“I have been paying extra for the LTE option on every tablet I’ve purchased in the last few years,” James Kendrick writes for ZDNet. “My purchase of the iPad Air 2 a few months ago was the exception to my LTE-required rule, and I regret it.”
“I bought the iPhone 6 Plus shortly before this, and with the Handoff feature of iOS 8 I figured I could use the phone as a hotspot for the LTE-less iPad,” Kendrick writes. “That worked well at first but I soon began to tire of using the phone’s LTE with the tablet. Connecting the two is easy enough by simply tapping the iPhone in the iPad Air 2 network list. With Handoff activated, that single tap turns on the iPhone 6 Plus in the gear bag, turns on the personal hotspot, and auto-connects the iPad to it; at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
“Unfortunately, what is making me regret having to do that is the delay of getting everything going and getting to work. Sometimes the Handoff isn’t an instant connection, and the iPad takes a little while to pair with the iPhone,” Kendrick writes. “It doesn’t help that every once in a while the iPad fails to initially connect to the iPhone’s personal hotspot. An error dialog box appears on the iPad indicating connection with the iPhone failed and I have to start the process again. It’s not a long process, but when I’m in a hurry to jump online with the iPad Air 2 it is very annoying… The situation has me seriously considering selling my Wi-Fi only iPad Air 2 and getting one with LTE. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: IS anyone else experiencing this issue and/or regretting not having a Cellular-capable iPad?
I have had 3 iPads. I had Cellular on the first 2. Since they added tethering on the iPhone i have NOT missed the cellular at all. The only issue I have had is sometimes my iPad will not “connect” to my phone and I have to play a game where I turn everything off and on until it works. Strangely if I connect them via a cable always works.
What kind of cable do you use to connect them? One with a lightning connector at both ends? I ask because I’ve never seen or heard of connecting iPhone to iPad in this manner.
So your complaint is EXACTLY the same one as in the article..
Half-empty vs half-full.
Ok, think you should do that, so… 😉
I always get cellular on my iPads. Just open it and I am set. Its worth the extra.
I’ve always saved the expense of a cellular iPad and used AT&T HotSpot. That works great every time for me.
Good point, but what if there isn’t one around? I’m on my second iPad with cellular connectivity and I’ll never go back to one without. The extra monthly expense on my AT&T account is barely noticed.
Use the iPhone as a hotspot, that’s always around.
Verizon cellular at an additional $10 a month per 4G cellular Apple device is a no-brainer. Works about everywhere.
In response to MDN question…yes, I experience the same issues the author describes pretty regularly. Slow to connect, misconnects, etc. That said, I live with it and don’t regret not getting 4G on the iPad. Turning airplane mode on and off on the phone resets everything sufficiently, then you retry the connection on iPad. The last two iPads I purchased for myself didn’t have cellular. While it’s an annoyance, it isn’t terrible. If there wasn’t also a per-device cost from AT&T, I’d pay the $100 to have cellular chip in the iPad…but I can live with the minor frustration otherwise.
Similar issues here. Frequently, the iPad shows the name of my iPhone as the WiFi node I’m connecting to, but then the connection is not completed and the hotspot link icon does not appear. Turning the iPad’s WiFi feature off and back on and trying again may do the trick.
You also get GPS with the cellular version, which is quite handy for navigating in a strage city when you don’t have a phone handy.
Yep, GPS is a must as far as I’m concerned.
Now, if only Apple would unlock the FM receiver……
The author confuses Handoff with Personal Hotspot.
I thought when Handoff was enabled, the iPhone shows up as an available connection on the iPad/MacBook, and then when you connect, it turns on the Personal Hotspot on the iPhone.
I haven’t used this, am I wrong?
No, you’re very right.
I bought a WiFi-only iPad Air 2, and have absolutely no regrets with that decision. WiFi is available to me about 80% of the time I use the device, and when it’s not I have no issue connecting to the Personal Hotspot on my iPhone. Webpages are slower to load on an iPad using a PH than one with built in cellular connectivity, but they load quickly enough.
Side-stepping the question of regretting or not, I’ll say on the used market, the premium for LTE and extra storage are dramatically less than new. I got a 128gb iPad Air LTE for 400 bucks.
I have a friend who does this a lot. So far, he hasn’t had any major issues with getting this to work between his iPhone and iPad. I’m wondering if the writer of this article has contacted AppleCare about this. I didn’t see any mention of it.
