Hands on with the Verizon iPhone’s 3G hotspot (video)

One cool difference between the Verizon iPhone and its AT&T counterpart is the addition of mobile hotspot capabilities — which allows you to share your 3G connection with up to five other devices.

I got a chance to see the hotspot functionality in action today at Verizon’s unveiling of the phone, and it certainly looks like a feature that subscribers will enjoy lording over AT&T customers.

As you can see in the video below, turning on the hotspot involves a quick jump into your iPhone’s settings, much like turning on internet tethering on AT&T’s iPhone 4. The hotspot was enabled quickly, but unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to connect to it. Turning off the hotspot was just as quick.

Verizon wouldn’t say how much it will charge for the feature, but I suspect it wouldn’t be much different from hotspot pricing for the Droid X and other Android phones. The carrier charges $20-per-month for the Droid X’s hotspot, which comes with 2 gigabytes of data.

I also tried to load a YouTube video on the phone to stress its data capabilities. As you can see below, the YouTube video started playing quickly, and I was able to easily jump to another portion of the video and have it resume playback. I didn’t get a chance to record my iPhone (which is on AT&T, of course) loading the same video, but I can report it’s significantly slower while trying to do so both in Manhattan and my Brooklyn apartment.

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