Hands-On With Verizon iPhone Hot Spot

The Verizon iPhone’s exclusive new feature is hot-spotting: the ability to share the handset’s data connection with up to five devices. Hot-spotting will cost you an extra 20 bucks per month on top of your voice and data plans, but it’s really sweet.

Apple made the hot-spot feature extremely easy to get up and running over Wi-Fi. You launch the Settings app, tap the Personal Hotspot option, set a password for the network, and turn the slider to On.

The Verizon iPhone then appears on the list of Wi-Fi networks in your area, under the name of your iPhone.

So for example, on a computer or any device with a Wi-Fi connection, I’d go to the�network list and select the Wi-Fi network “Brian Chen’s iPhone.”�Then I’d be connected to the internet using the iPhone’s data. (See screenshot at right.)�I connected an iPad and a computer to the hot spot over Wi-Fi within seconds.

There are also options to connect to the iPhone’s hot spot over USB or Bluetooth, which were also easy to set up.

(Note that you must install the latest version of iTunes, 10.1.2., because it contains necessary drivers to make Bluetooth and USB hot- spotting work with the Verizon iPhone. I had problems using these options with an older version of iTunes.)

Once you connect the iPhone with USB to a computer, a window will appear saying a new network device has been detected. From here on, you should just be able to select the iPhone in your network list and connect to the internet. (See above.)

You can also choose to connect to the hot spot using Bluetooth by pairing the iPhone with your computer. On your computer, after you select the iPhone from the Bluetooth menu, a notification gets sent to the iPhone with the same passcode that’s displayed on your computer. Once you hit OK, the devices should start pairing, and after a few seconds you’ll be connected to the hot spot.

Of all these options, the Wi-Fi hot-spotting was the smoothest and fastest to set up, and I imagine most people will be using that most often.

The Verizon hot-spot feature costs an extra $20 to get 2 gigs of bandwidth per month. AT&T has said it’s working with Apple to bring hot-spotting to its iPhone as well.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com