Clearwire Clear Spot 4G Apollo: New portable hotspot that can handle 8 connections, does 6 hours per charge

Clearwire, America’s WiMAX operator that supplies Sprint with their 4G network and is also facing some serious financial woes, has announced a new piece of hardware, the Clear Spot 4G Apollo. It’s a portable WiFi hotspot, meaning it takes the WiMAX signal that’s hopefully in your neck of the woods and converts it to WiFi so things like your laptop, smartphone, Kindle, whatever, can connect to the internets. Curiously enough, Clearwire doesn’t specify whether this device is capable of roaming on 3G networks. This is important since WiMAX isn’t exactly blanketing the 48 contiguous states at the moment, in fact there are huge pockets of the country that lack coverage. But hey, for $99 and no need for a 2 year contract, this thing is a steal. Plans start at $35 per month for unlimited “at home” use, $45 for unlimited “mobile” use, and $55 for unlimited “home and mobile” use. We have absolutely no idea what that means, so we feel rather bad for consumers who have to figure this stuff out on their own.

The bigger question here is do dedicated devices like these even need to be purchased now that most every Android phone on the market, not to mention every iPhone, already offer the same “hotspot” capability? You may argue that having a device like this is beneficial because if it dies, well … at least you still have your phone. That’s true, but it’s yet another piece of gear to lug around and make sure you’ve got charged up. Operators tend to charge more for tethering plans, which is a bummer, but you can easily get around that by opting to buy an unlocked device for full price and then shoving your SIM card inside. Something like the Google Nexus S is perfect for this.

What’s your experience with dedicated portable hotspots. Are they worth the money?

Update: Nope, no 3G roaming.