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Just tethered Nexus One to the iPad works crazy good!!

J

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
52
Wow I just got my Nexus one in this morning and finally got it rooted and tethered to my iPad wifi version of course!!

No need to buy 3g iPad version nor pay the $30.00 additional price!

My Nexus one is actually tethered to my macbook pro at the moment (testing it out) for the last 30 minutes and I can tell you tmobile's 3g is pretty darn fast!

I was downloading an application for the mac a while ago and it was at a steady 190-250 Kb/s! Thats pretty impressive!

Now I can keep my nexus one in my pocket and use the iPad anywhere I go! On campus I can just use the uni's wifi (and some places it drops and slows down to a crawl as everyone is connected to the wifi), then I can just pull out my nexus one and just switch on the 3g wifi for my own use!
 
Andrmgic said:
Awful!

At least it was on my Droid.. and it makes sense.. wifi tethering is using the wifi antenna and the 3G radio at the same time.. it's the ultimate battery drain!
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this is what i figured, and this is why i think that the new iphone will not have it. I was looking at the HTC evo and it can link like 5 (or 8 i dont remember) to its include "hotspot" and i just thought of how terrible the battery life would be if all 5 devices were connected. I wonder if they found a way on the evo to save battery life.
 
oftheheavens said:
this is what i figured, and this is why i think that the new iphone will not have it. I was looking at the HTC evo and it can link like 5 (or 8 i dont remember) to its include "hotspot" and i just thought of how terrible the battery life would be if all 5 devices were connected. I wonder if they found a way on the evo to save battery life.
Click to expand...

I can't imagine someone connecting 5 devices to share a cellular internet connection.. sprint's probably using that to tout the awesomeness of their 4G network.. I suspect that it won't work that well in practice.

Wifi tethering is only available in android with a rooted phone and an OS kernel that supports it.. usb tethering is pretty straightforward with PDANet.. but that's a better solution for laptops and netbooks.. as it charges the phone too.
 
Yeah the battery life is pretty terrible but this isn't meant to be an "always on" solution (at least it's not for me). I personally don't have the need for my iPad to have a constant internet connection and I only turn on the Android tethering when I need to download something or do a little light web browsing. All it takes to turn it on is to open the wifi tether app and within one click you're connected.

I do see this as being viable while traveling. If we have to go on a long drive it will give the mrs. something to do while we drive and my phone can be plugged in the entire time.

In fact I used this solution today during a meeting at work. I was taking notes on my iPad and needed to pull up a website to show my boss something. Within 30 seconds I had the website up and was handing the iPad to him so he could look at what he needed. iPad to the rescue (with a little help from Android of course :))
 
How do you like the nexus one so far? Is it on AT&T? I'm thinking of getting one myself, now that I can justify not having an iPhone because I have all my apps on the iPad now.
 
Andrmgic said:
I can't imagine someone connecting 5 devices to share a cellular internet connection.. sprint's probably using that to tout the awesomeness of their 4G network.. I suspect that it won't work that well in practice.

Wifi tethering is only available in android with a rooted phone and an OS kernel that supports it.. usb tethering is pretty straightforward with PDANet.. but that's a better solution for laptops and netbooks.. as it charges the phone too.
Click to expand...

i use myWi, i just plug up or dock my iphone and it runs the whole time I'm at work. it doesn't send data unless i am using my ipad and the battery stays at 100%. I also have a car charger so i have mobile internet access for others in my car. would be nice if i didn't have to plug it up without it draining so fast. i can get MAYBE 2 hours of unplugged tethering.
 
Yeah I do this too from my droid. People in class will ask me how am I able to get a wireless connection on my mbp, and i smile at them while pulling out my phone. Root ftw!
 
oftheheavens said:
i use myWi, i just plug up or dock my iphone and it runs the whole time I'm at work. it doesn't send data unless i am using my ipad and the battery stays at 100%. I also have a car charger so i have mobile internet access for others in my car. would be nice if i didn't have to plug it up without it draining so fast. i can get MAYBE 2 hours of unplugged tethering.
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Thats the reason I went with the 3G iPad. My iPhone drains fast enough already, I can't imagine if it was tethered too.
 
oftheheavens said:
he is excited! As I would be! Cut him a break!

How is the battery life while tethering!
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Using task killer and killing every application running on the nexus one, I started out with 40% battery life and tested the 3G tethering from there. My nexus one just died right now (actually surfed the net tethered to the nexus one well over an hour before I decided to make this post) and also with the screen turned off it lasted a good 4 hours and 30 minutes.

I'm going to test it out at 100% battery life tomorrow all day on campus as the iPad outlasts my nexus one for sure.

To give you an example, my iPad at 100% from the time I unplug it from the charger gets down to about 65% battery life by the time I get home. Which basically is from 8:30am to 7pm.

I really believe I'll be able to get 8 hours of continuous 3G tether from my nexus one.

What I'm more curious about is how long the nexus can run with it synced to my MacBook pro(that gets 11 hours of battery life) when my nexus is on low battery. Basically charge the iPad to the MacBook pro!


Better yet I wonder if the USB adapter to the iPad will allow any cell phones to be hooked up to the iPad borrowing the ipads awesome battery life.

From my experience the nexus one has a MUCH better battery life than the iPhone 3GS. With all the task killed and disabling of various features the nexus one lasts really long.

One other thing is that seigio has a 3rd party battery for the nexus one which has 2x the battery capacity of the stock battery and I read in a review that the reviewer did whatever he wanted to do while using the bigger battery and lasted 30 hours.

