Standby to upgrade your Three MiFi

My Three MiFi unit is a business critical tool for me.

Routinely, WiFi hotspots are so SHIT that I simply have to rely on my MiFi unit for connectivity. Three’s data network is amongst the best in the business — and the MiFi unit is a brilliant way of unlocking that for all your connectivity needs.

I used to regularly travel up and down the M4 motorway and goodness me, the networks — Three in particular — seem to have got that motorway connected properly. I was able to stay connected at what felt like desktop data speeds for my whole journey. [I want to point out, I wasn’t driving!]

The MiFi gets me out of a heck of a lot of tight spots though. You know the scene — turn up at an office and find that their guest WiFi needs 16-layers of security confirmation. Or arrive into a pub to do some work and find that the bollocks BT Openzone wants to charge you on a pence-per-minute basis. Stupid. Scenarios like this have me reaching for the MiFi all the time. I don’t even bother taking it out my bag. I just feel for the power switch, depress it for a second and then see the WiFi connection pop-up.

So I’m a big user. Three’s current MiFi unit is the Huawei E585. Here’s a quick reminder:

It’s great. The battery feels like it lasts most of the business day. In practice after about 4-5 hours of continuous use, I need to power it up. Provided you’re in a city centre location, I generally find the throughput speeds to be comparable to a desktop broadband connection.

That was then.

Now the next generation is upon us: The E586. Let’s have a photo:

Right. This one is HSPA+ which means that you’ll get up to 21.1Mbps down (“HSDPA”) and 5.76Mbps up (“HSUPA”). Amazing. Three reckons it should be about 40% faster. (80% of the operator’s network will be fully HSPA+ compliant by the end of the year.)

They’ve made a few nice improvements — apparently the dashboard has got a nice upgrade. I’m hopeful on this one. It was a little bit ‘Huwaei bog standard’ for my tastes but it certainly did the job. There’s also a smart new feature that enables users to see the WiFi username/password on-screen at the touch of a button, ‘for fast pairing with new gadgets’.

Somebody at Three has obviously given their MiFi a lot of use. One of the slight arses with the MiFi is having to open up the battery case to get the WiFi access code. Good thinking. See the picture above? See the button with the ‘key’ on it, top right on the side? I reckon that’s the one you press to get a reminder of the device password.

If you’re a big user of the internal memory card functionality (so you can access via your connected devices), that’s now upgraded to support 32GB micro SD cards.

And a final new addition? This:

That there is a fancy new charging cradle. This will be highly useful if you’re a regular MiFi user as you’ll want to pop it in the charger often.

This new unit should be available in-store and online from September. There’s no word on costs yet but I’d expect it will be priced similarly (if not exactly the same) as the existing E585. So, on PAYG the E585 costs £71.99 including 3GB of data. I’d expect it to be free on a 20/month contract. I think that’s what I’ll go for when it comes out.

Anyway, stay tuned. I’ll post a note when it’s available.