Ask Slashdot: Which Android Phone (and Carrier) For WiFi Proxy Support? 125
frisket writes "My current phone contract is about to run out, and I'm due a phone upgrade. My HTC Hero has been fine except for the notorious lack of Android proxy support for wireless connections, so I want a new Android phone which provides this. None of the phone companies hereabouts (Ireland) seems to know anything about this, and the forums offer conflicting advice. Is it true that wifi proxy support is disabled to force users to use their phone company's IP connection? What choices do I have (if any)?"
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Answer: unlocked phone (Score:2)
He needs to buy an unlocked Android phone which will likely do what he wants, rather than taking the tangled web of incapability that is packaged into one supplied by the phone company.
My daughter's stock HTC Desire Z has no restrictions on using WiFi access points, or using her unlimited data plan for tethering. We pay a whole 5 euro per month for that plan, and it really has no usage limits. Of course, we also pay 4 cents per call, so her monthly bill is usually between 10 and 15 euro.
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I too am unsure what exactly the submitter is trying to do.
But my oldskool HTC myTouch Slide 3G and my wife's HTC myTouch 4G running CyanogenMOD [cyanogenmod.com] 7.x supports just about everything on the T-Mobile network.
Wifi & USB tethering work, so I can connect my laptop and/or other people's devices to the internet over HSDPA
Phone calls over wifi works, though I haven't really bothered to test it yet. But this sounds useful if you spend a lot of time somewhere with wifi but poor phone reception.
The Dolphin HD brows
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I agree that any cyanogenmod supported phone is plenty. You can get a phone from the carrier if you want. As long as cyanogenmod says it's supported then you root the phone, install cyanogenmod and can use you phone as a WiFi to 3G/4G hub without requiring any support from your carrier or even for them to understand what it is you are doing. I have used my CM7 powered Evo 4G as a WiFi hotspot for my laptop from time to time without having any contract or support from my carrier to enable this feature.
On which carrier? (Score:2)
He needs to buy an unlocked Android phone which will likely do what he wants
Are there any U.S. carriers left that 1. accept unlocked phones onto their network and 2. give a discount for not taking a subsidized phone? T-Mobile has the "Even More Plus" SIM-only plan that's cheaper than plans that include a phone, but everything I've seen from AT&T suggests that AT&T will discontinue this plan once it finishes buying T-Mobile.
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Not sure about other carriers, but in the US on Verizon you can't even tether one device without paying more than your whole plan ($30 per device, I believe, which is ~22 Euro right now).
Add in $20 for texting, $10-30 for internet (depending on use, unlimited is no longer available from the top 3 carriers), and a minimum of $30 for basic phone service and you can see the ass fscking we get in America.
Yes, there are better plans if you don't ever leave a city center, but I travel to areas that are not covere
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I obviously didn't make it plain what I wanted to do. I want to be able to use wireless access points which run proxy servers behind them (all industrial and campus networks, for example). This is a standard setting on all devices except Androids, where the facility for specifying a proxy was left out. (Weirdly, it was included in the settings for 3G connections, where it is never needed, but omitted from regular wifi configs, where it is common. Go figure.)
Perhaps... (Score:2)
Not so much a matter of the phone companies not knowing about it, but not knowing about it with the kind of vigor a dieter is aware of a big slice of chocolate cake, but is determined not to eat it. I wouldn't expect much help from them.
I won't do contracts again, myself, so I'm quite interested to see what pops up here. Mobile phone service companies are nearly as evil as the Nazgul as far as I'm concerned.
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Mobile phone service companies are nearly as evil as the Nazgul as far as I'm concerned.
You can say that with a straight face?
Well, I know the Nazgul try, but they just can't get up to that level of evil.
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Nothing like watering down the meaning of the word "evil" to "I don't like having to pay for phone service."
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I think it was a joke, but I don't take exception to people ragging on oligopolistic abuses of public resources.
Not many people outside of phone companies will side morally with them. Amoral? Yes. Immoral? Maybe. Moral?
No need to let it get to you.
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Nothing like making a false accusation to show people you're involved in the conversation.
It's not paying for phone service that folks object to, it's having to select between carriers that charge too much for the service because the corporations are engaged in anticompetitive behavior. It might water evil down a bit, but it's definitely not above the board.
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I could be wrong, but it looks more like he is talking about using WiFi connections to pull data instead of the cellular connection, which is what happens whenever I update my text-to-speech software(which downloads a 250 MB dataset).
However, the browser doesn't do the same thing unless I explicitly disable the cell antenna(unless the settings are somewhere else).
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He's talking about using his phone as a mifi, which he can easily get by rooting or buying a non-carrier phone...
Data plan without a phone (Score:2)
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Oh, trust me, I get it. They want you on their devices, and they want you feeding from their contractual subsidy. T-Mobile often gives the non-contract discounted rates even if you go on-contract with them, because, frankly, they really want you to be a long term source of revenue.
Do I want properly open subsidized phones? Yep. That said, take a contract, get a subsidized phone, sell it to someone less demanding than yourself, buy an unlocked phone, or root. If he wants it to be relatively painless, he
What is Wifi Proxy Support? (Score:3)
What is Wifi Proxy Support?
