If you pick up a Wi-Fi iPad only to then find out you need wireless on the go all the time, your options for getting it access aren’t ideal. You either activate the hotspot feature on your phone, wasting battery life, or you get an external hotspot that you have to carry around with your other devices.
The FiiV case, with its built-in hotspot and battery, helps improve both solutions. For those who prefer to just flick a switch in settings on their phone to have LTE, you can keep your iPhone topped up by plugging your Lightning cable into the battery’s USB port.
If you’d prefer a dedicated device for Wi-Fi, the case accepts SIM cards for most GSM carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile, and European networks for international travelers. FiiV is available for both iPads Air and Mini, with both case sizes offering the same battery and hotspot.
If you get the FiiV from the case’s Indiegogo page, it’s currently still available at $99. That’s a pretty big discount from the eventual $179 retail price, and you’ll be among the first to get one in May. As for the rest of the pricing tiers, I have to say that they’re pretty disappointing. Instead of offering pricing tiers that go up by say, $20 each batch, they let you buy in bundles of up to 10. Who would buy that many units of a first-generation device?