iPad MiFi Conversion for Verizon

There is one major flaw with the iPad that’s been bothering me about it since day one: AT&T. As revolutionary and awesome as it is, the iPad deserves–and needs–a good internet connection, hence the reason Sprint and Verizon have been pushing the use of MiFi with the iPad.

Firstly, yes, my warranty is long gone. Secondly I’ve lost GPS. But, what did I gain? Only a killer, reliable and speedy network. Not to mention my iPad is now a WiFi Hotspot!

Me holding up the now finished Verizon iPad

To begin, here are the results using the Speedtest.net app. The first picture is on the iPad.

Verizon's MiFi now internal on the iPad

Next we jump over to my iPhone, which is using the AT&T network, and you can see that there are four bars available. Both these speeds are consistent for the AT&T 3G usage I’ve experienced in my area.

ATT 3g Speed

Now over to my iPiFi network. As you can see I’m back up to non dial-up speeds in seconds!

iPIFI on iPhone

Now comes the fun part: how it’s done. First, let’s take a look inside the iPad at the AT&T 3G card. You’ll see it has two connections for the 3G antenna, one on the screen (not shown) and one at the top of the iPad (hence the black plastic bar on the 3G model). This is the very reason I didn’t buy a WiFi iPad, but opted to pay extra for the 3G components. I did this only to remove what I paid the extra cash for!

ATT card in place

Here is a side by side comparison of the iPad AT&T card and the internals of the Verizon MiFi.

Verizon vs ATT

You can see the MiFi internals are rather a small piece of the whole MiFi experience.

Inside the Verizon MiFi

Next I did a quick test of the power, and the nice thing is, the iPad’s battery is 3.7 volts just as the MiFi battery. So, all that was necessary to power it on, was a bit of juice.

The Power Test

Interestingly, what I didn’t realize, is that the MiFi needs more that just positive and negative power, it needs two other connectors in the middle of the battery to run. And not just any batter, but he MiFi battery. After much trial and error I finally figured out this conundrum.

What was happening was that the WiFi was turning on with just the positive and negative power leads, but the EVDO half of the MiFi was refusing to power on. I tried connecting the two additional wires to the iPad battery, but unfortunately, had no luck.

Solder the Card

Finally it dawned on me: I could simply use the circuit from the MiFi battery and power it with the iPad battery! Two leads in, four leads out and I was back in business!

Soldered to the logic board with the battery board

After that was finished, I was then able to seat the logicboard back in it’s proper place.

Wires from the logicboard

Next came the fun part. The MiFi turns itself off after 30 minutes of inactivity by default. The only way to turn it back on, I discovered, was with the power button. My next step was to remove the power button so I could get to all those leads.

The power button removed

And here’s the reason I bought the 3G ipad: I was able to acquire a switch for $2 at Radio Shack, that with a little filing down, fit absolutely perfectly into the slot formerly occupied by the SIM card!

Close up of the switch

After a little super glue, soldering and wiring, I had a fully functional power switch which is easily toggled with the use of a finger nail.

Close up from the switch

Now that I had everything in place, it was time to work on signal strength. While no antenna was needed for the MiFi to transmit to the iPad, I was completely unable to have any other devices connect to the iPad hotspot without one.

I found I was grateful to Steve Jobs for including two antennae as standard for the wireless card. I simply borrowed one of them and was able to connect it effortlessly to the existing connector on the MiFi. Since the MiFi only has one antenna connection, it was a perfect fit for the signal strength. However, I still have the potential of losing some signal strength when connecting the iPad to other WiFi networks. This hasn’t been an issue for me yet at the two places I most use the iPad, my home and office.

Here is the MIFI connected to the bottom antenna in the ipad

If you remember, the AT&T card is located at the top. Unfortunately, the MiFi is too long and won’t fit in the place of the AT&T card.

MiFi in place of AT&T

This next part will get those of you who are already shaking your heads REALLY worked up. In order to fit the MiFi into the body of the iPad, I had to remove one-half of the speaker assembly. Here’s the thing, the speaker assembly consists of two speakers and a resonating chamber that runs the full width of the iPad. This allows the iPad to have remarkable sound quality and excellent bass. By trimming the resonating chamber down I was able to fit the MiFi assembly into the iPad with minimal loss to sound quality. The richness of the bass has definitely been affected, but the sound quality is still excellent.

A shot of everything in place with the exception of the speakers

In the above photo you’ll see a long black wire running all the way to the top of the iPad. I had an old Mac Pro that had been decommissioned, having been dropped during shipping. I was able to pull the WiFi antenna out of it and use the ample cable from the 3g connection for the fit. I simply de-soldered the gray wire, recently used to run the AT&T card, and soldered the replacement wire to the antenna at the top of the iPad. As can be seen, the antenna provides excellent signal quality for the EVDO connection.

Near the top one can see excellent bars and signal strength. Signal strength as reported on the diagnostics is excellent as well.

The only big “oops” I had with this project I discovered after everything was all buttoned up again. I discovered that the LED on the MiFi was annoyingly bright and shone through the back of the iPad’s screen.

See the green dot at the bottom of the screen?

There's the culprit

This issue was nothing a pair of needle nose pliers couldn’t handle though, and I was soon back in business.

All in all, it was a pretty crazy idea–and an even crazier execution. But, the bottom line is that IT WORKS and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the results.

Besides, if it could be done here, It could be done anywhere!

Now for my next project: Verizon in an iPhone.

On second thought, I’ll leave that one to Steve!