Steves71’s Blog

JoikuSpot is an application that can be run on any S60 WIFI enabled smartphone to turn it into a mobile hotspot. It works be using your phones packet data connection and allows other devices to connect to the phone via WLAN to get on-line. It’s been around for a few months but until now there was no way to create a secure connection, it was completely open. This meant that if you were in a coffee shop using it with your laptop there could also be another dozen people connected to your phone and there was nothing you could do about it.

Yesterday a new version was released, version 1.2 and it now has WEP encryption as one of the options. The program is still in beta, when you first run it you are asked if you want to activate it for 90 days trial or enter a registration code. According to the JoikuSpot website this is just to ensure the beta will expire at some point, another release will be out within that 90 day period. At the moment it only supports http/https protocols so no pop/imap email or ftp, these are planned though for a future release.

I’ve had it working with my laptop, eeepc, n800 and iPod Touch. All of the others except the Touch I could connect to my phone via Bluetooth, but as the Touch doesn’t have Bluetooth it now meant that I have one more internet enabled device that is truly portable and can get on-line from anywhere.

Some networks, 3UK for example, allow you to use the internet, email etc on the phone when you drop back into 2.5g coverage on their partner network, but don’t allow the use of external devices that use the phone as a modem on anything less than 3g. Occasionally I have found it will work, but most of the time a connection can be made but no data is transferred, web browsers time out etc. With JoikuSpot because it initiates the connection directly on the phone rather than the phone being treated as an external modem as far as you service provider is concerned you are just using the handset and it allows all data to low freely, if slowly.

It’s a great little freeware program that’s handy to keep on your phone. I hope it remains freeware once it’s out of beta, but for a small fee it will be well worth the asking price.