[Streak 5 Android Development] rlowell:
Bluetooth Tethering

mrmrmrmr:

Don't get discouraged (by no one responding thoughtfully to your question).

What you're asking for is the exact same thing I want... a subscription free

Dell Streak with fast Internet access from a non-smart phone with a data plan (maybe).

You want an advanced PDA - not a Smart Phone (with another data plan), right?

If you agree with that, then PDANet's useless. JuneFabrics never worked out the coding to make it work on a PDA - only on a smart phone.

Today, I still use (kind of antiquated; don't laugh) a Palm Tungsten E2 and a Motorola V950 (on Sprint) phone. The web browser and Google maps work great on the Tungsten, which connects to the Internet via the V950.

I do pay a reasonable price for data (EVDO Rev A, unlimited, $38/month) to Sprint. Some people tether for free or closer to it. But they're usually in violation of the terms of service. I'm totally legit/legal with my tethering. That's good. Because I use the phone for business.

I want to upgrade my PDA to the Streak.

I've been monitoring this issue (Bluetooth Dialup on Streak) almost a year.

From what I think I've read online, Google has published enough data on the

interface to Android, but made ZERO effort to implement things and make them easy. I think they do this to appease the cell phone carriers, who believe me don't want you and me to have this. So Android IS less locked down on this than iPhone/iPod Touch. But it's kind of an "on your own" support to get it.

The net is that (I believe) you must root your streak and (maybe) hack things to get BT-DUN to work on your Streak. I've seen comments from a few people online that they had to write some script (text file) carefully to enable this. I haven't looked into it.

Now, I've also read that if you don't mind rooting your streak and use the cyanogen rom, it has a program called "omni tether" that supposedly supports this.

I haven't seen anyone actually document the performance of this solution. I was kind of waiting to see if intrepid users would do this. Only then, after it was fairly debugged and characterized would I buy a Streak.

I looked at getting an iPod Touch as my new "upgrade" PDA. In the Apple world (which has a bigger number of apps than Android, a few of them pretty useful), someone's written a program (you must jailbreak the Touch; Apple and AT&T would never approve of this) called "iBluever" that does exactly this.

More people have tried this on the Touch. The wrap I've heard is that this program doesn't talk directly with the Bluetooth stack on the Touch. It kind converts data from one connect profile type to another. The net is that you only get about half the Internet wireless throughput on the Touch that the 3G phone gives you.

I believe Android's interface to its Bluetooth stack is better documented and in the public domain. So a higher performance solution is possible.

I tether for long periods of time (several hours at a crack sometimes with no recharge) when I'm on the road. If I was wi-fi tethering, that would be impossible. So I know what I want and what you're talking about.

Good luck with this, mrmrmrmr. Let us know what you find out as you proceed.

rlowell