How to Tether Your Android Phone
Posted in: Android, cellphones, Today's Chili, top, video
There are three ways to tether your Android handset and get sweet internet love even where there’s no Wi-Fi in sight: the risky-but-free rooting method, the still-geeky-but-not-as-bad free route, and the $30 easy way. Here are the pros and cons of each.
Method 1: Tether Android with Apps that Need Root (Free, heavy configuration)
The Android Wi-Fi Tether application turns your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot—essentially a MiFi—in one tap. The catch? You have to gain root access to your phone, a multi-step process that uses an unofficial Android add-on which can brick your phone if applied incorrectly. Rooting Android is doable for geeks and hackers with experience soft-modding hardware, but it’s not something most users could (or should!) do.
If you’re up for getting root access in Android, the Android and Me blog runs down how to do it. It’s a multi-step process that involves unlocking your phone’s bootloader, flashing a recovery image, and flashing an add-on to the default Nexus One firmware. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely doable if you’ve ever upgraded your router’s firmware or hacked your Xbox. Here’s a video of the process from Android and Me:
The pros of this method: it’s free and it makes your phone act as a Wi-Fi hotspot that any computer can connect to without extra software or messing with your computer’s setting. The cons: you can seriously screw up your phone if something goes wrong, and you may be sacrificing over-the-air automatic Android updates in the future. (If OTA updates cease, you can always flash your recovery image—but this just means your rooted phone requires maintenance a non-rooted phone does not.)
Method 2: Tether Android with Proxoid (Free, no root required, some configuration)
If you don’t want to gain root but know enough to get around the command line and use proxy servers, the Proxoid Android app can tether your phone for free. Proxoid turns your Android device into a proxy server that your computer uses to make internet requests. Proxoid is free in the Android market, but to get it working you have to install the Android SDK or device drivers onto your computer, tweak some of the settings, and then configure your browser to use a proxy server whenever you want to tether. Here are the installation instructions.
To connect to the internet via Proxoid, on the phone you tap a button to start the proxy server. On your Mac you enter a command in the Terminal and on Windows you run a batch file to start the tunnel, then you set your web browser to use that proxy.
The pros of this method are that it’s free and you don’t need to gain root, so it’s less risky. The cons are that you’ve got to install the Android SDK (something really only developers should have to do), and set your browser to use the proxy server each time you want to tether.
Note: Proxoid is the only method I haven’t tested myself on the Nexus One. Proxoid’s documentation is a bit rough—the Mac installation instructions are second-hand, as the author doesn’t own a Mac—and there isn’t a Nexus One-specific listing. Let me know if you’re successfully using Proxoid on your N1 and what OS you’re using.
Method 3: Tether Android with PDAnet ($30, no root required, minimal configuration)
Finally, the PDAnet Android application lets you tether Android using an app on the phone plus simple software you install on your computer.
PDAnet costs $30 if you want to access https ports (which the free version blocks). To connect to the internet via the phone, you tap a button to start PDAnet on the phone, and click “Connect” in the PDAnet on your computer.
The pros of PDAnet are that it’s risk-free, easy to use, and requires minimal setup. (You do have to enable USB debugging on your phone, which is the geekiest step it involves, but that’s just a checkbox in your phone’s settings.) The cons of PDAnet is that it requires the PDAnet software on your computer and that it costs $30.
What I’m Doing
Either I’m getting old and worn-out, or Jarvis is getting to me, because right now I’m with Chris: rooting Android isn’t a process I want to go through again or have to maintain. In that spirit of laziness, I also don’t want to have to mess with proxy servers or the command line when I tether; I want to click “Connect” and get online. So, I went with PDAnet, which was the simplest but not free option of the bunch.
How are you tethering your Android device?
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Windows only 
Happy holidays, gear heads! In case you missed them, here are some helpful guides to get you and your new gift gadgets off to the right start.
The moment you unpackage a new smartphone is a magical one. Don’t let the moment right after that, when you realize that it’s practically useless out of the box, cancel that out. Here’s everything you need to know:
A Case: They look goofy, Jason hates them, and they screw with your device’s carefully designed curves. But here’s the thing: smartphones are fragile. They aren’t like dumbphones, and a single fall—especially with devices with a glass screen—can poop all over your new smartphone party. Until you’re trained, play it safe. Wrap your unit. Case brand isn’t important, so just take your pick from your local Best Buy or wherever. Just make sure your device’s corners are covered, because it’s edge impacts that break the most glass. Just remember, you’re stuck in a multi-thousand dollar contract with this device, which itself would costs hundreds of dollars to replace. It’s actually kind of terrifying! Pretend it’s a baby, if that helps.
