We're not going to even try to hide our enthusiasm for Novatel's upcoming
MiFi router; honestly, what's there not to love about a credit card-sized sliver of metal that routes 3G over a little cloud of WiFi for a few hours on a charge? Nothing, that's what -- but you sure couldn't detect any enthusiasm out of the lab that dryly put a prototype through its paces in preparation for FCC approval. This one's a little weird and not entirely appropriate for North American use, featuring 850 and 1900MHz EDGE plus 1900MHz HSPA (there could be some foreign bands thrown in there, too, but the FCC doesn't give two craps about those, so they typically aren't listed). We're not sure why there wouldn't be any 850MHz HSPA if they're doing 1900, but there'll undoubtedly be a number of MiFi models released for different locales and carriers, so we're not going to break a sweat about it. Yet.
posted Jan 18th 2009 10:11PM
It is rather low-brow, don't you think, to use, "give two craps" in your writing?
We try to take our writing lightly, but I'm sorry if you took offense.
Hm. If this isn't too expensive, and has a decent battery life, supports the various AT&T bands in my area ... I could see getting one for my data use. Any ideas yet on release date and price? It certainly shouldn't cost more than a Cradlepoint PHS350 and an AT&T wifi dongle. It'd be interesting to see a comparison between that combination and this device for price, size, battery life, connectivity, etc.
Would be interesting to see Cradlepoint and MiFi complete against WMWiFiRouter.
The problem with throwing in WMWifiRouter (and Joikuspot, which is the same thing, only for Symbian S60) is that those aren't individual devices, so you could get dramatically different results based on which WinMo phone and/or which Symbian phone you pick. This is probably more of an issue with Joikuspot and a GSM carrier, though (where you've got Nokia with a bunch of phone models that aren't on that carrier's supported list, but that most likely will do the job). But, yes, it would be great to see a well written, broadly covering, evaluation of all of the different products that give you "wifi tethering" capability.
Do each of the following on each available carrier:
Novatel Mifi
Cradlepoint PHS-350 (the one that has a battery) + various devices (USB dongles, Express Cards, and even phones)
Joikuspot + various Symbian S60 phones
WMWifiRouter + various WinMo phones
Evaluated for:
Battery Life
Battery Recharge Time
Battery Charger type? (not an comparison, just a data point)
3G coverage area
3G signal strength
3G speed
Ability to fall back to 2G (seemlessly?)
Wifi signal strength
Wifi encryption types
Carrier diversity (mostly for the GSM solutions)
LAN port? (not an comparison, just a data point)
WAN port? (not an comparison, just a data point)
My expectation is that the Cradlepoint will be the most flexible (1 device, any carrier (as soon as T-Mo is supported), USB dongles, USB phones, and Express cards), but I also suspect it's going to have the worst battery. Depends on how limited the Novatel's battery is. I expect that the software solutions will have the weakest Wifi support (ex: I think I recall that Joikuspot only offers one type of encryption).
My wishlist for what I would love to see in this device category, though, is something like the Cradlepoint/Novatel approach, but with the following features:
1) internal PCI Express Mini card slot, with antenna, so that you can use an internal gateway instead of an external one, if you want
2) USB port (or ports) that can support external devices, the way Cradlepoint does (also with support for ethernet (for WAN), storage (for SMB sharing), USB modems)
3) internal battery with at least 4 hours of battery life
4) charge via USB-client port, and support for external USB batteries
5) a LAN port, for when you don't want to trust Wifi or something
6) support for the full range of Wifi modes and encryption types
7) as I hinted at above, support for SMB for acting as a server for USB storage that you've attached (USB drives, USB card readers, your phone or USB dongle's data card, maybe a built-in SDHC card slot, etc.)
8) a low-power Wifi mode, to make the battery last longer, but that limits the range of its wifi support (since you're probably not going to use this as a building-wide wifi solution, just for your own personal hotspot).
9) depending upon the connection type, maybe a SIP server for handling/routing your mobile device's voice capabilities, and a Jabber server for handling/routing your mobile device's SMS/MMS capabilities.
Last week @ Showstoppers during CES the reps from Novatel Wireless said there are both CDMA and GSM versions, and there will be regional variants of the devices.
If you're mentioning the GSM world variant going through the FCC, why are you showing the label off of the CDMA EVDO model? *scratches head*