He wasn't making an argument, you said:

I'll also be curious to hear how tethering will [finally] work on the iPhone. Will it be traditional tethering or will they also have hotspot sharing?

He responded by saying that tethering already worked on the iPhone and that if you wanted to find out how it already worked you could read up on it. He also explained that it only works over USB and Bluetooth, but not via wifi.

Ah, my mistake entirely. You are correct. My apologies.

I still wonder if the fourth gen iPhone will have hotspot. If it doesn't, they'll be behind several phones on the market. Given these plans, though, I certainly wouldn't want to be sharing a 2GB bandwidth cap with 8 devices

I've used tethering on several occasions in the past with a few different phones, and I'd pick hotspot sharing over tethering any day. Even bluetooth tethering is annoying, and requires more work to connect to than a simple WiFi network.

You must emit some sort of anti-Bluetooth field.

Agreed :-) Back when tethering could be turned on with iPhone 3.0 betas on AT&T, all I needed to do is click on my Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, click the menu option for the phone, then click connect. When I was done, same procedure. Never had to take my phone out of my pocket or fiddle with settings on it once the phone had been paired with the computer (a one time setup).

Now what would have been really slick is if the iPhone paired to the Mac in a way to route voice calls to the computer speakers and microphone. Would allow both bluetooth tethering, and the ability to make calls at the same time without the phone leaving my pocket.

I was just making clear that it's not a feature missing in the iPhone, its OS or its software. It's all there. It's just blocked/disabled on US phones courtesy of ATT. So, I was only making a suggestion that if you wanted to know how it worked, you could read some reviews of that feature from people outside the US of how it's set up and used. There are many out there.

Yes, I apologized for and acknowledged that. See above.


I do have an aversion to bluetooth, although I seem to have my first good experience with the technology on my Nexus One. And you're right, Tom, your setup sounds very simple, so I won't argue that.

To defend the WiFi hotspot, there are devices that can't do bluetooth networking. I was able to use my Zune HD to download music from the Zune marketplace on the go.

That's not a bad idea, actually...

No need. For one thing, you can connect multiple devices without having an additional level of network sharing.

Bluetooth probably uses less power, though. And it's nice to be able to turn it on from the client device rather than the phone. Hm, someone should write an app for that.

That's what I'm hoping. At the very least, it should be possible to put an icon on the home screen that turns it on. As it is, my only complaint about how they've implemented it is that it takes, I believe, 5 screen presses to turn it on, when it could easily take one.

But yes, being able to do it all from the client's end would be nice.

Crap, knew I forgot about something likely to increase my usage soon...

I'm still mostly listening to podcasts in the car these days, but do hit times where I either have none to listen to, or just want some music. I may stick to my current $30 a month plan a bit longer to see.

Almost has me considering an Evo since 4G is online in Austin already. It's a shame I can't just try out an Android device to see how it would really fit into my setup. Not willing to port my number to another carrier and buy a device without some hands on time.

Does anyone know if it's possible to port a number over after you've already been assigned one by the carrier? Seems like it would be feasible to me, but I don't know about these things. If so, and if Sprint has a return policy, then you could forward your iPhone's number while you try it out. You wouldn't be able to call from that forwarded number, but it would at least be a way to test it out. It's not convenient, but it's something...

Aren't you on Google Voice yet? My real numbers are becoming irrelevant.

You can. I assume the 4G you're talking about is Sprint's. They have a 30-day trial period.

Agreed. I now use Google Voice for everything, and don't even give my cell phone number out anymore.

One thing I love about Google Voice: a month ago, I was getting solicitation calls from the same number every few days. I just went into GV, into the call log, and blocked the number. One of many things I love about it, in addition to the visual voicemail, personalized outgoing messages, integration with my GMail contacts, and much more.