I'm highly contemplating buying that battery, sure it makes the nexus one a bit fat but as long as the dimensions are the same (except) thickness, the 30 hour battery life is more than welcome.
 
Subiklim said:
How do you like the nexus one so far? Is it on AT&T? I'm thinking of getting one myself, now that I can justify not having an iPhone because I have all my apps on the iPad now.
Click to expand...

Don't hate me for this as I am a die hard apple fan and I thought I'd NEVER say this but.. I really like the nexus one as an all around phone than the iPhone 3GS.
 
Subiklim said:
How do you like the nexus one so far? Is it on AT&T? I'm thinking of getting one myself, now that I can justify not having an iPhone because I have all my apps on the iPad now.
Click to expand...

I ditched my iPhone 3G for a Nexus One as soon as the AT&T model was released (there is also a T-Mo version and supposedly a Sprint one in the works). I already had my iPad 3G on order and 2G iPod Touch, so I wasn't too concerned about losing all of my apps. Much to my surprise, just about every utility I used on my iPhone had a free Android equivalent. A lot of the games weren't in the same boat, but there was still a lot to like (like Replica Island). Especially now that I know the iPhone 3G won't get multitasking officially, I'm really glad I made the switch.

As for battery life, it's something of a mixed bag. I get more life than the 3G when I enable 3G, but standby time is notably less. Also, backlighting drains the battery like nobody's business. The screen is clear enough to read easily indoors with no assistance, but I have to crank the brightness up when outside or mounted on my dash (yay, free turn-by-turn navigation!).

One other little quirk: the default no sound option is not the same as vibrate. No physical switch either. Most of my silent-mode time is spent at work where I use the glowing trackball to check for updates; when my phone would vibrate on the desk, it still got loud. By the way, there is a vibrate mode, but it isn't the default.
 
I ditched my iPhone 3GS for a Droid about a month ago and couldn't be happier. The custom ROMs are AMAZING!

In any case, I can do wired/wifi tether, but see that as a last-resort. The primary use for MY phone is to... wait for it... make phone calls. :D I can't afford to be draining the battery doing wifi tethering for heavy browsing or constantly charging it. For checking a quick email or something, sure. But battery life is more important to ME than the $130 cost difference and $30/month unlimited data plan.

To each his own I guess. :)
 
I really wish they would allow it on non-rooted Droids like they do for the Pre Plus ... I really depend on my Droid and while I want the WiFi I just can't take the chance of screwing it up ...
 
My wife and I were on a long drive this last weekend and so it was a great time to pull out her new Palm Pre Plus that we got from Verizon and try out the free hot spot service they have for the Pre.

It worked great with the iPad, we just zoomed on down the highway and I was connected the whole time. I didn't know how it affected the battery life of the Pre, as we just plugged it into the car so that power usage wasn't an issue.

At some point I'll have to do some tests with the Pre, it can have up to five devices connected wirelessly, but I'm curious how much of an impact that will have on battery life, compared to just one device connected.

When we arrived at a relatives house they had wifi, but the relatives were out and so we couldn't get their password, so I just turned the Pre on again and chugged along on the net until they got home.

It's a pretty good deal from Verizon right now. They have loads of Pre Pluses they want to move and so to help that along they are waiving the hot spot service fee for the life of the device. WebOS is also a really slick OS. I think the only real drawback is the screen is on the small side.
 
jjahshik32 said:
...I was downloading an application for the mac a while ago and it was at a steady 190-250 Kb/s! Thats pretty impressive
Click to expand...
do you really consider those speeds impressive?? :confused: in my area (tampa bay) i'm getting an range of 637-860kbs the few times i've monitored my speeds.
 
Tethering the Nexus One is clever. I tried a Nexus One. Then I returned it. That's because I prefer the iPhone experience and easy syncing via iTunes.

But to get the 4G speed, I chose the Sprint 4G Overdrive portable WiFi hotspot. It provides fast connection speed for two WiFi iPads, two MBPs, and one iPhone 3GS --- simultaneously.
 
barefeats said:
Tethering the Nexus One is clever. I tried a Nexus One. Then I returned it. That's because I prefer the iPhone experience and easy syncing via iTunes.

But to get the 4G speed, I chose the Sprint 4G Overdrive portable WiFi hotspot. It provides fast connection speed for two WiFi iPads, two MBPs, and one iPhone 3GS --- simultaneously.
Click to expand...

I actually prefer the droid in syncing as well. You don't need to rely on iTunes anymore it's even better on a Mac!

I just mount my nexus one and my Mac picks it up just like any hard drive or flash drive and I can just drag and drop apps, music, video it's so easy.

Ps I'm tethered to my nexus in my first class where wifi is dead slow. While the rest of the 90 people are waiting 2-5 minutes for their website to load mine is fast consistently, I love it!!


No more limitation from iTunes.
 
jjahshik32 said:
I actually prefer the droid in syncing as well. You don't need to rely on iTunes anymore it's even better on a Mac!

I just mount my nexus one and my Mac picks it up just like any hard drive or flash drive and I can just drag and drop apps, music, video it's so easy.
Click to expand...

Don't forget - with Android you can also get your media on your phone wirelessly. Just mount the phone's storage card via WiFi and drag/drop the media. Good luck doing that with iPhone/iTunes.

Also, those who really prefer iTunes style syncing - doubleTwist works great, and it supports your existing iTunes library.
 
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