Downloaded and installed last night.

All working OK and a very quick download.

Ditto.

Doesn't really appear much different TBH, although possibly slightly 'snappier'. Didn't get a chance to test the home sharing in iTunes before work. Have tested the 'wifi hotspot' feature and that seems to work fine. Had to do a second sync on the iphone to get it to refresh the library in the iPod app, which is a little odd but other than that all seems normal.

Jon

My Apple TV wanted to install the update last night. I politely declined as I have it Jailbroken. (8+)

Mark

I clicked "Set Up Personal Hotspot" and got the meesage "To set up hotspot please contact Orange".

Possibly. It's taken over from the old 'tethering' function and I pay extra for that with O2. Only a fiver like, but it's not free. It's likely Orange similarly expect you to pay a bit extra for the privilege as well, at which point they'll switch it on for you.

Hmm.. bit of digging finds the following in Orange's terms and conditions...



But I can't find anything on Orange's web pages that actually tell you what the bundles are (in terms of GB/month or cost thereof) or how to get one.

Personal hotspot option doesn't appear at all on my tesco Iphone 4.

Disappointing as i was about to get an ipad and the 2 together would have been perfect.

I really don't understand why carriers don't turn this on and charge for usage over the 1gb or 500mb or whatever that is bundled.

Surely they would make more that way?

Didge.

Unfortunately the telcos aren't required to support it if they don't want to. But it wouldn't appear unless you've had the service update sent to the phone to enable it either way. Best advice I can find is



If you don't see that, you'll have to phone the support line...


Fundamentally, they're just not really equipped to handle it. The basic fact is smartphones don't actually use that much data traffic. You may read your email and browse the web but you're not going to do any heavy downloading and uploading on a smartphone. Plug that smartphone into your PC though (by whatever means) and you're probably going to attempt to do whatever you'd normally do on your home broadband. If everyone who had iPhones suddenly decided to switch tethering on, the network would congest itself to standstill pretty quickly. basically, the telcos have relied on the fact phones don't need much upstream bandwidth to buy the absolute minimum upstream capacity they can get away with and if they have to provide more, it will hit their profits. So some of them won't let you do it and the rest try to 'hide' the functionality as much as they cam, both in terms of activating it on the phone and on their web sites. As above, you can find out on Orange's web site that tethering bundles exist, but try to find how much it'll cost you? Good luck.


Not necessarily. if you can't get the the tethering switched on you might want to consider a mifi as an alternative. 3 are running some very good deals on mifis and mobile data plans at the mo.

Jon

The mifi deal is good BUT:
1/ I already have a device that is capable of providing a wifi hotspot.
2/ I already carry a device every day that is capable. I really don't want to carry another device.
3/ I paid £350 plus a 12 month contract .. i kind of feel i have paid for the phone and should be able to at least see the available feature, even if the telco charges for its use.
4/ The contract provides 1gb of data per month. I should be able to use that data in any way i see fit. If the telcos cant provide it (as their network would grind to a halt) they shouldn't be able to sell it. If I use more than the 1gb they can charge me whatever I agreed to when i signed up.

There is something intrinsically wrong with the way data is sold in this country, be it adsl or mobile and its about time someone took a long hard look at it.

Didge

The personal hotspot sounded like tethering to me. Even though his holiness said no to tethering a couple of years ago. It actually makes a lot of sense for operators to allow it. If people actually use it then they can actually charge for it. If they go over their personal limit then they can get extra income. Without which they will not get that much extra income. I am planning on getting a wifi iPad 2 so would not be interested in a contract. Though I would imagine that they are looking at billing options to make money from this.

As far as I know, Apple have never said anything that was specifically against tethering. I don't think it was implemented in the early builds of iOS, but then lots of other things were missing too so you can't draw any solid conclusions from that. It is true that tethering was available in the EU quite some time before it was available in the US; demonstrably the only reason that could be is that AT&T - who were the only US network to have the IPhone at that point - didn't want to support it.

Jon

I thought that there was a one word answer from Steve regarding tethering. Though I am happy to accept your view of things. It might have been one of the deliberate delayed improvements that Apple had planned but would trickle out over a number of upgrades.

My iPHone 3G is now officially “left behind”. It’s going to be 2 years old next month.

I thought the 3G was coming up to 3 years old?

The 4 is coming up to a year old, the 3GS was the yar before that, I thought the 3G was the year before that?

My iPhone 4 still "feels" new but it too will soon be replaced. Everything changes at a ridiculous rate.

Ah, you've fallen for the marketing trap.