Looking to Tether your iPhone Without Overpaying? MyWi for iPhone is the Best Solution For You!
One of the core features that AT&T users have been missing out on for quite a while now is tethering. Its competitor, Verizon, has offered it on most of their smartphones, as far as I know. Thanks to iOS4, iPhone users can now tether their devices, but for a price of $20 per month. Fortunately, for owners of jailbroken devices, you can now use MyWi (compatible with iOS4) to tether, for a one time fee of $20.
To clear up any confusion whatsoever, I will repeat, MyWi for iOS4 is $20, just like AT&T’s tethering, except it is a one time fee. Also, this is only available through Cydia, which you will only have if you own a jailbroken device.
What is tethering?
Tethering is basically using your iPhone’s 3G network on your laptop, or other portable device. There are several ways you can tether, either via USB, Bluetooth, or WiFi. I suggest only tethering your device for some web browsing, not streaming HD YouTube videos or downloading large files. If you use MyWi, you can tether using any of the three ways mentioned earlier. AT&T’s official method allows you to tether only through a USB sync cable.
Tethering via USB:
To do this, you simply connect your iPhone to your laptop, and open the application. This will trick your iPhone to think that it is connected via Ethernet to a modem of some sort. It is actually just running the 3G network that your iPhone is running on, so you may notice that the speed is not up to par with the wireless network at your home.
Tethering via Bluetooth:
Tethering via bluetooth is quite obvious. You pair your iPhone up with your laptop (which must have bluetooth capability), and your iPhone will automatically begin tethering. To do this, you have to open up MyWi and enable Bluetooth tethering.
Tethering via WiFi:
The third, and my preferred, method of tethering is via WiFi. How this works is quite interesting. MyWi will basically turn your iPhone into a wireless router. It will broadcast its own 3G data as a WiFi network, giving your other devices access to the wireless network it created. I gave this a go in my car the other day. I enabled WiFi tethering in MyWi, and it created a new WiFi network for me. I was then able to access my iPhone 4′s 3G data on my iPhone 3GS (which has no service in it, at the moment).
It is because of MyWi that I have decided that if I ever get an iPad, it will be a WiFi version. Why? I will always be carrying my iPhone, so I can simply share its internet, using MyWi, with my iPad. There’s absolutely no need to spend another $15 (or $25) per month for a data plan just for your iPad.
Now that the iPhone 4 is jailbroken, and I have MyWI, I really wish I renewed my AT&T contract (when I upgraded to the iPhone 4) with the unlimited data plan instead of downgrading to the 2GB per month data plan (I had that option available because I had the unlimited data plan with my 3GS, but now that I’ve downgraded, I can’t go back up to the unlimited data plan).
If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll notice there’s quite a few settings you can modify if you’re looking to tether via WiFi. You can give it a name, a WEP key, etc.
The downside to the WEP key is that it must be between 10-36 letters/digits, and that is simply too long for me. Instead, I usually leave my WiFi network unprotected whenever I use MyWi. However, I have changed the SSID (basically, the name of the WiFi network) to “This Is A Virus.” This helps keep the majority of the other people around me from connecting to my network.
Once you turn tethering on, you will notice a blue bar across the top part of your iPhone. It will display your usage statistics, both the amount of data downloaded and data uploaded. Please use MyWi wisely, and make sure you don’t go over your data limit! To see the total amount of data consumed, you can go to Settings>General>Usage. At the bottom, it will show you how much data you’ve sent and how much you’ve used.
Overall, MyWi is a very handy application. If you heavily rely on tethering, you should definitely check it out. For what it is though, I find the $20 price point to be a bit high. The $10 3.x firmware version was a reasonable price, however, the 200% increase is definitely not a good thing. All in all though, it is still an excellent jailbroken application.
Our Rating: 4/5
Download Repo: ModMyi (Comes pre-installed with Cydia)
