iPhone in Canada Blog - Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

dude the company can’t not to update a new phone because of a 3 year old phone! the 3 year old phone simply is too weak spec wise. i personally could never hold on to the same phone for 3 years! 3 years is way too long for technology, maximum I would hold would be maybe 2 years! so far i have had a new one every year! past 5 years

regarding my first two points, no one is forcing anyone into signing onto any contract. the fact is you can purchase it outright. if you want the promo pricing then you have to accept the fact that you’ll be locked to that carrier for the next few years. me personally, i have had no issues with rogers, and when i’ve complained about soemthing theyve given me more than ample extras and it was always resolved. regarding the point about the contract being lousy. you’re right. this is canada. show me contracts that arent loust for any carrier (other than those new carriers).we pay a rediculous amount for cell service just liek we pay a rediculous amount for cars (in comparison to the USA).even if you sign onto a lousy contract, you could always switch to a different plan as the time goes by. thats not locked in, whats locked in is the fact that you have to stay with that particular company for the next few years.

as for your particular situation, i agree, disabling hotspot on the 3gs was a dicky move. no argument there. just be lucky that your 3gs even got ANY sort of 4.3 update…..once you jump ship to android, you wont be as lucky. the older devices couldnt benefit from ANY new features in the new OS (and when i say older devices i mean devices that were only out for about a year). same with blackberry and the example i gave with thebold 9700 and 9780….9700 cant even run os6, and they KNEW OS6 was being released when they released the 9700 within a few months, yet they chose to milk it and offer a few months later the 9780 with double the RAM to force anyone who wants the benefits of OS6 (which is alot) to get another new phone…..from what i could tell apple hasnt done anything remotely close to that (and dont get me wrong, im not an apple fanboy….my only apple product is the iphone. in the earlier firmwares i was pissed that literally all the new features of upcomming updates were features we all had in the jailbreak community for a year (spotlight, copy/paste, etc) and those features arguably ran better on the jailbroken versions).

the point of my initial post was that ppl shouldnt be complaining. no one said technology was cheap, and if you want to stay up to date dont complain about spending often because it changes so rapidly….that commenter was talking about getting an new phone after almost 3 years….in my opinion if u want new features its about time

UPDATE: I’ve updated my iPad and iPhone 4 to iOS 4.3 and tested. I can confirm that Bluetooth tethering DOES in fact work! Using the speedtest.net app, I saw about 1.5 Mbps up and down tethered over BT.

But tethering over Wi-Fi is definitely faster. Performance appears to be about the same as when measured from the iPhone itself, e.g., about 5 Mbps down and almost that up (Rogers, North Vancouver).

One interesting note–if Cellular Data is disabled, the iPad stays linked to the iPhone but the hotspot doesn’t work. In other words you can’t link from the iPad to iPhone with Bluetooth, and get to the Internet via Wi-Fi from the iPhone to your router. I suppose you’d never really need to do this since every iPad has it’s own Wi-Fi, but I thought I’d try it. This also means, I assume, that you can’t re-broadcast a Wi-Fi hotspot. So if you’re in a for-pay hotspot you can’t re-share it freely using your iPhone.

I guess the only reason you might tether to your iPhone via Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi is for security (since you’re not creating an access point), or if BT tethering uses less power than Wi-Fi. My guess is that it should, but I haven’t measured that.

And if you get the av cables you can play movies form your computer to your tv though your Iphone or ipad, so no need to by apple tv

I cannot get the hotspot feature working. After updating iTunes and rebooting my laptop, I finally was able to see the Bob’s iPhone wifi connection but if I choose it and type in the password, it fails to connect every time. After awhile the connection even stopped showing.
Also, I’m not sure if the AirPlay functionality is all working correctly. I am able to play movies from my camera roll (that’s fantastic) but I can’t get videos to play from Safari which Apple says it should now do. I only get the audio with no video.

I think you are right about that. I don’t believe you could bluetooth tether to you iPad prior to 4.3.

yes, you also need to update your iPad to iOS 4.3 – then you can Bluetooth tether it to your iPhone
(with iOS 3 you could BT tether iPhone to your laptop, but not to iPad)

I updated my iPhone 3GS to 4.3 and when I turned on Personal Hotspot via Bluetooth, I could not pair my 4.2 iPad to it. But then updating the iPad to 4.3 got it working.

too bad iPhone 3GS doesn’t support Personal Hotspot over Wi-Fi. there seems no technical reason why.

but at least I can now connect my iPad to share data over Bluetooth (and avoid Rogers’ greedy $30 data sharing fee)

Thanks, are you with Rogers?

Yes you can:
1. I turned on hotspot in my iphone 4
2. Joined the hotspot with my macbook pro.
3. Face timed from the macbook pro to a wifi connected ipod touch.

It works. Definitely not as fluid as wifi but pretty cool anyway.

I’m in the same boat. I turned on hotspot last night and setup a password. Since then, personal hotspot has vanished, and doesn’t even show up in the settings area anymore. Have tried turning off then on the phone, still nothing.

I can’t get my 3GS hotspot to work with my iPad. I’m with Fido too. I turn on the hotspot on the 3GS and then turn off wifi on the iPad and turn on bluetooth but nothing happens. Can you walk me through the steps that need to be taken. Thanks

If you read my post, I have it working with my 3GS on the Fido network, over bluetooth.

Currently posting this over WiFi Personal HotSpot on Rogers, 6GB Data plan. Ontario Canada. Just updated and it works great so far! didn’t have to reboot or anything.