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I knew someone who gave away free wireless ethernet cables with purchase of a wifi card. Until it became too much trouble to explain the empty boxes.
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I knew someone who gave away free wireless ethernet cables with purchase of a wifi card. Until it became too much trouble to explain the empty boxes.
He could have at least included the antenna in the box, as that's the closest thing to a cable in Wi-Fi.
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No, he doesn't mean tethering. Android phones can already do tethering.
What they can't do - and Android is very notorious for this - is use a web proxy over their wifi connections. It's a bug that annoys many Android users, but Google is either refusing to fix, or just plain ignoring.
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Works perfectly on my Galaxy S, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).
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Because he's a retard. Plain and simple.
Re:What is Wifi Proxy Support? (Score:4, Informative)
All comments below about proxy support being something to do with tethering are complete rubbish.
Barnacle is the droid you are looking for (Score:3, Interesting)
Root your phone and install a copy of Barnacle Wi-Fi tether. It works on just about any Android phone with a 2g/3g data connection, it is lightweight and easy to set up. At an MSRP of free, it won't break the bank. All hail our open source overlords!
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Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price.
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If that's the case, then the question is a complete non-starter. Is he really asking "what carrier will sell me an Android phone that has a feature that is not present in Android to begin with"? Excuse me for not answering a completely absurd question properly.
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I am confused by this story... The editors must use iphone's because they lack a basic understanding of how android and its aftermarket distributions work. Its such a simple question for anyone that has paid attention to the andorid space for the last few years or perhaps googled the subject. Its linux... if you have root you can replace the kernel with one that has the NAT module and install iptables... Or just use Cyanogenmod or its competitors who all support it out of the box with fancy graphic click he
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I don't have root currently on mine (used to, but updated firmware and didn't see the need), but I can access the same functionality by going into Wifi Settings and pressing the button that says 'Tethering and Wifi Hotspot'. I hit a button to turn it on and there are settings that one can adjust if they so choose.
Stock firmware. Mind you I'm on a carrier that includes tethering, but I believe this feature has been available since Android 2.2 at least, so it's really a carrier issue more than anything. I
Do you mean using your phone's data connection? (Score:1)
Root the phone and profit! (Score:2)
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So does the verizon samsung facinate and my Samsung galaxy s gt-i9000 that came unlocked from my carrier
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My Nexus S (on T-Mobile) has built-in wifi tethering. I know that some carriers lock it down, but then I guess that's the magic of an unlocked phone.
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He's not asking for WiFi tethering. He's asking for proxy support while tethering.
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E.g. on iOS, there is a single system-wide proxy configuration setting that all apps on the phone should understand and use (and most do).
On Android, until fairly recently, there was no such thing - so third-party apps, when they supported proxies (a rare case), each had their own settings for it; and stock apps didn't support it at all.
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That's my fail, actually (mental note: "Preview" button is labelled that for a reason). TFA doesn't ask about tethering at all; he just wants a phone that can connect to a WiFi network with a proxy that requires explicit configuration, and be usable on said network.
Unlocked phone (Score:2)
Remember lads, unlocked phones are *not* expensive. Only if you buy them in a mobile phone shop that gets kickbacks for selling contracts
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Any Android device within the last year will work (Score:2)
While there are programs and apps that allow for tethering, there is no real need to root your phone as others have suggested. Well at least not permanently. Most of the customized ROMS that the carriers place on their devices have tethering disabled by default so they can charge you for a service that you already pay for. Data is data.. it does not matter how you use it, so fuck the carrier.
Initially you will need root to install a rom manager, once you have that complete, go peruse XDA Developers and f
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HTC stopped upgrading the Hero at 2.1. I got so frustrated with MMS messages filling up my phone built-in memory (compacting database bug) that I rooted and put on CyanogenMod and never looked back. In addition to wifi tethering and app2sd, it all just behaves better.
ProxyDroid? (Score:3)
Well, lots of people have addressed tethering. If you mean using a wifi hotspot that requires a proxy to actually connect to the outside world (think corporate environment here), then I've had real good luck with ProxyDroid from the market. It requires root, but that wasn't an issue for me anyway.
Wifi tethering - requires rooting (Score:2)
I just looked into wifi tethering and got it working on my Samsung Fascinate last night in about 20 minutes. Open Garden is what I went with. I had already rooted my phone quite a while back to get a newer version of Android so that requirement was no problem for me. It was interesting to find that some wifi tether apps require you also to use a modified kernel. Neither Barnacle (mentioned above) nor Open Garden require a different kernel.
I passed 25MB down / 6 MB up over the course of a couple hours on
Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile (Score:1)
Stop calling it "proxy support" then (Score:3)
No wonder the phone companies haven't heard about it, since judging by the comments, no one on Slashdot has either. Perhaps you mean tethering?
I have a contract with Vodafone (Netherlands). It came with a HTC Desire. The phone came with an app called "Wifi Hotspot". It works perfectly.