I leave HotSpot turned on on my iPhone6, and I thought a Wi-Fi iPad was supposed to discover and “automatically” use the iPhone if no other Wi-Fi is available. Mine has never done that. I always have to go into settings on the iPhone and once I get on the Personal HotSpot settings screen, the iPad auto connects, but the iPhone has to be on that screen. I assumed that is because I have 4th gen iPad. Interesting to hear that none really work as advertised.
I think it’s a good thing. I only use hotspot to power my Mac, and for work. Don’t want any surprise 500GB overages on my AT&T data plan. I’d rather be forced to connect it manually. In fact I go an extra step and fully disable my hotspot on the iPad when I don’t need to be using it. Don’t have any issues with it once connected. Don’t see the problem.
An iPad without LTE? The sheer agony! The suffering! How do you get through the day?
I’m the opposite: I’ve always had wifi only iPads until now, and my iPad Air 2 (128 GB Space Grey) is now cellular (AT&T), and I LOVE it.
For me, having a cellular iPad versus a wifi only iPad, is about the same as having an iPod touch instead of an iPhone, literally THAT different of an experience.
Also must clarify something before people ask: I don’t have personal hotspot on my iPhone because I have a grandfathered Unlimited Data Plan through AT&T, and that disqualifies me.
And another purchasing decision in the cellular version was I previously had to use a Verizon hotspot device for backup Internet with a pay as you need it type plan for backup Internet since I work from home, but over the last year before I bought the iPad it still ended up costing just as much as the extra data plan on the iPad would have, so it was a no brainier for me.
I always buy the cellular iPad. I’m grandfathered in unlimited AT&T and is a simple process to move the account to any iPad I’m in need of the connection for. 💥😃
That’s very interesting. I’m also grandfathered on an unlimited plan with AT&T and use it for my iPhone only. Could you explain how moving the unlimited plan to an iPad works?
No. The original iPad had an unlimited option that you can continue to carry through to new iPads. It is not possible to move an iPhone plan to an iPad plan. There use to be unlimited iPad plans.
Only in the first 30 days of the first iPad could you sign up for unlimited data for $30 a month. Then by continuing to pay $30 a month since then, those of us lucky enough to have signed up get to keep it. After a month, the CEO of AT&T rescinded his unlimited data offer never to be offered again.👀💥😱
Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
I always get the cellular iPads. $130 is worth it for convenience.
Also, your iPad does not have a true GPS unless you get the Cellular version.
#firstworldproblem
We opted to go with hotspot for work iPads and don’t miss the LTE, especially with so many wifi hotspots popping up all over sometimes you don’t even need your hotspot ……
Add in the savings plus a somewhat lighter iPad and it works for us!
This article is simply idiotic whining and a prime example of why most people can never retire.
OK, so maybe it doesn’t connect instantaneously every single time. Poor baby.
Selling a perfectly good, new Wi-Fi only iPad 2 will likely lose the author $200 or more. Then, it’ll cost an additional $130 or so to get the cellular iPad 2 to replace it (vs the Wi-Fi only).
Now you’re paying $10/month (or likely more) for cellular plan for the new iPad (plus your iPhone plan, don’t forget).
That’s about $300-400 in up front costs/loss, plus $120/year (or more) for every year that you own it. That could easily wind up being nearly $1000 IN ADDITION TO the base cost of a Wi-Fi only iPad 2. Repeat that behavior on your next iPad and it’s likely to cost you close to $10K over 10 years. Invest that money instead and you’ll probably have over $13K.
If the author is absolutely rolling in cash ($5 million or more), then they can easily afford it. For most people, decisions like this are stupid.
I still use my iPad 2 64GB that I bought with the cellular option (because there was no tethering option at the time). I signed up for the “200MB/month free for life” from T-mobile for it over a year ago , and have never paid for cellular since. My iPad 2 is certainly slower than a new iPad Air 2, but certainly not worth shelling out $900 or so to replace it.
Decisions like this are part of why I’m retiring in 2 years whereas most of my similarly-paid co-workers and friends will work at least another 15-20 years.
It’s making companies like Apple and AT&T a TON of money, though, so as an Apple stockholder maybe I shouldn’t be pointing this out? 🙂
$10 more a month for LTE on my iPad is easily worth it.