At Mobile World Congress, Huawei has announced a nifty little gadget to make connecting to the internet on the go a little bit easier. Called the CarFi, the unit is designed to sit in your cars cigarette lighter and will provide Cat4 LTE connectivity through wifi for up to 10 users.
The unit is a more refined idea of simply placing a 3G/4G hotspot into your car and hiding it away with no extra wires hanging around leading to such a unit.
With an always on unit, the possibility of over-heating is always going to be a potential problem. Huawei has gotten around this by not including a battery, and the CarFi is a little bit smart with the unit turning itself off if no WiFi connections are detected. You can still charge devices through the CarFi – there’s a USB port in it – as long as the car is on, and to re-initiate LTE connections, you simply turn the device on.
There’s also controls through ‘Huawei Hilink’, an app you can install on your Android or iOS device to control the CarFi.
The availability of CarFi is somewhat limited with Huawei only currently making the unit available in the UK and Western Europe. There’s currently no announcements made for Australia, but with shared data plans beginning to emerge, a permanant hotspot in your car could be a great idea.
I’d buy one. It would suit me nicely.