Palm Pre data tethering is a go, Sprint be damned
By Nilay Patel 
posted June 15th 2009 2:46PM
posted June 15th 2009 2:46PM
posted June 15th 2009 2:46PM
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LOL, ain't nothing sacred on the intratubes.
I think that this is going to be a major class action lawsuit. It's crap when you pay for unlimited data plans and have a phone with the capability to connect via usb or bluetooth and the phone company chooses to disable this function. Thus, turning your smartphone into a dumbphone for profit. Forcing you to pay double for data services just so that you may connect to your laptop is robbery.
Data Plan $39.00 / month
Tethering Data Plan $79.00 / month
damn, that is robbery
do you at least get free data transfer when you pay for tethering or do you have to pay $120 per month to have both?
i get tethering for free because my carrier doesn't consider it a function different from data transfer (because it's not)
Jesus. For that price, I'd just buy an air card.
What I don't get is why Sprint is lax on tethering for some phones, and others not. Example one of the big selling points for our company moving to Sprint from Verizon was Sprint allowed blackberries to tether for free, whereas Verizon wanted $15 per line per month for blackberry tethering.
To the people assuming Sprint is just going to "shut down" accounts for tethering, I don't think they're going to turn out to be quite the nazi's that Verizon are about unlocking/uncrippling features. I could be wrong but that's not the vibe I get.
A SOCKS proxy != tethering. It won't do you a damn bit of good with many applications. What we want is layer 2 tethering, i.e. wired or Bluetooth DUN (dial-up-networking). That is guaranteed to work with anything you throw at it, no special configuration required.
I love my Pre... and this gives me even more reason to love it!
My girlfriend is a programmer and has been waiting on this phone for a while now. Too bad they are locked in with Sprint (we have verizon). She has a ton of old Palm programs and still carries around a palm from 4 or 5 years ago (I dont think they make it anymore). She doesnt want the Centrino because according to her it has half the processing speed. I cannot wait for this to drop for other carriers so I can get this for her. She would love to dig into this phone.
Centro fail
It does seem like a horrible choice on palms part, they base of costumers would be much larger if they went with someone like att or Verizon. I'm sure att and have loved having 2 high profile phones, seems like apple may have held the iphone contract over their heads to stop them from buying the pre one.
Sprint has historically been Palm's launch partner dating back to the Handspring Treo 300 and Treo 600. They're willing to take the chance on these leading-edge devices whereas VZW is extremely gun-shy about any unproven devices. The BB Storm is the exception, but they were desperate for an iPhone competitor (note I did not say "killer").
Sprint has much better data plans than anyone else in the business. Combine that with generous 25% employer discounts (check with your employer) or even a 10% discount for credit union members (mutually exclusive w/ emp discount), and it works out to much less $$ than AT&T or VZW.
Why the hell did Sprint disable tethering on the Pre? I thought it was a problem with the Pre that was the limitation.
Sprint allows tethering on a wide variety of phones, so why not this one?
Sprint Allows tethering if you pay for the service. You get the message if you aren't paying the additional fee. The workarounds are for tethering without having you account enabled for it.
On a side note anyone notice how much data the Pre uses. Idk how they are going to tell. I don't surf any more than my old HTC touch which I would use under 10 mb a month. On my account usage page I have used over 400Mb since the launch day. I also would like to note I use wifi at work and home where I use it the most. The OTA update to 1.0.2 was done over wifi so that 400mb doesn't include that 70mb download.
Android FTW. Using PDANet (http://www.junefabrics.com/android/index.php) it couldn't be easier:
1. Install PDANet on laptop
2. Connect USB cable to G1
3. Surf, check email, etc etc
Works great. No root needed.
I will admit though, I was at the local Sprint store this weekend playing around with their demo Pre. It's a pretty slick phone / webOS.
Sprint - your company is dying. The Pre is a good but possibly final chance to save yourself. Why piss off customers!?
Suggestion: avoid torrent seeding.
of course they allow it. they can watch all they want. how many people are actually gonna tether their laptop to their phone. you bought the smartphone so you don't have to carry a laptop. i have been able to tether my blackberry to my laptop for a while. it isn't that great. enjoy tethering, i guess.
nilay, any of you guys plan on trying it out and displaying a video of your own?
free?
Not bad
what it going on.wait for gsm pre.
The dev group better get something going where they can block these auto-updates from Palm before they rain on the tethering parade.
i have never met anyone that tethers their smartphone to their computer. for dorks that need to have everything even though they use it once in a while then fine. get excited. complain because you don't have it. i have never met anyone that is that desperate to get their computer hooked up to the internet that they have to tether their phone to their laptop. once or twice a year it would be necessary, maybe, but not really. who cares. your smartphone should be capable enough to do the things you need to do with the network you are on. my phone is in my pocket, my laptop is in my office or hotel room. if you need tethering then you are among the few that will actually use it. get excited because sprint has allowed this for a while. unlike the other service providers.
