Android Tablet Wifi tethering with a rooted android phone

I just bought a Toshiba Thrive 16GB which I should get either today or tomorrow. From reading all the android forums, it seems to be quite difficult to tether that device to a rooted phone because the Thirve can't connect to a device that uses ad-hoc for wifi (has to be an infrastructure AP.)

Has anyone gotten an android table to successfully become tethered to their phone. The obvious issue is that I'm not going to pay $30 extra a month for something that should be free. I'll be playing around with this when I get the device. The phone I rooted was a free Samsung Continuum so I'm not concerned about voiding the warranty (even though I can revert the phone back to stock if that becomes an issue).

I want to be able to use the device with that phone if we ever leave the house. I would like to do USB tethering but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that with android to android devices.

I do have the android wifi tether app on the rooted phone (the beta application). My main issue is how to tether my tablet without paying the $30 bucks a month.

I would want to try to get this information here as opposed to the android forums because a lot of them are a bunch of infantile folks who should be popped in the mouth hard.

Believe me, I have searched for this information and I just need to be pointed in the right direction.

Thanks in advance.

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Comments

demonfurbie

check into bluetooth tethereing

How to Tether Motorola Xoom Tablet to Droid X via Bluetooth - YouTube

shaqazoolu

I have tried to tether my OG Droid and my Transformer multiple times with no success yet. My Droid is rooted so I can do pretty much whatever I want to it. I have managed to get file sharing over Bluetooth working between the two but I haven't gotten the data connection going just yet. I'm close though. I have been considering rooting my tablet too to maybe improve my chances, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I think when I finally upgrade my phone (hurry up with the Galaxy Nexus already, VZW), I'll probably just get the mobile hotspot on my phone and do it that way so I don't have to worry about all the other crap. Come on sweet, sweet LTE.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I know there used to be an app that made this a trivial process but it is not on the Android market any more. I think it was called Easy Tether. If you could find it from somewhere else, that might help out.

swild

I have an Samsung Galaxy 4G and so far have been able to tether it to everything: iPad, Ubuntu laptop, Win 7 laptop, Win 7 desktop, Win XP laptop. Don't have an Android tablet to try it on but I will in about a month.

demonfurbie

shaqazoolu wrote: »

I have tried to tether my OG Droid and my Transformer multiple times with no success yet. My Droid is rooted so I can do pretty much whatever I want to it. I have managed to get file sharing over Bluetooth working between the two but I haven't gotten the data connection going just yet. I'm close though. I have been considering rooting my tablet too to maybe improve my chances, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I think when I finally upgrade my phone (hurry up with the Galaxy Nexus already, VZW), I'll probably just get the mobile hotspot on my phone and do it that way so I don't have to worry about all the other crap. Come on sweet, sweet LTE.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I know there used to be an app that made this a trivial process but it is not on the Android market any more. I think it was called Easy Tether. If you could find it from somewhere else, that might help out.

check out

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pdanet.tablet&feature=more_from_developer#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiY29tLnBkYW5ldC50YWJsZXQiXQ..

shaqazoolu

demonfurbie wrote: »

check out

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pdanet.tablet&feature=more_from_developer#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiY29tLnBkYW5ldC50YWJsZXQiXQ..

I used to use PDANet to tether my phone to my laptop before I rooted my phone and before I had my tab. It worked like a champ. I didn't know there was a tab version now. Might check that out later. Good call.

erpadmin

shaqazoolu wrote: »

I have tried to tether my OG Droid and my Transformer multiple times with no success yet. My Droid is rooted so I can do pretty much whatever I want to it. I have managed to get file sharing over Bluetooth working between the two but I haven't gotten the data connection going just yet. I'm close though. I have been considering rooting my tablet too to maybe improve my chances, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I think when I finally upgrade my phone (hurry up with the Galaxy Nexus already, VZW), I'll probably just get the mobile hotspot on my phone and do it that way so I don't have to worry about all the other crap. Come on sweet, sweet LTE.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I know there used to be an app that made this a trivial process but it is not on the Android market any more. I think it was called Easy Tether. If you could find it from somewhere else, that might help out.

I have easytether on my Droid Charge (it's sweet...it is available on Amazon market, FWIW, but I got the APK from the developer), but I do believe that ET can't be used on an android to android device (yet, I hope!) ET is much better than PDANet for me because ET lets me use my phone as a L2TP VPN client to my job whenever and wherever I am (I don't have to input those settings on a strange computer, for obvious reasons.) If VPN wasn't an issue, I could have gone with either.

My main thing is to get some sort of tethering solution between the thrive and the phone. I will check into Bluetooth tethering (thanks DF) when the tablet arrives.

Shaq, please kindly let me know your progess. You really do seem like you're close. (I will no doubt do the same.)

