WiFi or 3G, what does it use?

[AE1M]

How does the user control which method is being used at any time? Planning on buying as soon as they're in stock for my wife. Does it auto change or does the user need to select?

B

 

[Teacher's Pet]

It auto changes. It's very quick, I don't notice when it does it unless I'm watching the icons, which don't change quite as fast as the connection itself. But also, it's very easy to open "Settings" and change either mode to off. For example, when I get to work it rolls over to wifi as I pull in the driveway. I usually turn it off because 3G is faster than our T1, but our fiber installation should be complete this coming week.

As an example, I often use instant messenger apps. As I'm leaving my house and it switches to 3G while we're messaging rapidly I usually don't notice. That is on my iPad 3G but I believe the iPad 2 that I bought on launch day has the same wifi controller.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

How does the user control which method is being used at any time? Planning on buying as soon as they're in stock for my wife. Does it auto change or does the user need to select?

B

As the previous poster suggested, when the iPad has both 3G and WiFi available it *always* uses WiFi. If, for some reason, you want to force it to use 3G then you need to turn WiFi off under the 'Settings' menu.

If WiFi is switched on - but not available - it automatically switches to 3G - and back again, should WiFi become available again.

The 'thinking' is that, typically, 3G is costing you money (data plan, limited volume of data, etc) whereas WiFi is typically free or fixed cost.

The iPad can be set to 'auto join' 'known' WiFi networks, for those that it doesn't 'know' a 'pop-up' box appears asking whether you want to join that network.

Tim
Snowy Scotland

 

[BBSean]

What absolutely sucks about this programming on the ipad and the iphone is that if you have wifi WITHOUT internet but want to print an internet document from your phone or ipad, you must shut wifi off, use 3g to bring up the email or document, turn wifi back on, print, then turn wifi back off to use the internet.
Please let us use wifi and 3g at the same time apple!!!

 

[twerppoet]

Please let us use wifi and 3g at the same time apple!!!

Withe the exception of routers, firewalls, and a few other specialty computers you can only have one IP address at a time. That is true of all computers, not just the iPad.

It is not a missing feature. It's a feature that no one has. Well, maybe a few alpha geeks.