Dell Venue Pro May Never Get Wireless Hotspot Mode

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Late last month Microsoft attempted to clarify how Mango's internet sharing would arrive on existing WP7 hardware. The issue, ultimately, depended on the presence of new drivers to let Mango take full advantage of the phone's WiFi hardware. Does that mean we might hope to see the feature make it to all WP7 handsets, eventually? Some detective work by the users over at the XDA-Developers forums suggests we could be stuck with one particular WP7 phone that gets left behind the rest.

All Windows Phone models that can already form a wireless hotspot are powered by Broadcom's 4329 chip. It's so prevalent, that nearly all the models that don't yet have drivers available also use the same chip; in these cases, it appears to just be a matter of time before drivers are released, rather than any sort of hardware problem affecting the ability to deploy the feature.

The Dell Venue Pro, on the other hand, uses a Broadcom 4325 chip. Not only does that component lack 802.11 n support, it doesn't include the AP mode needed to act as a wireless hotspot. That suggests quite strongly that we'll never see wireless internet sharing working on the Venue Pro. At the least, you could always whip out a USB cable and do some tethered connection sharing.

Source: XDA=Developers forum
Via: WMPoweruser

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BlackBerry WiFi Hotspot Coming to OS7 Before Year's End?

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Where, oh, where is mobile hotspot functionality in the current batch of BlackBerry smartphones. BlackBerry OS7 was rumored to include the feature, but it's yet to materialize. A newly-leaked Sprint memo now gives us some insight into the feature?s coming availability.

In response to customers wondering why the box for the BlackBerry Torch 9850 on Sprint mentions hotspot capabilities, the carrier has distributed said memo to its employees to enable them to answer customer questions. The official word, according to this, is that the phone will gain the ability via its first major software update, which is currently expected to arrive sometime in Q4 of this year.

While this only specifically concerns the Torch 9850, we'd expect to see other current-gen BlackBerry models get the same treatment when their updates arrive. As should be no surprise, you can bet on carriers locking-down this functionality and charging extra access fees above and beyond the data you're already paying for. At least it's something to look forward to.

Source: CrackBerry

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Satellite Hotspot Gets You Online Anywhere, But At What Cost?

No matter how powerful our smartphones are, and what advanced 4G services they can access, their usefulness takes a nosedive when you can't find a data signal. Thankfully, we can usually get by with the likes of GPRS or another slower-speed connection, but sometimes even that signal's not available. When you're going to be out in the middle of nowhere, there will soon be a way to get your smartphone online even then, but there are some pretty huge caveats to consider.

Satellite communication provider Iridium offers globetrotters reliable communication via its hand-held satellite phones. Now it plans to extend those services to providing satellite-based WiFi hotspot connectivity through the Iridium AxcessPoint.

The $200 AxcessPoint connects to a separate Iridium satphone for communications, making it pretty expensive for an accessory that can't even get online by itself. Those phones are in the $1000 range, and then the actual data service is a little over a dollar a minute.

For that kind of money, it must have some pretty impressive performance, right? You'd better dissuade yourself of any dreams of watching Netflix from a mountaintop, because we're looking at data speeds around 26-27Kbps ? that's roughly 1000 times slower than modern LTE, and slower than nearly all dial-up internet connections.

Getting your phone online through the AxcessPoint will be slow, expensive, and require lugging around a bunch of extra hardware. On some occasions, though, there just aren't any other options. The Iridium AxcessPoint will be out sometime in Q4 2011.

Source: Iridium
Via: PCMag

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