First Look at Verizon’s Mobile Hotspot service
Photo: Palm
Verizon finally has a Palm Pre and Pixi of its own, complementing the very similar Sprint versions of these smart phones. Known as “Plus” models, and costing $150 and $100 respectively, the most interesting new capability of the Verizon versions is the ability of the Palm Pre Plus to act as a 3G hotspot for up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices with a service called Mobile Hotspot.
The service is a free download from the Palm App Catalog. Not free is the service, which costs $40 on top of your data plan of $30 or more. What’s more, you’ll pay an extra 5 cents per megabyte if you exceed the monthly data allowance of 5 gigabytes.
But at least Mobile Hotspot is fairly easy to set up. When you launch it for the first time, it asks you to create a password (8 to 63 characters). You can also change the name of phone network from the default webOS Network. Then all you have to do just have to go into the Wi-Fi setting of your laptop or other wireless device, select the Palm network hotspot you created, type in the password, and voila.
Download speeds on 3G are noticeably slower than Wi-Fi—especially if you have several devices hooked up at the same time. But the connection can be a lifesaver when you’re out of range of a Wi-Fi hotspot and need to connect several devices to the Internet.
However, other smart phones, including the Motorola Droid, can attach to your laptop so that you can use their 3G data connections to access the Internet—also from an additional monthly fee.
The new Verizon Palm phones, are largely identical to their Sprint cousins, which remain available. The Pre Plus ($150 with a two-year contract and rebates) has double the memory of the Sprint Pre, offering 16 gigabytes (GB). It also drops the pearl-like hardware button for closing apps, leaving that job to a swipe on the gesture bar. The only improvement to the Pixi ($100), which I’m not reviewing but will soon be in our Ratings, is that it gains Wi-Fi capability.
One quibble about the Palm Pre Plus: As with the Pre that debuted on Sprint, the tiny keys on its tiny keyboard perform double duty for numbers, punctuation, and symbols. But at least on the Sprint Pre, the numbers are highlighted in bright orange. On the Pre Plus, however, the number keys are no longer highlighted, which further complicates the already difficult task of finding them.
—Mike Gikas