NEWS: US carrier tailors 3G jacket for iPod touch?

Jul 29, 2010 3 Replies

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John Navas 15 years ago

US wireless carrier Sprint is slated to offer a kind of handset sleeve that could provide 3G wireless access to an iPod Touch, the Apple iPhone that's not a phone.

As noticed by Phone Scoop, Chinese manufacturer ZTE has submitted a Sprint-branded device to the Federal Communications Commission that can house a mini-tablet like the iPod touch and supply EVDO 3G service via WiFi. In essence, it's a WiFi hotspot that wraps around a WiFi-only handheld.

This contraption is dubbed the "Peel," an apparent play off the Apple name.

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Thomas T. Veldhouse 15 years ago

Sure, but you are missing all the phone capabilities in the OS ... so it isn't a phone at all [unless you Skype over a usually latent network ... a problem for all carriers who try VoIP on 3G. Verizon got around this by pushing the voice over their voice network on the Droid X (and presumably other Android based phones).

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Paul Miner 15 years ago

I think you completely missed the point. It provides another avenue for Internet access, i.e., "it's a WiFi hotspot that wraps around a WiFi-only handheld". Nothing was said about turning a non-phone device into a phone.

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John Navas 15 years ago

Have you actually tried it? I've been doing VoIP on cellular since EDGE (EGPRS) days, and while there was some latency on EDGE in the beginning, it works pretty well on 3G. Try it.

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