I was using the Huawei MiFi E585 which I bought 4 years ago till the battery life decided to give up on me. The battery will go flat after about an hour of usage. On top of that I am spoilt with 4G because the 3G speed is way too slow in Singapore, due to bandwidth congestion.
I wanted to get a 4G mobile wi-fi modem last year but it was still pretty expensive, but this year it seems the prices has drop quite a bit. I bought the Huawei E5372 4G Mobile Wi-Fi Modem from a reseller (romz1983) in HardwareZone Forums for S$230. If you are interested in getting it, check out the forum thread, WTS: Great MIFI sale from $90 Huawei E589 E5776 E5331 E5220 E5151 ZTE MF60 Wifi Router. He offers other models as well.
The mobile wi-fi modem is actually from Telstra which is an Australia teleco that Huawei OEM for. It comes with 3,560 mAh battery instead of the default 1,780 mAh which gives you up to 10 hours of battery life instead 6 hours. It uses the normal SIM card instead of micro or nano SIM. If you have a SIM adapter, you can use it with it. Accordingly to romz1983, this is the first 150Mbps LTE mobile wi-fi modem that allows you to use SIM adapter. I am using micro SIM with a SIM adapter and it works fine.
One of the reason for getting a mobile wi-fi modem instead of tethering from my phone is because tethering drains your mobile phone battery very fast (though you can keep it charging using a portable battery). I hope 2014 is the year where MacBook Pros/Airs will have a built-in SIM card slot!
Specifications
- 4G: Band 900/1800/2100/2600 MHz
- 3G: UMTS/WCDMA Bands 2100/1900/900/850 Mhz
- 2G: GPRS/GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
- Speed: LTE Speed up to 150Mbps (Download) and 50Mps (Upload)
- Dimensions: 99mm x 62.2mm x 14.4mm (Width x Height x Depth)
- Weight: 140g (including battery)
- SIM Card Slot: Normal SIM (Micro SIM & Nano SIM can be used with adapter)
- microSD Card Slot: Support up to 32GB
- Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11b/g/n
- Wi-Fi Connected Devices: Up to 10 simultaneous device
- Battery: 3,560 mAh
- Battery Life: About 10 hours
Hello, I recently got the E5372 here in the Philippines with the default 1780 mAh battery. And yes, it does die rather quickly. I’ve been searching for larger capacity batteries for the device and came across your pictures. I just wanted to make sure that the 3560 mAh battery you have is for the E5372 and fits in the device. From the pictures it looks double the thickness of the original battery, lol. Thank you.
-Chris
Hi I’m from ph too. Just wanna ask if your E5273 has a weak wifi range?
mine is very weak in terms of wifi range, even weaker on 5ghz range.
James: I haven’t had to use it at range, usually its next to me on my desk or in my bag. I do notice that if I’m on a floor above/below but in an open space (ie device is upstairs, im directly below it downstairs, no ceiling between), it will disconnect. Haven’t tried 5ghz mode, sorry.
Hi I am using e5372 too, im having problem with the connection, too slow even though I’m just using facebook
I think you can get replacement batteries here…