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- The wait is over for those who need to use their phone as a hotspot for Chromecast-powered content consumption. The Play Services 11.5.03 beta allegedly fixes this issue. If you aren't part of the Play Services beta, you can easily pull the requisite version for the fix down over at APK Mirror.
Around the world, a lot of people rely on their mobile devices as their only point of access to the internet and don't have a WiFi connection or router at home. For many of those people, using a Chromecast would have been impossible if it weren't for one small logical workaround: creating a hotspot with their phone that the Chromecast can connect to. Unfortunately, that workaround is no longer, uhm, working right now and it sounds like the latest Google Play Services is to blame.
Wi-Fi Tether For Root Users V3 Lands In The Play Store, Grab It While You Still Can
Wi-Fi Tether For Root Users V3 Lands In The Play Store
Almost one full year ago, carriers threw the gauntlet down on tethering applications in the Play Store. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile were among the first to lay down the banhammer, with Sprint following soon after.
As someone who primarily shoots with Nikon equipment, I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Chainfire's DSLR Controller (while awesome) lacked support for Nikon cameras back when it came out. Looking to alleviate the Nikon user's plight, Helicon Soft Ltd. introduced Helicon Remote (beta) to the Android Market some time ago, allowing Nikon and Canon users alike to shoot while tethered to an Android tablet running Honeycomb 3.1 or later.
At one point, tethering was a simple process - installing a program from the Android Market would enable the feature and you were good to go. Of course, carriers didn't like this, because instead of paying them an extra $30(ish) a month to use their hotspot service, you were gaining access to the feature for free. So they had many tethering apps pulled from the Market. Not only that, but many carriers put a block directly on devices that disallowed the use of common tethering apps.
In the last couple of days, I've been closely interacting with Harald Mueller, the developer behind Android Wi-Fi Tether for root users, a free and open source tethering app for Android. Android Wi-Fi Tether is pretty much a de-facto app when when it comes to tethering on Android devices that have native Wi-Fi tethering disabled (thanks, carriers), and is what I consider one of the most important apps in our supposedly open ecosystem.
A few months ago AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all started blocking wireless tethering apps in the Android Market, making them unavailable for download on their respective devices. At that time, Sprint was the only carrier still allowing tethering apps to be installed without limitation -- but that time has come to an end. That's right, the Now Network has begun blocking the installation of wireless tethering apps from the Market on any device attached to its network.
A few weeks ago, a GSM Nexus S update 2.3.6 (GRK39C) with voice search fixes started rolling out, but it was immediately discovered to break Wi-Fi and USB tethering. After many complaints, Google pulled the OTA, and it seems like they've spent the last couple of weeks making sure everything works as expected.
The carriers continue screwing us in lockstep. Sprint is once again making its service less appealing (and more in line with the rest of the quadopoly) by putting a 5GB cap on its Mobile Hotspot plans. As always with capped data, overage fees are now here to keep you up at night. Going over the 5GB cap will tack 5¢ per MB onto your bill, which means the homepage of AP is going to cost you around $0.30. We're like an old timey newspaper.
Looks like Verizon Wireless has taken a page out of AT&T's playbook, as the latest Gingerbread update for the Droid X now seems to detect tethering apps not approved by the carrier and cut off users' data, replacing all requests with an upsale page for the official hotspot add-on. This is now the 2nd wave of attacks against free tethering, following a global carrier block (with the exception of good old Sprint) of the most popular tethering apps on the Android Market.
There's been a lot of talk about AT&T's crusade against rogue tethering lately, and it all comes back to this AT&T text message sent to some poor iPhone customer(s):
An independent test conducted by a research firm in New York City comparing the speeds of Verizon's and Sprint's respective 4G networks has made at least one thing clear: Big Red owns the Big Apple. After conducting over 1000 individual network speed tests in various locations throughout the city, BTIG Research tallied up the averages, and it's not a pretty picture for Sprint:
AT&T users who have been tethering their phones' data plans under the radar (either using MyWi on a jailbroken iPhone, or one of many apps like Wireless Tether for Root Users on a rooted Android phone) have been receiving a little nudge from AT&T asking them to sign up for a tethering plan - or face possibly getting signed up for it without consent.
I was about to go to sleep, but, of course, when I heard of a possible G2 OTA report, and one that brings such important new features as WiFi calling, otherwise known as UMA, and native tethering, I had to stay up just a bit longer.
The number 1 Android app for rooted phones out there is undoubtedly Android WiFi Tether, which is a free alternative to all those carrier-bundled WiFi hotspot apps. In fact, it is the primary reason I root every Android phone I own - 2 hours of commute on the train suddenly become extremely productive because of always-on laptop connectivity. I've excitedly written about the app before, especially after it added support for Infrastructure mode and WPA2 on the EVO 4G.
Only 5 days ago the brilliant team behind the android-wifi-tether project, which provides free WiFi hotspot capabilities to rooted phones, added support for EVO 4G. This meant users of this recently released beast could now turn their phones into WiFi routers, broadcasting WiFi signal to devices nearby, thus removing the need for a similar application Sprint charges $30/month for.
EVO 4G users, rejoice! As of a few minutes ago, you can enjoy unlimited free WiFi/Bluetooth tethering using the Wireless Tether for Root users (or simply android-wifi-tether) app.
Yesterday we brought you exclusive benchmarks showing the amazing speedups achieved by the Android team in Froyo 2.2, and today we're back with some more juicy info.