Share that Great Thing – 3G

Oh! You have got an iPad without the 3G option thinking; don’t know when 3G will be a reality in India? If you have done that, you have done exactly what I also have done around 6 months back. But now, when I see so many operators promising 3G in next couple of months, I feel bad about it. But hey! I do have an Android phone with 3G support. So what’s to worry about? Let’s use the phone as the 3G router to my iPad. And not just the iPad but with every other device I use and supports Wifi. For instance my Laptops, My old phones which have wifi but not 3G. Now they can all be connected to a Wifi PAN (of course secured) with access to the 3G speed.

Oh! You don’t want to spend money on a new Andorid phone with 3G. Well! I haven’t got any money from Micromax to say this. But they have a phone which is sub 10K, is Android and has 3G. It’s called A60. You might like to give that a shot. But remember, I haven’t done this hands-on on that phone. I own a HDC Wildfire (with 2.1 Android of course, coz HTC didn’t bother to give us Indian the benefits of the 2.2). And the entire hands-on on sharing (a.k.a Tethering the 3G) over Wi-Fi throw Android is done on that. So, not sure the exact steps will work on A60 or any other Android phone or not. But, technically it should.

Ok, enough of Gyan! Let’s get on to the hands on now.

Applications Required.

From Market Place:

1. SuperUser — Free
   

This app gives the Super User access to the Android Phone. But don’t confuse it with rooting an Android Device. Rooting means hacking the device so that it can run commands with Super User privilege

Not From Market Place

1. VISIONary Plus – Free
   

   http://download538.mediafire.com/iffeaoeas1bg/xhwc5m7f273l7b2/com.modaco.visionaryplus.r14.apk

This is the application which does the hacking part. This application can Soft Root your Android device. Now what’s soft root?

In Simple Terms, soft root means rooting your device in non-permanent manner trough software and without modifying/replacing the ROM and the actual OS permanently.

Benefits: you can only root your device when you need to run an application which needs a rooted device. Otherwise it’s your plain vanilla secured android device.

1. Wireless Tether — Free
   

   http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/downloads/detail?name=wireless_tether_2_0_5-pre15.apk

This is the actual tethering application from Google’s Code Share. And of course free. You can even use Barnacle which is even available from the market place but somehow for me it didn’t worked.

Now you have to do one more small hack if you have a Wildfire with Android 2.1 like me. You have to download the following bin file and copy it to your SD card under a folder called “android.tether”. So the location of the file should be:

<SD_CARD>/android.tether/fw_bcm4329.bin

https://docs.google.com/a/technewton.co.in/leaf?id=0B7Pf7PxUij-uMjY2ZjI3MjMtNjQxYi00MGUxLWExZGQtOTk0YTRkOWRkN2Q0&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

This should not be required for Wildfire with Android 2.2 or with other phones.

Now, make sure your SD card is not mounted to the computer and start running the following steps.

Enabling USB Debugging

Step 1: Go to Settings under the Menus

Step 2: enter the Applications option

Step 3: Select the “Development” Option

Step 4: Check the USB Debugging option. This is needed for running the Soft Rooting application.

Step 5: And the standard warning pops up. Click on OK. You can click on Cancel as well if you are fainthearted.

Rooting the Phone

Step 1: Under the
Menu click on the VISIONary icon to start the soft rooting application

Step 2: Now click on the “Temproot now” option. This will temporarily root you phone. After a reboot the entire rooting will be lost. If you want to do permanent rooting. You can even Attempt Permanent rooting by selecting the “Attempt Permroot now” option. This will make sure your rooting is not lost after the reboot. But, this rooting is also recoverable and you can unroot your device from this application later on.

Wifi Tethering

Step 1: Run the “Wireless Tether” application from menu.

Step 2: You will see this interface.

Step 3: Click on the Menu Button and the 4 options will pop up. Select the Settings Option

Step 4: If you are scared of terrorists, click the “Enable Wi-Fi Encryption” to enable WPA PSK on the Wi-Fi network which will be created on the device

Step 5: Change the SSID to your desired one from this option

Step 6: here you fill in the desired SSID

Step 6: Click on this option to select from a few pre-configured subnets. Make sure it does not clash with any if your existing networks.

Step 7: I have selected 192.168.3.0 subnet for the Wi-Fi network which will be created by his App. This means the IP your phone will allocate to the connecting device will be from 192.168.3.0 subnet.

Step 8: Now go back to the first screen of the app and click on the Green Wi-Fi logo to start the tethering.

Connecting Device to the Tethered AP

One you are done with all the above settings, you can go to any device with Wi-Fi and you should be able to see an ad hock network with the ESSID you have provided.

After connecting to the newly tethered AP this is what My Laptop was showing

And here is the speed I was getting on my Laptop over the tethered BSNL 3G connection. Not bad I say!!