The iPhone is finally coming to Verizon in the United States. No, it’s not April Fools’ Day. The blogosphere is overflowing with news about the just-announced end of AT&T’s exclusivity. By February 10 you should be able to get your hands on one. (Verizon, being a CDMA carrier instead of GSM, requires a different cellular radio in the device, so if you’re an AT&T customer you will have to buy a whole new phone.)
You can read about that sort of stuff elsewhere though. Apparently Apple has been testing their CDMA iPhone since 2008, and finally has a chance to roll out a new feature in iOS 4.2.5 that (I assume) AT&T wasn’t too keen on having: portable hotspot. You can flip a toggle switch in the Settings app and broadcast a WiFi hotspot for up to five devices.
You can also set the Personal Hotspot up to use Bluetooth or USB. Obviously, the latter two are for one-to-one connections. Essentially, it looks like this replaces the “tethering” option found in the current iOS build. An Apple rep I talked to believed this was the case as well.
Anyway, I won’t rehash all of the gory details here. You can read up on them from my sources.
