[BlackDynamite]

Originally Posted by MiniEOD

eh... not really... the difference here is that the phone, like many phones now, have a wifi antenna, which allows to connect to wifi signals, and then access that network for data reception (instead of the phones cellular data signal)

that is wifi

then you have mobile hotspotting...which is what clearwire currently has, who sprint is working with....

this is allowing you to take your phones cellular data signal and allow other devices with wifi antennas to access the stream.... transferring cellular data signal, through the phone, making your phone act as a router, and then picking up this signal on another device, to have broadband connectivity speeds

you can clearly see there are two very different things going on here

if you connect 8 laptops to your phone's hotspot, all accessing 4G data... its going to be a lot of data transferring through

thus, sprint is charging $29.99 per month to activate this feature... THIS feature

they will not ask you to pay 29.99 to connect to your home's wireless router and enjoy quicker speeds, it has no relation to sprint's data streams...in fact, it takes strain off of their network

these are two different types of wifi, and it will be easy to block your phone from acting as a wifi hotspot, while still being able to access your local starbuck's wifi signal


plus in your example, what does it matter if your router has access to your phone's wifi? your router is not going to use the cell signal to process data...it is strictly for hotspotting..where your device is working as a transmitter....



TL;DR in wifi use, the phone is a receiver of data only, using broadband wifi signals the same way your laptop would in order to stream data to the laptop / phone...in hot spot use, the phone is a transmitter and receiver of data, acting as a router itself, but instead of the router receiving signal through fiber optic or cable lines, it is receiving it through the 4G sprint towers

You're wrong man. WiFi requires 2 way communication to work, period. Regardless of weather the phone is sending its data connection to another device or receiving it's data signal from another device, the WiFi adapter is always both a sender and a receiver. It has to tell the router which web page to seek, and then it has to receive the web page from the router.

Now, if Sprint had said, "hotspot add on required for another device to access the Evo's data connection" then you would be correct. but they didn't say that. They said "hotspot add on required to access the device's WiFi" which is not good at all.