Headphones: Your smartphone is now your primary media player, too, so you’re going to need to ditch the headphones or headset it came with. Yes, they all suck; no, your phone’s aren’t the one exception. If you don’t care about a microphone, treat yourself to a decent pair of 
Storage: Phones either come with internal storage, like the Pre or the iPhone, or taunt you with “expandable” storage, which pretty much means they’ve got an empty microSD slot. If your phone comes with less than 2GB of space and has said slot, you need to fill it. Buying a microSD card is a little different than buying a regular SD card, because speed doesn’t really matter, and nothing you’re using your phone demands particularly high transfer speeds. This is a place to store your music, photos and videos—that’s it. Buy these 
Cables: Pick up a spare charging cable for your phone. For most smartphones this is a simple mini/microUSB cable, while for iPhones it’s an iPod dock connector. Why worry about the spare? Think of it this way: if you lose your only iPod cable, you can’t listen to music until you buy another one. If you lose your only iPhone cable, you’re out of touch with the rest of the world in a matter of hours.
A dock: Again, people have a tendency to confuse their PMPs with their phones, which may look and act similar, but are used in a completely different way. Unless you want to dock your smartphone near your bed to use as an alarm, it’s going to be charging—and syncing—with your computer whenever it’s not in your pocket. An impulse-purchased dock will, in all likelihood, live a lonely life. Don’t let this sad thing happen!
A branded navigation mount: These are almost always overpriced, and all they really do is hold your phone in your line of sight. Just buy a 
Bluetooth anything: Bluetooth headsets can make anyone look like a dweebish soccer dad, and while they might make chatting on the phone while driving more legal, they don’t really make it much safer. Just hold your phone like a normal human, put it on speakerphone, or take the call later. You should avoid 
Contacts: Somehow, in over two decades of cellphone development, we haven’t settled on a simple way to transfer contacts from one phone to another. Here’s how you should proceed through this somehow-still-painful process:
Email: Email, you’ll find, is one of the best things about owning a smartphone. Setting up your email varies from smartphone to smartphone (
Calendars: If you keep a Google Calendar, having it sync with your smartphone is a revelation. Android phones will automatically sync with your default Google account’s calendars, as will the Pre, while the iPhone will need to be configured with 
Media and Syncing: Most smartphones rely on some kind of desktop software to transfer personal info, music, video and photos to and from the handset. For the iPhone, this basically means downloading iTunes—which you have to do anyway. For BlackBerry, this means downloading 
Converting Video: You can’t just copy your torrented videos or home movies over to your smartphone; you need to downsample those videos, stat. Just download 
iPhone: First stop, Gizmodo’s 
Android: It’s got the second best app selection, which is to say there’s some really great stuff out there. Our 
BlackBerry: We cover the 
Palm: We’ve just pulled one of our patented “Essential” roundups fresh out of the oven, so 
Windows Mobile: App development for WinMo isn’t exactly picking up nowadays but there’s a tremendous backlog of useful reviews and materials at 
How to keep you smartphone clean: These little machines are fantastic at collecting fingerprints, dust and grime. 
4. Note your computer’s name on the local network. It’s sitting on top of the main file sharing setting page. And, if you’ve got AFP turned off, you’ll get this dialog, noting the IP address Windows users can access your stuff.
Okay, if you’ve done everything correctly, and the gods are pleased, what you should see on your Mac in your Finder Sidebar under the Shared tab is your Windows computer. (Make sure Shared is enabled in your Finder sidebar preferences, or you won’t see it.) Then, you should be able to just click on it, enter your user account and password, and voila, you can get right at everything just like you hoped.
On a Mac, it’s pretty simple. Go to Finder, tap command+k and punch in:
It’ll ask you what volume to mount (what folder you want stuck on your Finder Sidebar under shared, essentially), and a login, and then you’re good to go. If prefer the cmd+k approach, you can add computers you tap a lot as a favorite, so you don’t have to type it in every time.
