In yesterday’s post, I only touched on physical impressions I had on my E583C. Because of my excitement (understandably so), I wasn’t able to hold off the post till I actually got to put the thing through its paces. Instead, I just ended it with a cop-out statement:

The only thing to really evaluate with gadgets like these is how powerful/reliable their antennae and WiFi beacons are. So I’ll be using this unit quite a bit and compare it to how my broadband account would perform when stuck directly into the iPad.

But assuming the thing actually does what its advertised to do, even if it doesn’t do it spectacularly, I really can’t find any reason why it wouldn’t be a worthwhile investment for anyone who wants connectivity on the go.

The logic of the statement is obviously sound, but in this post, I’ll confirm what we’ve all been wondering: Will it blend?

Just kidding, I meant “how does it perform?”# Networking Woes

As you saw from the E583C’s photo, the initial startup of the MiFi connected to the 3G network without any problems. What you didn’t see was that it fell back to 2G (GPRS) the rest of that day.

I first assumed it was battery related (after all the unit only had a partial charge going on empty) – maybe it would do better if it had more juice. It was a stretch, but I was desperate.

So I drove to Cris’ place while sticking it in the USB/lighter port I have in my car. Long story short, it never got out of the 2G/GPRS network no matter what I did – which sucked.

In context of the iPad

When I was using my 3G plan directly with the iPad, one issue the iPad seemed to have (or maybe iPhones as well – if I took the time to test it) is that it’s lousy in deciding when to switch between 3G or GPRS connections. I would often find it displaying the “circle icon” instead of “3G” – indicating that it has fallen back to EDGE/GPRS (usually happens if the 3G signal is too weak) I’d often have to toggle Airplane Mode to reset the radiocomm and get it back to 3G… but having to do that often gets annoying.

That’s one of the reasons I considered getting a MiFi as well; that it would hopefully be smarter than the iPad in choosing which connection to use. Unfortuantely, it seemed to behave the same way, at least until I found the “fix.”

Finding the Solution

In my annoyance, I just searched the web about the issue, then forced myself to think out of the box; I tried to think about what other possible factors could affect network connectivity. The first thing that popped into my mind was the APN it was using (analogous to DNS servers – which is a common source of problems with standard DSL connections)

So I hopped-on to Google and searched for the proper APN for SUN’s service – so I could find a way to force it to use a specific APN. I did find what I was looking for, but turns out that wasn’t the problem.

While going through the documents, I noticed one “tips” when going through SUN’s FAQ:

Ensure that your network is under WCDMA Only if within the 3G coverage. Open your Sun Broadband Wireless user interface and go to Tools > Options > Network > Network Type > WCDMA Only > Bands> All Bands> Apply > O.K.

That line caught my attention since I did see such a setting on the E583C’s web-interface. And it was then set to “WCDMA Preferred” – which I left alone, since that essentially meant “if there’s a 3G signal, then prioritize it” I didn’t know that it was safe to actually force it to use only that.

Having nothing more to lose, I tried it – and was rewarded with the sweet, sweet sight of seeing those 2 characters I’ve longed to see: 3G Hopped on my iPad and surfed… and confirmed it was certainly using 3G speeds. For good measure, I still explicitly set the APN, even if the previous setting already solved my problem – just to cover all the bases.

Implications

Finding out there was nothing wrong with the MiFi was well and good, but this did mean one thing: that the iPad’s (and maybe iPhones’) algorithm in deciding which signal is better is faulty – and worse, I don’t think the iPad has an option to force a 3G connection like the MiFi does.

GPRS has much better coverage than 3G – that is a given. So given what I’ve observed/confirmed, I’m inclined to think that just because GPRS is always available (hence can be considered to have a “better” signal strength), the iPad would decide that that would be the more reliable service to connect to.

The problem with that is that it is technically correct – as far as availability goes, but hardly the case in terms of speed. But having a weaker 3G signal than GPRS doesn’t necessarily mean that 3G will not work at all. That’s what Apple will need to address: to find out the “threshold” when it’s indeed better to use the much slower 2G signal, in the situation where the 3G is not as strong, but still usable and consistent.

The MiFi worked around that problem by forcing the use of 3G (I’ve yet to check what it’ll do when it doesn’t find a signal at all, will it still go back to 2G even if I forced a “use 3G only” policy? Time will tell.

But for now, this unit is working perfectly 😉

Battery Life

What I did notice about this thing is that it’s a battery vampire! From what I’m experiencing, it seems that the E583C is the sort of device you have to keep plugged for good measure if you don’t want to run out of connectivity within the day. I don’t think you can afford to forget to charge this the way you could forget with regular phones. If you forget to charge this when you get home, then chances are the next day, you’ll run out of juice first thing in the morning hehehehe – and I haven’t really studied how fast it could charge.

Luckily, it charges via standard USB cable, so all you need is any USB to AC/DC adaptor and you’re set. It also seems to be using a typical cellphone [Nokia?] rechargable battery – which is awesome since it makes buying [charging] accessories for it extremely easy.

I’ve got a USB port ready in the car for charging it on the go, and I already have one of those compact AC wall-wart -> USB adaptors. All I need do is find a much shorter USB cable for it so I can just bring that with me all the time.

But if I were to give advice on how to maintain this and be sure you have connectivity all the time:

1. When at home, first thing you should do is just plug it in… regardless of how much juice it still has.
   Since it’s reasonable to assume you have a better network connection at home, you won’t be using it anyways – so just keep it plugged while it’s not in use.

2. I guess it would also be practical to buy a spare battery for it, just for those emergencies.

3. Have some way to charge it in the car, and when in the car, treat it as if you were at home (i.e. keep it plugged in)