Mobile internet on your cell phone is great, but many times its just no substitute for a real internet connection and a laptop. Sprint has attempted to address this need of an available anywhere internet connection with the introduction of the Sprint MiFi 2200 Hotspot.

The Sprint MiFi Hotspot is actually a repackaging, or rather a rebranding, of the Novatel MiFi 2200 hotspot. The device is capable of allowing up to five WiFi devices to connect to Sprint’s EVDO cellular data network. In addition to an included DHCP server, and integrated GPS, the unit also will allow VPN pass-through.

The Sprint MiFi 2200 Hotspot has a brushed aluminum finish and the dimensions of the compact unit are 3.50″x 2.32″ x 0.35″ and it weighs about 2 oz. On the front of the hotspot is a mini USB connector for charging, and a green status light. The top of the hotspot has an on-off connector. The battery included with the unit is tiny – about the size of a memory card.

Mostly coverage varies with the foot print of the sprint network, but is generally very good. I would recommend that you verify the coverage in your area, if you know that you will use the unit regularly in your home area, as opposed to traveling with the device.

Configuration of the unit is straight forward though the normal web accessible configuration page. The page offers GPS, WAN, Power, TCP/IP, and other standard settings, and was exceeding simple to set up.

Recently I was able to use the unit in a vehicle with some friends and didn’t have any issues with each of us being able to connect to the device. The only thing which I noticed which I would class as somewhat of an issue is that the unit tends to run a little on the hot side. Battery life is ok – but I would recommend running it tethered to a power source when ever possible. It seemed to me that heavy WiFi use tended to drain the battery, say from streaming music, vs just hunt and peck web surfing of static websites.

Overall this is a great concept and I am sure that we will see more devices of this type in the future. There are several good applications of this technology, say for running credit card transactions at a fair, or impromptu web surfing sessions in a park, to the great convenience of having a wifi internet connection on long car trips. This device definitely represents the unwired internet of the future as more and more data devices become wireless. The real innovation that this device offers is the ability to share an EVDO data connection which is a major improvement over past EVDO offerings from the cellular providers.