Review: MyWi turns your iPhone into a wireless hotspot [Jailbreak Apps]
The reason that MyWi rocks (aside from the fact that it’s on the Rock store) should be pretty evident to people without a 3G modem on their laptops: it’s a jailbreak app that lets you tether and even turn your iPhone into a mobile wireless router. Not every country supports iPhone tethering, but I’m of the strong opinion that data is data and you should be able to use it on whatever device you want, and MyWi is a great little way to take advantage of every dime that goes towards your overpriced data plan.
I’m not promising that this app will prevent you from being charged for any tethering costs should you choose to use it (nobody has complained about charges on the Rock reviews), but at least it can provide an easy extra way to use your data.
How You Use It
All I had to do on my iPhone 3GS (firmware 3.1.2) was install MyWi — no extra hacks or tweaks were needed since Rock App made sure to install everything that was needed. After that all I had to do was make sure that wi-fi was activated on my iPhone, and then launch My-Wi. The app can create a hotspot over Wi-Fi or tether via Bluetooth or USB.
Data Counter
MyWi makes great use of the top bar of your iPhone and displays a pulsating tethered data counter that looks a lot like the one used for phone calls or ongoing voice memos. This is much better than Apple’s default tethering process, which requires you to go to Settings -> General -> Usage just to see how much data you’ve used overall. The data counter does tally the amounts similarly to Apple’s tethering solution, however, and so the numbers you’ll see up top are for all of your tethering, and not just the data you’ve used in one session. There doesn’t seem to be a way to reset this counter, and I haven’t used the app often enough to on the tally every month (I’ve also had some hard resets in between using MyWi, so my previous tallies were lost). If you’re really concerned about going over your data limits, I’d suggest picking up Consume from bjango on the App Store.
Tethering: Bluetooth and USB
I’ve had MyWi for a few months now and I’ve used it mainly for the wi-fi hot spot, and not for any other sort of tethering. Bluetooth always felt a bit too slow (connection and set-up wise) and USB tethering always felt too haphazard with the wiring. Most of the places I’d use MyWi at were usually lacking in desk space, and running a wire between my iPhone and MacBook just pales in comparison to simply sharing my 3G connection over wi-fi. USB tethering does have the advantage of eliminating the battery drain of sharing data, but you could also accomplish the same thing with an iPhone backup battery.
The final reason for not using either of these versions was the strange bug I encountered with regards to the data counter: it didn’t work over Bluetooth/USB tethering.
Tethering: Wi-Fi Hotspot
The wi-fi hotspot can take about 10 seconds or so to set up, but logging onto it is business as usual: find the name of the network (usually the name of your device + MyWi) and then enter the assigned WEP password. You ould also theoretically go without a password, but letting strangers onto my iPhone data plan isn’t on my list of Generous Things To Do This Year.
I used Speedtest.net to measure my download speed (5.15 Mbps) and was quite impressed — results will definitely vary based on your 3G signal strength, but speeds in downtown Toronto are pretty good.
Battery Drain
This is a tough area to measure, but I can say that the battery on my 3GS didn’t drain quite as quickly as I thought it would using MyWi as a mobile wi-fi hotspot. I once spent an hour in this mode and ran my battery down to about 60 percent, though the iPhone never got too hot to pick up and use (this was a problem with a few previous WinMo devices of mine).
Conclusion
I feel as though MyWi is an app that had to be made if only to bring balance back to the world. Sure, it isn’t free, but it does free up the data that smartphone users already pay for, and it seems absurd to have to pay extra to use my limited data plan to let me surf on my computer instead of on my iPhone.
The $9.99 asking price isn’t quite in impulse buy territory, but it’s really a small price to pay for such a fantastic utility that lets you tether and use your mobile data on your terms.
—
MyWi is available for $9.99 on the Rock jailbreak app store.
The app was provided by Rock Your Phone for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
It’s good to see you didn’t have any problems with it, but unfortunately for me, it killed my phone.
I installed MyWi and attempted to try it out, upon hitting the on button in the app, I got a loader, then after about 10 seconds. it told me that there was a problem, and a restart could possibly solve it. Obeying the dialog, I rebooted my phone, and as expected, got the apple logo. Unfortunately that’s as far as it got, then turned itself off. I could not get the phone to take me past the apple logo, I tried everything.
