When you turn on the feature on your iPhone, Wi-Fi sharing is only enabled for 90 seconds unless a device connects via Wi-Fi within that period. What you’ll like best, though, is that using Bluetooth tethering sidesteps a major inconvenience with the Personal Hotspot feature. You can also likely save battery power on both the iPhone acting as a hotspot and the device or devices you to tether to it: Bluetooth should consume less power than Wi-Fi, even though modern Wi-Fi has a lot of built-in power-conserving features. The key advantage of Bluetooth tethering is simplicity, especially with a streamlined pairing process for securely connecting two devices over Bluetooth that Apple added to the iOS with the 4.3 update. On an iPhone 3GS with iOS 4.3 installed, it’s labeled Personal Hotspot, though Wi-Fi isn’t available as an option.)
(If either phone has iOS 4.0 to 4.2 installed, the sharing option appears as Internet Tethering. It also has a few drawbacks that might dissuade you.įor iPhone 3G and 3GS users, this form of tethering also allows other iOS devices to share a connection, which was previously impossible. Bluetooth tethering has a set of advantages that might lead you to select it instead of Wi-Fi for routing your iOS device through an iPhone 4 Personal Hotspot.
