Hot spot on the AT&T iPhone remains easy to use, but not so fast

The hot-spot feature appears under the main Settings menu. Once activated, the bar at the top shows you how many devices are connected.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Kent German/CNET)

When the
Verizon
iPhone finally went on sale last month, it bested its ATT cousin by offering a wireless hot spot that could support up to five devices. It was a welcome addition and, as we found in our Verizon iPhone review, the feature performed well. It wasn’t necessarily better than other smartphone hot spots we’ve tested, but it offered a simple and relatively speedy way to get online.

When ATT would join the hot-spot party became the next question, of course, but Apple offered an answer Wednesday when it delivered its latest software update a couple of days early. Though as iOS upgrades go, iOS 4.3 activates the hot spot on the ATT iPhone 4 (earlier iPhones will not support the feature). It’s almost the same experience as on Verizon’s device, but there are some important and disappointing differences.

What’s the same
As with Verizon’s handset, ATT users will need to activate the optional tethering plan to use the feature (if you don’t have the plan, the option won’t appear in your Settings menu). And, like Verizon, ATT charges an additional $20 for the plan. Though ATT’s data cap is 4GB per month for tethering and the hot spot (Verizon has a 2GB cap), the carrier requires you to select at least the $25-per-month Data Pro plan for basic data.

Once you’re set up, the interface is exactly the same as on the Verizon iPhone. You’ll find the hot-spot option under the main Settings menu. After you set a password and choose which connectivity options you’d like to use, you can get started. Here again, we’d like to see a list of which devices are connected at a given time in addition to the status bar at the top of the display, which conveniently tracks how many gadgets are linked up.

The status bar will continue to show even if you switch back to the home screen.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Kent German/CNET)

What’s different
Though ATT also allows you to connect up to five devices to the hot spot, it limits the number you can connect through Wi-Fi to just three. You can connect an additional two gadgets through a USB cable or Bluetooth, but Verizon still holds the advantage there for the time being. When we tested the Verizon hot-spot feature, we were able to connect five devices via Wi-Fi. What’s more, other smartphones, like Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G, can connect up to eight devices.

The reason for the restriction is unclear at this point. Though some sources have blamed ATT, others suggest it’s coming from Apple. And if that’s the case, the Verizon iPhone could get the same limitation when it gets iOS 4.3 or the equivalent (currently, the update is for GSM iPhones only).

Performance
We tested the ATT hot-spot feature with an iPad, a Motorola Atrix 4G, an LG Optimus U, a Samsung Galaxy S 4G, a Samsung Craft, a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, a RIM BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300, and a laptop PC. We were able to connect all devices via Wi-Fi, including the MyTouch 3G, which we never were able to pair with the Verizon iPhone hot spot.

All devices connected immediately after we entered the password, and they reconnected quickly and automatically the next time around. The connection mostly stayed solid as well, though the Optimus U dropped off a couple of times and we had to reconnect manually. If we tried using a fourth device via Wi-Fi, we were able to get as far as inputting the password before the connection would drop. Yet, if we then removed one of the original three devices, the fourth device would connect automatically. That’s a nice touch.

We also had no problems connecting to a laptop. As long as the hot spot was on, the computer was online just seconds after we plugged in the USB cable. As we found with the Verizon iPhone, however, the Bluetooth connection gave us more trouble. Though we could pair the iPhone with the Galaxy S 4G and the Atrix, for example, we couldn’t establish the final connection even though we had the correct PIN. After spinning for a couple of minutes, the iPhone finally gave an error message that the format was “not supported.” We’re checking this out and will report back.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t connect to the Atrix via Bluetooth.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Kent German/CNET)

Unfortunately, we also found that data speeds over ATT’s network weren’t as reliable. Unlike on the Verizon iPhone, we could barely get a signal in an interior room in CNET’s offices. We showed a full five bars on the iPhone’s display, but our connection usually timed out when we tried loading a Web page on the phones and on the laptop. The
iPad did better, but it still took over a minute to load CNET’s main site. We had the same experience when we tried loading Google Maps and the iTunes App Store on the iPad–the features took more than minute to load if they did at all.