could send text and emails as the data service was better. Yes you can use the hot spot on the phone and talk on it at the same time with most all the "smart" phones available I believe. We could go a few blocks east or west of the campground and have good cell service. Something was blocking it at our location, not too surprising in the mountains.

I too have about given up on trying to use campground WiFi set ups. First I try the phone hot spot and use it if we have a decent signal, if not then I will try the park signal on their wifi. I prefer having the hot spot on my phone over a mifi card as I always have my phone with me. Helps when all the adults in the group have their own hot spot to use, so if my wife or I are away from the camper, the other person can still surf the web or whatever they want to do over the air.

My actual experience with an iPhone and Droid on AT&T is that if you activate the hotspot and do not have a plan that allows it the hotspot simply won't activate and it will tell you it is not supported. We just got a plan for our 2 phones and a tablet for only 2 gig that supports the builtin hotspots on my Android and my wife's iPhone. When we travel, and since I am working, I can bump that plan to whatever we need up to 200 gig for $500/month if need be.

Dave

2oldman wrote:

RoyB wrote:
Question here - when you are in the HOTSPOT mode does your cellphone still send and receive calls at the same time?

couple years back. Everyone was using their cell phones as hotspot and all of the data used was unlimited. n

My Droid Razr Verizon will do one or the other.. it will receive a call while I'm online, but the data xfer will suspend until the call is done.

I used to tether on ATT but they knew how much data I was using. It still goes thru their system.

I just tried it with my Droid Razr on Verizon and I was able to make a call while running a Speedtest, no problem, no hesitation. I think you can only do it with a 4G connection, not with 3G.

I think Android has been able to do data and voice at the same time for quite awhile. I remember a few generations back Android couldn't do it and Apple used to use that in their ads but not any longer.

I use the hotspot feature on my Droid Razr at my stick house because the 4G on my phone is much faster than my regular ISP. I've used as much as 24G in a month on my phone (have been doing that for a couple of years) using it's grandfathered unlimited data plan and have never heard a peep from Verizon. I use my phone to download large files and to stream movies via Netflix and the like.

I'm not a huge iPhone fan - having switched to Android - but my old iPhone used to do voice and data as long as we were on 3g instead of edge.

Dave

I can hotspot data and make calls at same time on Verizon.