In the end, I had to restore my phone, losing everything I had done since my last itunes backup. (Which isn’t often, as I hate itunes and have to run it in a virtual machine.)
Holy crap. Very sorry to hear about that. I’ve installed the app twice now and haven’t had any such problems, though I have had other jailbreak apps give me similar grief. How long did you wait for the apple logo? One time it honestly took my phone 3-4 minutes to reboot, thanks to AnyRing. I deleted the app soon after.
Apple logo came up within seconds, went away after about a minute, leaving me with a powered down brick. The only other thing I could get the phone to display was the “Connect to iTunes” restore screen.
search for "rec boot" this will kick the iphone out of the restore screen.
Are you a Linux user? I assume so because otherwise I am confused why you would use a virtual machine for Itunes. I am not trying to be a jerk, just trying to learn more.
Sorry John — confused about whom the apply was addressed to. If you meant me, I'm on a Mac. No Linux here, and no virtual machines. Find them a bit messy to work with.
I tried to do this for TychoQuad, but I think I goofed. I made the comment because he wrote (Which isn't often, as I hate itunes and have to run it in a virtual machine.). Sorry for the confusion! Great post BTW Thomas!
Sounds like a perfect companion for an iPad – free 3G when you need it.
This might show my stupidity, but I’ll share it anyway. I tested the app. It worked a little too good. So I thought it was just passing my home wifi to my Macbook (spoiler: it wasn’t). So I disabled iPhone wifi and tried again. This really made me phone go haywire. 4 restarts and several times toggling iPhone wifi lead to a happy ending, and about 5-10 minutes wasted. I plan on keeping this App and using it for when I travel and desire a better browsing experience than Safari can provide.
Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the “fancier’ hotels charge for crappier wifi than what is available for free at the “budget” hotels?
Also, did anyone test this with 2 devices at once? I’d like to see how 2 laptops utilize this mywi signal…
I tried this out with an iPod touch and a netbook while surfing on my 3GS. I believe up to four devices can be connected. The speed was fine for browsing, although it probably did take a bit of a hit. My friends even skyped each other over the connection just for kicks.
Now that's a test! I think these developers earned their $10.
Pingback: Will you still want to jailbreak on iPhone OS 4.0? « Just Another iPhone Blog
MyWi should be allowed on the appstore. I hate jailbreaking but this is one of the reasons someone would.
Pingback: MyWi 4.0 for iPhone: iOS 4 compatible, requires upgrade fee [Jailbreak Only] « Just Another iPhone Blog
Pingback: Review Update: MyWi 4.0 for iPhone [Jailbreak] « Just Another iPhone Blog
I purChased mywi4.0 for 20 bux now for some reason I have no problems setting up a hotspur everything connects great but when I try USB the only CPU that recognizes the connection is my desktop now my netbook only reconizes it as a camera same with the computers at work I've tried on numerous cpus with only failed results, do you have to have iTunes on the CPU for the USB tethering to work? If not what is going on here I cannot figure this out for the life of me thanks guys
Shane
I purChased mywi4.0 for 20 bux now for some reason I have no problems setting up a hotspur everything connects great but when I try USB the only CPU that recognizes the connection is my desktop now my netbook only reconizes it as a camera same with the computers at work I've tried on numerous cpus with only failed results
need a bit more detail there. Operating Systems?
But it may be that you do need the latest version of iTunes to get tethering to work.
?
Xp pro didn't think u would need iTunes?
I installed MyWi today and worked just fine, as described, everything ok, but I saw a problem: I connected my iPad to the tethered iPhone (MyWi) and used it for about 15 minutes just to browse Facebook and Fidelity website and this was enough to drain my data plan. I should mention that I have a “Pay as you go” plan on my iPhone 3GS, meaning it is not a monthly unlimited data plan, I am using the APN carrier crack from unlockit.co.nz. I had about 80mb left on my data plan, which I consumed with those 15 minutes browsing on the iPad.
My question is: does the tethering over iPhone 3G internet consumes a lot of bytes? I mean, maybe the packets downloaded to the iPad are not formatted as mobile data but normal WiFi internet data packages?
Thanks for reading.
hey does anybody know if this app MyWi take data from your iphone? i am trying to find out if it takes your data. i have a 2gb data iphone but i dont want it to take my data. i only wanna use it for computers and ipods. and if it does take data from your phone, how much does it take?
answer me soon please.