This information appears when you first power on the device, but the screen goes dark after a few moments, presumably to conserve battery life. While using the 4G Mobile Hotspot, however, you can bring up the status info by pressing the on-off button on the side of the unit. A small removable plastic doorway on the opposite edge conceals a connector for an optional external antenna, which can improve reception.

On the same edge, but on the other side of the MicroSD card slot, is a button for setting up security using WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup)--the Wi-Fi Alliance-backed setup protocol--if the device you're connecting to the hotspot also supports it.

You connect your devices to the ZTE hotspot and choose the security settings manually, as you would with any other Wi-Fi network that you were joining for the first time. The default network ID and encryption key are written in the battery compartment (it's a good idea to write them down so you don't have take the back panel off more than once), but you can change them in the browser-based settings pages.

You can access the settings either by installing an application while connected in USB mode (the app is in the hotspot's internal memory), or while connected wirelessly, by typing http://mobile.hotspot in the address field of your browser. The settings are fairly typical of a Wi-Fi router, aside from the above-mentioned text-messaging feature. However I doubt that text messaging support will be a big draw because you have to launch a browser to use it, and most people are likely to prefer to use their normal cell phone for this service.