iPad, iPhone and Tethering

This blog will discuss the merits of tethering the iPad to a iPhone. The equipment used for this blog was -

• iPad (first generation) 16G, 3G
• iPhone 4S, 32G,

Assumptions

The iPad 1 is much slower, so the sluggishness of some of the apps may not be so with a more powerful iPad. To be honest, I’m not convinced of this point as the apps work fine when not connected to a hotspot.

I’m based in NZ, so I’m referencing 3G, not 4G or LTE. To be honest I wouldn’t expect LTE to arrive in NZ over the lifetime of the“new iPad”.

Benefits of tethering -

Tethering works well. Tethering means I won’t need to spend an extra NZ$200 on a iPad 3G option (also means I can buy more storage, more about this later) and no ongoing monthly prepaid 3G cost for the iphone. Currently NZ$20 prepaid with a budget telco provider.

Some drawbacks

Time - The time taken to setup tethering on the iPhone and setting up the iPad to use this tethering can be a pain. Using iPad 1, the wireless bits don’t seem to pick this network up immediatly. Often wireless on the iPad needs to be turned on before the iPhone hotspot is turned on. Such a pain. I understand the iPad 2 works better with regards to picking up the hotspot.

Security - Password for the iPhone hotspot appears to be clear, on the iPhone anyway. So if someone can access my iPhone then they could feasibly access the iPhone hotspot. The name of the iPhone hotspot is something like “Sam’s iPhone”, pretty obvious whoes connection that is and ripe for password hacking. Guess changing the name of the phone could do the trick, but shouldn’t need to do this.

Data - How much more data will I use ? Well tethering the “new iPad” will mean more data will be used. How much ? Annedoctal evidence suggests 2.5 to 3 times the amount of data.

iPhone battery life - Battery definitely runs down much quicker when it is tethered. You could probably expect no more than three to four life out of the tether setup. So keep a power cable handy for the iPhone.

Theoretically data been synced shouldn’t change the amount of data been uploaded or downloaded. For example syncing OmniFocus data should not change. However syncing Instapper data may change. This all depends on where the parsing for the articles takes place, on the server or on the iPad.

3G speed - Ran some tests. Tethering the iPad 1 to the iPhone was pinging at 427ms, download at 6.72 Mbps and upload at 0.84 Mbps. The iPhone ping test was 258ms, download at 7.28 Mbps and upload at 1.13 Mbps. So what are the differences ? 65% slower for the ping test, 8% for the download test and 35% for the upload test. These tests are based on the iOS app, speedtest.net.

I tested some of my favourite apps, below are some comments I noticed on performance when run under a tether scenario.

Safari - downloading various apple websites. Takes a little time on both devices, 14 to 16 seconds to load the iPad or iTunes home websites. These results were inconclusive, possibly depending on content been delivered. Some of the apple pages were taking much longer with the tethered iPad.

OmniFocus - A refresh of omnifocus for iPad take much longer when the iPad was tethered. Something like 30 seconds compared to around 10 seconds. I’m assuming the reason for this lengthy time is around the upload and ping tests.

Instapaper - Seemed to take a little longer to load the “Read Later” screen. Also noticed scrolling to be a little jumpy. Loading an article, again seems to take longer and scrolling is jumpy. Again not too bad, maybe an extra second, definitely not to the extent of the OmniFocus differences though.

Reeder - Syncing is definitely taking longer. Syncing took 20 to 30 seconds. This seems to be a similar issue with the OmniFocus test. Moving between articles, sending articles to Instapper takes slightly longer when the iPad is tethered, but definitely less than one second.

iThoughts HD - This is my favourite mindmapping application. Looking at normal syncing activities, uploading to dropbox, for example, there was maybe an extra one or two second delay.

Day One - Selecting the first article took between two to five seconds longer. However selecting other articles took slightly longer, but less than one second. Creating a new article too one to two seconds, again a little longer, but not unbearably so. Typing speed on the iPad is no different. There is no noticable lag.

Byword - I’m typing this section using the byword iPad app which is tethered to the iPhone. Like the DAYONE app, typing is no problem. In fact every other function seems to work very well.

AtBat - Looks as though there is quite a bit of syncing going on. Loading articles takes 5 seconds. The app looks as though it is continually loading articles and other data.

Twitter Native App - takes longer to load, two to four seconds. Most actions seem sluggish. Opening a website in the Twitter web browser is suprisngly quick. Opening the web site in Safari is much slower. Refer back to section on Safari. I would assume the website is cached on the Twitter servers.

Goodreader - no differences with opening application, scrolling through to a particular document and opening said document. However has found in other applications the syncing between Dropbox and the Goodreader app is much slower.

Conclusion

Tethering the iPad, on the surface would seem a good option, however the realities of pinging and upload times makes tethering not wise. This is particulary the case when you have apps that require some form of syncronisation. Some good examples are OmniFocus and Reeder.

For me, running with a just wireless option (tether) is a risk. It may be OK as the extra performance could offset any network issues. I’m not so sure though. The apps I like to use adopt syncronisation and lets be honest - the cloud is where its at.

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