Raising the bar with MiFi router design
Articles
AT&T’s new MiFi Liberate is LTE-capable, ‘world’s first’ with touchscreen display – Engadget
AT&T Shoved a Touchscreen in Its Latest LTE MiFi Hotspot Because, Hey, Why Not! | Gizmodo
AT&T’s MiFi Liberate LTE is first touch-screen hot spot | CNet
From the horse’s mouth
AT&T – Press Release
My Comments
AT&T have released a new “MiFi” router for 4G wireless broadband networks in the form of the AT&T-Novatel MiFi Liberate. Here, this device is not your “father’s old station wagon”.
The device borrows the P-shaped design cues from the Apple Magic Trackpad and some door-handles rather than Microsoft’s newer input devices. Users can manage their connection using a colour LCD touchscreen rather than the typical Web user interface and, in some cases, a monochrome LCD or OLED display.
It can connect up to 10 concurrent Wi-Fi devices to the 4G LTE wireless-broadband connection and can do this for 11 hours on its own battery. What also impresses me about this MiFi is that it, like a few recent AT&T MiFis, has the ability to share files off a microSD card, including the ability to share media to UPnP AV / DLNA devices like Internet radios. This function could be taken further if the MiFi could mount microSDXC cards of 64-128Gb capacity.
At the moment it’s only through AT&T but I would like to see more carries who run LTE-compliant 4G networks offer this device in their 3G wireless router lineup. The firmware that all of the carriers who run with this device should support all of the functions including the file-sharing / DLNA functionality.
