As you know, Apple has finally brought wireless tethering functionality with iOS 4.3. Called Personal Hotspot, it allows you to share your iPhone’s 3G cellular data connection with other devices over its WiFi connection. It’s one less reason to fork an additional $130 for a 3G iPad even though some people are willing to pay the premium for its GPS features. Well, guess what, your WiFi-only iPad inherits GPS positioning capabilities when you tether the tablet to an iPhone via the Personal Hotspot feature.
According to Kyle Carmitchel of TabletMonsters who discovered this by accident on a recent road trip, a tethered iPhone will pass GPS information to an iPad when an application requires it:
It is clear I am being fed GPS information from the phone, at what appears to be an interval of once a minute or so between refreshes (likely they didn’t do real time updating so as to go easy on the phone’s battery).
He was able to confirm that GPS data passing also works with the first generation iPad and posted a video to prove it, embedded below. I’m guessing this should work with the iPod touch as well. Many people could be sold on this unofficial feature, especially those avoiding WiFi iPads for their lack of precise GPS positioning while refusing to pay the premium for 3G and GPS upgrades. You’re advised to take the post with a few pinches of salt considering we couldn’t confirm authenticity of this feature nor the site’s credibility. We’re posting this for your convenience and please do tell us in comments if you were able to get GPS functionality up and running on your WiFi iPad tethered to an iPhone.
I would have done it myself, but my mom is busy playing Angry Birds on my iPad.
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