Following Ralink's card innovation, a number of other Wi-Fi vendors, including Edimax, later released SoftAP software for their devices.
Windows gained the ability to natively create software access points with the release of Windows 7 through a virtual Wi-Fi adapter, allowing a network card to function both as a station and access point.
[3] SoftAP is a common method of configuring Wi-Fi products without a display or input device, such as a Wi-Fi enabled appliance, home security camera, smart home product or any other IoT device.
Second, if the user enters the passkey incorrectly, or if the phone gets disconnected from the SoftAP network for any reason, it is difficult for the app and device to smoothly recover, so the user is often left having to factory reset the device and start over.
Because of these complexities, many companies making Wi-Fi connected products are now adding BLE, ZipKey, data-over-sound,[4] or another technology to facilitate a better out-of-box experience for users.