The Apple iPad Review (2012)
by Vivek Gowri & Anand Lal Shimpi on March 28, 2012 3:14 PM ESTThe iPad as a Personal Hotspot: Over 25 Hours of Continuous Use
Verizon makes the decision of which iPad to buy even more difficult by being the only of the two US carriers to enable the personal hotspot option on the new iPad. For no additional monthly fee on top of your data plan your Verizon LTE iPad can act as a wireless hotspot, allowing up to five other devices to use its cellular connection over WiFi (2.4GHz only, unfortunately) or Bluetooth. One device can use the hotspot via the iPad's USB dock cable.
If you don't already have the personal hotspot option in the initial settings page, you'll need to go to general settings, then network, and activate personal hotspot there. Once you've done so you'll see a new item for personal hotspot in the default settings page.
You must remain on the personal hotspot settings page for the iPad's SSID to be visible to nearby devices. Once you leave the settings page, the iPad stops broadcasting its personal hotspot SSID.
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In general the iPad's personal hotspot seems to be better behaved than similar options under Android. I've noticed all too often that Android hotspots will either stop routing traffic after an extended period of use, requiring either cycling the radio states on the hotspot device itself or in some cases a full reset of the hardware. The iPad wasn't immune to this sort of behavior, it just seemed to happen less than on the Android tablets and smartphones that I've tested. In one test it took only a few hours before I had to reset the iPad to make its hotspot work properly again, while in another case it was only after 24 hours of continuous use that the feature began misbehaving. Overall I am very pleased with the Verizon iPad as a personal hotspot, the bigger issue is the cost of the data that you're sharing with all of those devices.
As I mentioned in our Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE review, these LTE tablets make great hotspots simply because you are pairing smartphone modems with gigantic (for a smartphone) batteries. The end result is if you have to treat your LTE tablet as a true hotspot (screen off and all), you get great battery life. The new iPad takes this idea to a completely new level since its battery is now squarely in the laptop-sized category, but its LTE modem is still designed to run on a < 6Wh smartphone battery.
Our standard hotspot battery life test involves running four copies of our web browsing battery life test and playing a 128Kbps internet radio stream on a laptop tethered via WiFi to the hotspot being tested. While peak download speeds during this test can reach as high as 1MB/s, remember that these web browsing battery life scripts include significant idle time to simulate reading a web page. The average data transferred over the duration of the test amounts to around 25KB/s if you take into account idle periods.
With the Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE I tried something different—letting the tethered notebook download at full speed using the Tab's LTE connection. On the new iPad, after nearly an hour of downloads at well over 1MB/s I saw no drop in the battery percentage indicator—it was stuck at 100%. Not wanting to upset Verizon too much, I needed to find a good balance between a realistic workload and something that wasn't going to make me rack up over a hundred GB in overages.
If our standard hotspot test averages around 25KB/s of transfers, I figured doubling it couldn't hurt. I downloaded a sufficiently large file at a constant 50KB/s on a laptop tethered over WiFi to the new iPad to see how long it would last. The result was astounding: 25.3 hours on a single charge
I used up over 4.5GB during this period—almost the entire amount that my $50/month plan gave me, all without having to plug the iPad in to recharge it. That's the beauty of using a 42.5Wh battery to drive a cellular modem that can last a couple of hours on a tenth of that capacity. If you want to use the new iPad as a personal hotspot, you'll likely run out of data before you run out of battery life.
It's a real shame that AT&T decided against enabling personal hotspot on its version of the LTE iPad. It's for this reason alone that I'd recommend the Verizon version, assuming that you're planning on using your iPad in an area where Verizon has LTE coverage of course.
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zanon - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
In the article:The higher resolution does make smaller fonts readable. For something like an SSH session, that really will mean significantly more stuff can be on a screen at once.
MobiusStrip - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
A more useful change would be abandoning the ridiculous glossy screens. It's sad that Apple takes its cues from the plastic schlock being peddled at Best Buy, and participates in this fraud of shoving glossy screens down customers' throats.repoman27 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
The plastic schlock at Best Buy has a glossy plastic film applied to a cheap TN panel. Apple puts a piece of glass in front of their much more expensive IPS panels to protect them. The only way to make that glass (or the glass of the LCD panel itself) matte would be to apply an antiglare plastic film coating to the glass. These films have drawbacks (they block and scatter light making small details and text blurry.) The drawbacks become more exaggerated the farther the front surface of the glass is from the plane of the actual LCD.But you're right, it's probably Apple copying the design language of sub $500 laptops in order to somehow defraud the general public and force their customers to buy the products they actually produce.
And seeing as how this discussion is about the new iPad screen, I'd like to point out that you're complaining about the lack of an antiglare coating on a touchscreen device... Strong work.
Sabresiberian - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
How is it fraud? Apple isn't, like, saying their screens are anti-reflective and then giving you totally reflective glossy screens.Many people prefer a glossy screen and simply aren't bothered by background reflections.
;)
Henk Poley - Monday, April 2, 2012 - link
Yes, Apple really should use Schott Conturan/Amiran/Mirogard antireflective technology.btw, not-glossy does not mean matte. Air is not matte either. Glass can be see-through too ;)
Watwatwat - Monday, April 2, 2012 - link
Nope, steve gibson has tested even using screen protectors on the new ipad vs not, it seems to affect the resolution at that level, matte might not be a good idea at all for high density display.KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
I wasn't initially blown away, but then after a day of using it every other display seemed bad in comparison. It is one of those things you didn't realize was needed until using it, now I want very high DPI in all of my monitors.menting - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
Is it just me, or do Shadowgun and GTA screenshots look more detailed in Transformer Prime than in the iPad?menting - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
nm..i just noticed that it's scaled up in new ipad, so it's definitely not as sharp.However, how can fps be fairly compared in this case then?
TheJian - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
Basically because of the way Nvidia and Apple approach games so far, you can expect games on Tegra3 to just look better as they seem to aim for more graphics and fewer games (they spend money on fewer projects that produce better results), as opposed to apple who spreads the wealth but just ends up with more cannon fodder if you ask me :) You should get more variety on Apple I'd guess, but a better experience with fewer choices on Tegra3/Android. I like QUALITY over QUANTITY personally and hope Apple leans the way of Nvidia in the future. I would rather have 10 games that I'd play for weeks or months (if I'm playing on my hdtv through one of these I want better water, buildings etc) rather than games I fire up for less than 20 minutes as their just another angry birds variant and arguably useless on your TV.I want these devices to KILL the consoles next year and make MS/Nintendo etc give it up in 2015 or whenever the next revs should come. I hope they just realize we won't buy them anymore. DirectX11 on my phone/tablet and probably standard 25x14 resolutions by then (won't all be retina by 2015?) make a console purchase STUPID. This could be the merging of console/pc we need since phones/tablets rev yearly like pc's instead of 10yr console's stuck in stone stagnating gaming. Your phone as a portable console with xbox/ps3/pc gamepad support would be excellent. Pump it out to a monitor and keyboard/mouse setup and you have a notebook replacement too...LOL Now if they'd just put in a few extra cores by then that will disable if on their own screen but turn on when on a larger display like TV/Monitor and we have exactly what we want in both cases :)
Pipe dreams? Retina is here now, and gamepads sort of. Next stop cores that only turn on depending on display output :) Awesome battery on the road, and great power in the dock at home pushing your 27in monitor. :) The 28nm versions by xmas of everyone's chips should come close to console power or surpass them. Interesting times.