I tether my kaiser at least once a week.
I think Sprint would have a hard time defending in court their ability to tell you what you can do with your data. What if I download an image on my phone and then bluetooth it to my computer? Is that okay? Now what if I write a program that lets me do that in an automated fashion? That's tethering...
I might see Sprint's point if their data plan was unlimited, but it's actually only 5 gigs ("unlimited" is latin for "5 gigabytes" I think). So you pay for five gigs - who cares how you use it. Whether it's your phone or your computer, Sprint has budgeted 5gb to your account. Their excuse that computer's use too much data is bunk.
Hey Jake you re tard, people do it all the time. Maybe you've never been to an airport or something. People who don't want to pay $10 for an hour of Wi-Fi tether and they do it via bluetooth with the phone still in their pocket. So you can't really observe the process.
It's much better than carrying a laptop card and having that crap stick out the side of your laptop.
While its quite ok that you told off jake, do try not to epically fail in the reply system yourself when calling someone else a "re tard".
^^^ No moron, the filter filters out the whole post if I don't space out the word.
ROFL. Those are my EXACT feelings towards AT&T.
@sr
call me a re tard all you want. if you use that method all the time then good for you. i agree with everything you said. except the re tard part. if you need tethering then get a phone and a service that allows it. that would be sprint service with a number of different phones they offer. my palm 700p did it, my blackberry curve did it. are you calling me a re tard because you want the palm pre with that feature or just because you aren't looking at me directly. say what you want, but a re tard i am not.
if you are complaining about the $10 an hour for wifi in the airport then get a tethering plan. it's cheaper. or switch to sprint and use your phone. re tard.
No moron, because you said this:
"i have never met anyone that tethers their smartphone to their computer."
Only a certifiable moron would say something like that. It is done commonly and I've done it with many unlocked phones before. In fact every Nokia and Motorola in the last 9 years have supported it in case you didn't know. Before that phones supported CSD (go look it up), that was in the late 90s. So really this all may be new to you, but it isn't to me.
Tethering should be a 100% allowable activity. What kind of rudeness motivates a carrier to do this.
#1 rule for myself is if the phone or account wont support it, then i wont buy it.
If i'm paying for the phone and the data then what right does a carrier have to dictate how i use that data.
Its rediculous to have 2 modems for the same purpose. What about the land fill ATT... What say you? Hm? fairly un-environmental, maybe we should set the environmental lobby dogs on you? Any one got Al G's number?
I thought you said 'Ali G'. That would be funny...
"Why is it that everything you fund is so crap?"
Trust me I have that for AT&T also.
Sprint Executives are a bunch of greedy pigs. Unlimited data ...... means Unlimited data. The nerve of those bastards to say that unlimited data is now limited. We should start a class action lawsuit for false advertising .and for punitive damages. As a matter of fact. I am going to start one. Ill be calling my lawyer in the morning. Who is going to join me?
Ehh no thanks. Maybe another time.
OK. My lawyer is taking the case. Ill be putting up a website with more information on how to join us. Feel free to email me at gf44t5fgfd4e32@gmail.com for more information.. I think it time we put an end to this charade.
Since you have network connectivity over the USB connection (using what i assume is the cdc_ether driver that most phones use for ethernet over usb) Its trivial to get full layer 2 connectivity, just enable ip forwarding on the pre with (as root): echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward, and then add a SNAT/MASQUERADE rule in the Pre's iptables (if it doesnt already have iptables, you can use the Debian arm binary) and the appropriate rule in the forward rule to allow traffic from your bluetooth/wifi/usb interface to go out on its hsdpa interface (probably ppp0 or something). Then just set a static ip on each end (pre and host computer, and you're done.
Isn't Linux great?
My mistake, i meant evdo not hsdpa, forgot you use that over there. Also, what i described is actually layer 3; routing between a private network on usb/wifi/bluetooth to its public connection using NAT to make the other machine seem to have the same IP as the Pre. Layer 2 would be if you somehow bridged the evdo and the private interface, which I don't believe can be done. (There is such as thing as PPP bridging, called BCP, but it is not implemented in the current Linux kernel)
You can't compare one phone with another, based solely on your shit US networks. I've got unlimited data and tethering on my Blackberry - same as I had on WinMo before that. Your telecoms is slow, outdated and overpriced... you can't blame Apple or Palm for that.
I've had PDANet on 3 different palm phones on Sprint..
Why wouldn't I be able t 'upgrade' to the PRE?
Could someone break the tethering process down into plain english for a tech simpleton?