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Verizon Will Sell iPad+MiFi Bundles, Starting Oct 28th
wiredmikey quotes from today's much-anticipated announcement from Apple that Verizon is joining the iPad club, which means that: "iPad will be available at over 2,000 Verizon Wireless Stores nationwide beginning Thursday, October 28. Verizon Wireless will offer three bundles, all featuring an iPad Wi-Fi model and a Verizon MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, for a suggested retail price of $629.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 16GB + MiFi, $729.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 32GB + MiFi and $829.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 64GB + MiFi. Verizon Wireless is offering a monthly access plan to iPad customers of up to 1GB of data for just $20 a month. In addition, Verizon Wireless will also offer all three iPad Wi-Fi models on a stand-alone basis."
Since the Verizon bundles don't seem to offer the kind of subsidy that many phone purchases do, it would make sense to shop around for the same functionality (Wi-Fi iPad + 3G service) from other carriers. For instance, if you live within Sprint's city-centric 3G footprint, and want more than 1GB of data, Virgin Mobile's branded MiFi offers unlimited transfer (within the limit of the network — it's no FiOS, but I've used it with Skype and Google Voice) for $40/month.
is that it does not have a GPS chip. This makes all the location services not working. Would it work with +myfi?
Somehow Apple did not stress this point in feature difference when it released the iPads. I only found it out a while after I bought the wifi version.
I'm not really sure how much of a change they would have to make, considering there was an article earlier this year on how someone removed the 3G unit from their iPad and replaced it with the insides of an.. wait, you guessed it, a MiFi. (article) My point being the 3G unit is modular in the iPad (unlike a phone's, which is integrated with the radio which is deeply involved with the phone's operation) and they could probably make a CDMA version.