The very first time we laid hands on a Verizon iPhone 4, it took us about 0.00000004 seconds to fire up the Settings app and dig into the Personal Hotspot feature. How's that for speed? Can you hear me now, and so on?
The good news: Personal Hotspot works really well, and a monkey with an ice-cream headache could have it set up in seconds.
The bad news: It requires an extra $20/month charge, on top of your (required) voice and data plans, and (optional) texting. And AT&T users don't have it yet. In fact, the Verizon iPhone we have is running iOS 4.2.6, as opposed to iOS 4.2.1 on my AT&T iPhone. Futurey!
Look, iOS 4.2.6!
The Personal Hotspot screen is in Settings > Personal Hotspot. It looks like this.
The text, if you scroll down a bit, explains that you can use Personal Hotspot to connect via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or by tethering to your laptop with a USB cable. That's so...last year, so we'll focus on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth here.
To get started, slide that slider to On. Simple enough!
Since we didn't have Bluetooth turned on yet, we saw this screen.
It helpfully asked us if we want to enable Personal Hotspot over Bluetooth, and when we tapped Turn On Bluetooth, instead of being sent to the Settings > General > Bluetooth screen where that option resides, the iPhone just turned its Bluetooth on and kept us in the Personal Hotspot settings. Nice touch!
Now we're up and running. Notice how simple the directions are to connect using Wi-Fi. Let's try it!
Hey look, the iPhone is showing up in our Mac's AirPort list!
We selected it, and got a familiar password prompt. The password is shown on the iPhone's screen in Settings > Personal Hotspot.
And that was all we had to do. Type in the password, and you're online.
Oh, and if you hate the password your phone generates, just tap it to select a new one. It has to have at least 8 characters.
Ch-ch-changes to the passwooooord...
The phone gives you this lovely pulsing blue bar across any screen to show you someone's connected. To boot them off, you'd just go to Settings > Personal Hotspot and turn the feature off, or change the network password, as described above.
On the next page... connecting via Bluetooth! (Spoiler: Also easy.)
peterfl
February 13, 2011 at 6:03am
We had the bluetooth tethering option in Korea since 2009 though......WITH NO EXTRA CHARGE!!!!!
CPTKILLER
February 11, 2011 at 12:39pm
This is interesting technology that a few years ago wasn't non my radar screen. This is great.
joeyinsf
February 11, 2011 at 7:38am
When I setup network sharing on my Android (also Verizon), my Mac could not set up a Cisco VPN connection over that path. Anyone know if that would work with the iPhone as network host using PersonalHotSpot?
iFan
February 10, 2011 at 10:44pm
The only reason I could think you'd want to use bluetooth instead of WiFi? You melt the WiFI radio downloading porn in your Mac and have to use the bluetooth as a backup!
macguy805
February 10, 2011 at 5:01pm
Does this $20 option allow for the iPad to use the Verizon wifi hotspot for Internet connectivity?
macguy805
February 10, 2011 at 6:38pm
That is what I was thinking but was hoping someone could confirm this.
Thanks!
