

Google To Add Tethering, Wifi Hotspot To Android 2.2 Froyo - whyleym
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/13/exclusive-google-to-add-tethering-wifi-hotspot-to-android-2-2-froyo/

======
bwr
If this is true, it will remove the only reason I would deviate from the
standard android build.

~~~
michaelcampbell
What the carriers allow to make it to their phones is not necessarily the
standard android build, though. (Or is that what you meant?)

I'm speaking from a US perspective here; I understand in other parts of the
world things are different.

~~~
bwr
I'm also in the US and I can see carriers removing this feature. I guess when
I say standard android build I mean before the carriers mess with it. I feel
pretty safe with the nexus one.

------
buster
JIT, Flash, Wifi Hotspot, hooray for the update \o/

Android is really moving fast, i think.

~~~
notauser
So is the hardware. I got hod of a G1 side by side with a Nexus One the other
week and couldn't believe they were only a year and a bit apart.

------
PanMan
Google seems to go all out to promote android, others be dammed: First with
their free satnav (making TomTom lose 20% of it's value), now with tethering.
While I love tethering, I wonder what carriers will think of it. I can imagine
this backfiring, with carriers less likely to push tethering-supported devices
that eat into their (more profitable) laptop packages.

~~~
vetinari
I still don't understand, what is the problem with tethering.

Where I live, the operators don't care about it. Even the lowest-end phones
support it. As far as I remember, I never owned a phone that didn't support it
(the oldest as a modem on serial port and CSD/GPRS speeds).

So what is so special on some smartphones, that it causes problems? As far as
I remember, 3G phones (both feature and smart) always supported tethering,
whether over USB (CDC ACM, CDC ECM, RNDIS) or Bluetooth (DUN or PAN).

~~~
Mc_Big_G
My guess is that an unlimited plan on your phone doesn't actually pull a lot
of data if you just use it as a phone. It's a different story after you tether
it to your laptop and start downloading entire movies or throwing a 10GB
directory into dropbox. Maybe I'm missing something, but that's my guess.

~~~
dagw
Most unlimited data plans I've seen have some sort of throttling clause,
basically stating that if you use more than X GB of bandwidth in a month they
reserve the right throttle you to Y Kb/s for the remainder of that month.

~~~
eli
I think actually that's just T-Mobile. They definitely seem to be the most
progressive of the US carriers.

Most carriers either cut off your data entirely for the rest of the month,
threaten to terminate your contract, or charge you an outrageous overage fee.

------
Sidnicious
I'm an iPhone user seriously considering a switch to Android due to the big
"we must control your device" stick Apple has up its collective ass.

I've read posts saying that some Android phones can't be upgraded to newer
OSs, and that people are waiting for certain features to show up on their
device's special build. How true is that, and how practical is it to ignore
and install fresh new releases from the Android team? Does doing that void any
warranties? What about installing a customized build? Most critically, is any
kind of jailbreaking or exploitation of bugs needed to get builds not released
by the manufacturer onto the device?

~~~
starkfist
_Most critically, is any kind of jailbreaking or exploitation of bugs needed
to get builds not released by the manufacturer onto the device?_

Yes. What's usually left out of the discussion about Android vs. iPhone's
"openness" is that you have to root and unlock your Android phone to install
any non-vendor approved operating system mods, just like the iPhone. Here's a
good starting point if you want to do this:
[http://androidandme.com/2010/01/hacks/video-how-to-unlock-
an...](http://androidandme.com/2010/01/hacks/video-how-to-unlock-and-root-a-
nexus-one/)

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
It depends on the device and the requirements of the devices' carriers. Most
carriers specify that devices has bootloaders that will only allow flashing
system images signed by the carrier; these devices require some manner of
exploit to gain root access and overwrite the system's bootloader. There are
also devices capable of running Android that have no restrictions on the
bootloader at all, such as the Neo Freerunner; almost as "open" is the Nexus
One, which has a bootloader with a user-accessible method to "unlock" the
phone and flash a new system image at the cost of voiding your warranty.

------
metabrew
This is great news, and rather unexpected. I'm running the cyanogen firmware
on my nexus one specifically for the wifi hotspot app. (the multicolored
trackball is just a bonus).

I'll probably stick to the default firmware once 2.2 comes out.

The only other thing that cyanogen adds that I'd miss, is a 1-100 indicator on
the battery charge icon in the notification area.

------
mcobrien
So Android and the Pre both have wifi hotspots, but iPhone doesn't. I had
hoped they'd add this for OS 4.0, but of course that might hurt sales of the
iPad 3G (and all the free marketing it generates from mobile networks).

------
pacemkr
I have a Palm Pixi Plus on Verizon and can turn it into a wifi router by
launching a built in app. It works absolutely flawlessly.

Verizon has recently made this feature free for webOS devices (ie. Pre/Pixi
Plus).

------
not_an_alien
No way this is gonna make its way to T-Mobile. :(

Thankfully there's Pdanet and others, but I surely would like it as a cleaner,
built-in feature.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
If you have a Nexus One, it most certainly will. Unlike the G1 or MT3G phones,
T-Mobile doesn't have anything to do with the image on a N1, mainly because
you bought it directly from Google instead of T-Mobile. I expect my N1 to be
one of the devices to have the official 2.2 update from Google.

------
parbo
Why wasn't it included to begin with? My Nokia N78 has had tethering and Wifi
hotspot (with Joikuspot) since day one (got it two years ago).

------
wowfat
Great news for android users. bad news for PDANET for android. Now users can
access internet without paying for an app.

------
eli
Tethering is inevitable... but so is the end of all-you-can-eat mobile data
plans.

~~~
zaphar
I somehow doubt the end of all-you-can-eat mobile data plans is inevitable. I
think mobile plans will go the same way cable and dsl plans in the home have
gone. All you can eat with ever increasing bandwidth.

Do you have some information I'm unaware of that would change that trend?

~~~
eli
The more you use mobile data, the more it costs your carrier. This becomes a
big issue when you allow tethering and have some customers using massively
more data than others, but paying the same price. Sure, I guess we can
continue to have low-usage customers subsidizing the high-usage customers, but
I don't think that will last.

I don't think this is a bad thing. If I use less data than average, I should
be able to pay less than someone else.

(And as an aside, I don't recommend testing the theory that your home
DSL/Cable connection is truly unlimited.)

~~~
zaphar
The more I use my Cable internet at home the more it costs Comcast. That
doesn't stop them from continuously upping the bandwidth and giving me
"effectively" unlimited useage. You haven't demonstrated this is any different
than the story for mobile carriers.

------
oomkiller
WiFi tethering already works great for me using the app that requires root.