You seem to pretty much be a lot closer to getting this working than I am at the moment. I'm hoping a solution is out there. This would be so convenient when I'm stuck in the boondocks somewhere with no free wifi in sight.

Edit: I just clicked on DF's pda for tablet link and it does look promising! Her phone is already rooted though so I'm wondering if someone wrote a solution for that already.

I'll check this out and let you know how it is. I gotta tell you though that I don't like using Bluetooth. It isn't very secure.

erpadmin

HA HA!!! I DID IT!!!! YIIIIIIIIIEEEESSSSS!!!!

Newegg got my tablet to me with the quickness. Prior to the tablet's arrival, I decided to give the Android Wifi Tether app another go. The reason was there were a lot of people on the android forums having success with that app tethering to droid tablets.

Long story short, I installed the latest beta on the Samsung Continuum (rooted and then upgraded to a Stock Froyo, then rooted again [It comes with Eclair as stock.]) I then chose the Samsung Fascinate profile and used softap. THEN...once the changes were as I wished (WPA security, non broadcast of the SSID, etc.) I then rebooted the phone (I did not do that before...I just couldn't figure out why those changes were not taking after I made them. But rebooting the phone seems to do the trick.)

Then I decided to test this against my PS3, since I know it doesn't like ad-hoc connections. The good news is that the connection worked splendidly. The bad news is that 3G connectivity sucks like no other compared to my regular wireless cable-modem connection. However, the fact that the phone was now a 3G wireless hotspot ensured that I'd be ready for my tablet.

A good couple of hours later the tablet came through. Booted it up, did the initial setup, had it pick up my SSID from my fiancee's phone, and now I'm just doing system updates (getting that new Honeycomb 3.2 on the Thrive.)

Man, I was really worried that this tablet (or any Android wifi tablet) was going to suck. I wanted this thing tethered to the phone so that when we go out, she can enjoy Internet from anywhere and not be at the mercy of open wifi. Now she doesn't have to.

I may end up rooting my Droid Charge and getting a tablet of my own. I'm so excited and happy I got this working for her. The hardest part of the whole ordeal was rooting the phone (superoneclick did not work, z4root did not work...only thing that did was some app that required running a batch file specifically for the Continuum I was rooting. When I saw that the batch file would not harm my PC or her phone, I ran it and it worked like a charm.

Well guys, there you have it. After I'm done setting everything up, I will release the Tablet to her. She's gonna do all the playing around with it. I may end up getting one myself, but I wanna see how it goes for her.

Seriously, I'm happy as punch. Thank you guys for your help and Rep to all who participated in this thread.

shaqazoolu

Ha nice. I went looking for EasyTether after I read your last post and came across another app that someone had success with using my phone and my tablet, so I gave it a shot. It's called Barnacle WiFi Tether. Works like a charm as long as you are rooted. Took literally about 20 seconds. The only thing I don't like about it is it only supports WEP. Unfortunately for me, I have cracked WEP keys before so using it really doesn't give me any peace of mind. Gonna have to see if the Pro version supports WPA2. It might be worth 2 bucks at that point.

erpadmin

Easytether only does USB tethering and even then, only for laptop/desktop to phone (at the moment). ET doesn't do wifi tethering.

Also, I'm guessing the Transformer supports ad hoc wifi connections? The Toshiba Thrive doesn't; I could only use wifi infrastructure mode (like everything else I've used in wifi...) If that's the case, Barnacle might be what you need.

Are you sure Android wifi tether wouldn't work for you, though? Did you install the beta APK? I hate Betas myself, and usually I would NEVER use them, but I gotta tell you, this piece of code did the trick for me.

SupportedHardware - android-wifi-tether - Supported Hardware - Wireless Tether for Root Users - Google Project Hosting

I might actually give this guy some money around Christmas so he can still work on this (and I can get off of Beta.) The last time I gave money to a shareware developer (willingly) was when I bought a license for HS/Link back in the BBS days. (To be fair though, this was before I had heard of WaR3Z but it was still worth it.

I think he only wanted $20 or something so I mailed him a check.....)

I've already went through a mini-walkthrough with wifey. We got to do Skype (it's a bit jittery but it'll do for video chat when I go to Atlanta.) Netflix is more/less better than PSP-video. Internet is decent. And she'll no longer use her phone for data anymore. She knows how to check the wifi tether app if there's a problem (basically restart the phone and boot the app up [doesn't auto-start or I haven't figured out how to do it yet.]) Plus, if she ever does straighterline.com, it'll help her out with school studies.

After sometime, I'll come back to this thread for a proper review of how this went with her. If it ends up being convenient, I will most likely get one myself and go through the exercise for myself.