How many of you use your phone as a modem to get to the internet on your laptop or PC? Use it exclusively/extensively/occasionally as your internet connection? Do you see yourself ditching your home internet and go exclusively with your phone as a modem one day (especially when 4G takes off)? [Fixed (sorry, I realized I wrote the sentence wrong)] Just curious as I use my phone on my work PC to circumvent the firewall that blocks certain sites (like this site). [/Fixed]
When I read this, I thought you were talking about 56k modems and was completely confused. But no, even 4G isnt at the point where it provides the comparative speed of my connection now (at least from my personal tests). But 4G is a new thing so I'm sure it will improve.
Yeah I wonder myself if 4G will be able to handle heavy downloading and multiple users on one network in the future. But I've read on that new HTC EVO that one of the features is that you can connect 8 WIFI devices to it, so it seems they are anticipating that possibility.
I do all the time if I'm in an area with slow wifi or restricted surfing. That's the cool thing aboout Windows Mobile phones and Sprint. A simple registry hack = free PAM. No downloads or apps needed.
I'll probably start doing it with my next phone when I get one this summer, I never jailbroke my iPhone so I was never able to tether.
How do you do this? I'd be interested...Just curious, but my guess would be that it would be really slow, but since it works for you, can you tell me how it performs?
I used to do this quite a bit with my blackberry if I was in an area that didn't have free wifi. I got an air card a few months ago though, so now I use it for that type of situation.
Like AstroRocket said, I hacked my WinMo phone and already have an unlimited data plan, so I can use it as much as I want (they say there's a 5GB limit, but I've never approached that limit). Depending on area, speed for mine I would say is a little slower than DSL. Actually I just tested it with speedtest.net and D/L speed was clocked at .29 Mbs , yeah that's pretty slow. But it's good enough for casual surfing, I don't use it to download movies or large files. I don't have that phone but a quick google came up with this: http://www.taranfx.com/how-to-tether-motorola-droid
I haven't done it, but I could see myself doing it if I take my laptop to a place of slow or no WiFi.
No way 4G even touches replacing home internet. Unless you casually surf, and do nothing else, home internet will be faster. I only tether when i cant get access to a wireless network. It sucks doing work on a cellular network.
i use a rooted sprint palm pre as a wifi spot (free mobile hotspot) for a couple of laptops at home when comcast goes down for whatever reason. same speed as a pc/express card (reasonable speed). also use it in other places where speeds suck.