Plus, on Android you can actually use a Google Voice app

And, by and large, it doesn't even appear to be an app. Integration with Google Voice is nearly seamless. The only problems are when you lose your data connection and it can't tell GV which number to call, and you get duplicate texts, unless you turn text delivery to your phone off.

I have an unused Google Voice account, because if I use it, I lose visual voicemail. I also wasn't happy with the lag back when it was GrandCentral. Not sure if Google has done anything to improve that. So I never ported my number over. I want to hold on to it, as I've had it for 11 years now.

I'm also not seeing pricing on sprint.com yet for monthly service. If what I read elsewhere, the idea is probably dead to me already. I'm seeing $69.99 for the base "everything" plan (that I don't care to be forced into), plus $10 a month for 4g, plus $29.99 a month for the mobile hotspot feature for my iPad. That puts me at ~$110 a month plus taxes. I could go unlimited on the iPad and keep "unlimited" on my iPhone and still be below that cost.

What lag?

Lag when talking to people. It was noticeably higher then even normal cell phone voice lag.

huh. Never seen, err, heard that.

The lag is still there, but it's not terribly significant.

You could port the number you want to keep to, for example, Callcentric, and have it forwarded to your cellphone number.

While it was a fun idle though, digging into more Evo info has me pretty turned off at this point. Higher monthly cost, nearly every review saying the battery can't make it a single day even with light usage and 4G off, and still the unknown of how Android would work for my needs. Add in the complexity of dealing with my number, signing contracts, and dealing with returns, and I think thats that for now.

I really do wish GSM had taken off here in the states. Having my phone number tied to a little smart card chip is so handy. If someone else was around with an Android phone compatible with AT&T, I could just swap with them for a week or two.

You can put an AT&T SIM in a T-Mobile phone; you just won't get 3G.

Also, unless the service plan cost is a complete dealbreaker, which I can certainly understand, you can still get a 30-day trial from Sprint.

My N1 generally makes it a full day unless I have particularly heavy usage, and, even then, generally charging it in the car on the drive to wherever is enough to top it off for the day. It also claims, in almost all cases, that a definitive majority of the battery is being used by the display, if you're to believe the report. So maybe there's some backlight tweaking to be done on the Evo.

(Also, it's spelled "idyll". Good word, though.)

Tom, there isn't a phone out there that compares to Apple's 2007 effort yet. Many have more features which make them seem very attractive or appear to smoke the first gen iPhone. But everything seems to have at least two or three big flaws as well. Things get more skewed when you come up to the 3GS and I'm quite confident the new model debuting next week is going to really pull ahead in a significant way. Of course Matt Warman thinks the new iPhone is crap - he must have something he found while dumpster diving at 1 Infinite Loop. Every one of his ten "reasons" is factually incorrect. 9 if you give him a boat-load of slack.

Regardless of how good Google makes the OS, for now we're still mpostly seeing hardware from discount or third-rate brands like Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC (sorry, these guys all make shite hardware). Nokia and Sony-Ericsson otherwise make the best handsets on the planet.

Idle thought is usually spelled with a t, not a y.

The only thing I kind of want that I don't have is "proper" Exchange support such that I can use my work email on my phone. That said, I certainly don't miss it and, having achieved it at some point would probably make me yearn for the days without it.

2.2 adds ActiveSync Exchange Mail and Calendar "push"-based access. (I forget if Mail via ActiveSync worked before. Calendar is definitely a new feature.) This should work if you can access your company email via Outlook Web Access.

Ah. Hrm.

I interpreted what he said as "a fun idyll, tho'". You're probably right that he meant "idle thought".

Alright, move along. Nothing to see here.

They require fancy stuff like the ability to wipe my phone on a whim. Another reason I'm not too hurt that I can't view my email from my phone.

Interestingly, I'm one of the rare people who doesn't care about tethering his iPhone. I work for a company that sells software that's meant to be used with all-you-can-eat WWAN cards, and it's my job to test our software against said cards, so they're like candy around here. You should see my desk.