My girlfriend has a Desire S. It also has the Wifi Hotspot app. So... where's the problem? You're in Ireland, not the US.
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If he had meant tethering that is what he would have said. What he is asking for is not the same thing.
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He doesn't mean tethering. He means accessing an HTTP proxy over wifi. Which Android, ridiculously, can't do.
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My Epic 4g can.
Settings->Wireless and Network->Wifi Settings-"Menu" Button->Advanced->Proxy
Settings->Wireless and Network->Wifi Settings-"Menu" Button->Advanced->Port
Didn't see any options for username/password though.
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Have the same settings on my HTC Sensation... Dunno if it is what frisket seeks?
cyanogenmod (Score:1)
I have a G2 on T-Mobile. Put cyanogen on it and use any carrier. That does involve rooting the phone, but if you buy a phone fro mthier list of supported devices its really really easy.
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ [cyanogenmod.com]
-Darkseer
if you can tether you can share wifi (Score:2)
...through the machine that is tethered to the phone, right? You can do that now with your HTC Hero + PDANet. But Heroes are woefully underpowered, so you might as well upgrade anyway.
Time for a reflash (Score:2)
Just jai- sorry, root the phone. Then you can do whatever you want.
Any phone will do (Score:2)
Even your current phone if you can install Cyanogenmod on it. Android 2.2 and greater have tethering support built in already so no need for a separate app.
Very simple with any Android phone. (Score:2)
Use ConnectBot (free) to create an SSH tunnel to another computer, with dynamic port forwarding. This creates a SOCKS5 proxy. Then use Firefox (free) with the Firefox add-on Proxy Mobile installed. Set the proxy settings in Firefox to the SOCKS5 proxy set up with ConnectBot.
Done. Secure proxy over WiFi when browsing.
However, if you want system-wide proxy support (everything going through the proxy), you'll very likely need to root.
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Official ticket (Score:5, Informative)
See this ticket - there are many user reports on which phones have it working and which don't in the comments:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1273 [google.com]
Samsung Galaxy S2 in particular supports it with updates (2.3.4+), and is otherwise the single most awesome Android phone on the market today (at least until Nexus Prime is officially announced tomorrow).
Re:Official ticket (Score:4, Informative)
Google's decision to omit proxy support was a sweetener to the US telcos so they could make more moneyselling their sucky expensive G3 networking by making it impossible to use Androids with company or academic wireless networks. They didn't know that outside the US, G3/Edge/H/etc connections are very cheap, and that they would lose a huge number of student and business potential users because of the omission of proxy support.
Wifi proxy is not tethering (Score:1)
Rather, it just means being able to hook up to a wifi network that requires logging in to a proxy server in order to access the web.
This is a very common setup at many companies, where wifi is provided, but you must authenticate yourself to a proxy server in order to use it.
(This is beyond authenticating yourself to the wifi access point.)
Google has been very speedy supporting this (Score:2)
free Bluetooth PAN (Score:2)
I got a Droid Bionic in September, no tethering plan (Verizon, New York City). I intended to get a tethering plan later, should I need it
My laptop has bluetooth. I paired the phone and the laptop just to do it and see what speaker sharing was like, etc. I right clicked on the phone when it showed up on my laptop's list of available bluetooth devices, and there was a menu option I never saw before: "Join Personal Area Network"
I clicked it and it just works.
I never heard of such a thing before. I realize you
2.3 or higher (Score:1)
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My understanding, though, is that you can turn the proxy on or off only globally, which means you have to dig through the settings and set up a proxy when you're on campus, and then dig back through the settings to turn it off when you're at Starbucks and want to use their wifi.
I have the same issue. Turning the proxy on or off depending on whether I'm at work or ... anywhere else ... is a time consuming task, so much so that I don't use wifi while at work.
What Android needs is wifi proxy settings on a per
Atrix has this (Score:1)
Nothing better than AutoProxy (Score:2)
Here is the link http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13877540#post13877540
It requires root and iptables support. It automatically starts proxy when you connect to access point and remembers which proxy to use for which AP SSID.
TransProxy is pretty good too http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=766569 but you have to switch it on and off manually.
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In my case, the problem is I'm not allowed to root a company phone. I'm pretty sure that's going to be true (at least technically) for most corporate users.
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I feel your pain, especially if you don't have transparent proxy on your network, such simple technology is apparently outside of grasp of lots of IT organizations.
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> such simple technology is apparently outside of grasp of lots of IT organizations
It didn't used to be, but the local IT guys are gone now.
web proxy? (Score:2)
If they're talking about using a web proxy, I joined the bug report describing this, and got a note a couple months ago that it was fixed in Android 3.0. So all you have to find is an Android phone running 3.0 or above. I still haven't seen any. But it's nice to know they fixed it.
There is one (Score:1)
Samsung Galaxy S 2 on ATT (Score:2)
I've confirmed that there is a proxy and port option for the Samsung Galaxy S 2 on ATT. The caveat here though is twofold:
1. The proxy setting does NOT allow for a username and password (credentials) to be passed, only proxy IP an port.
2. The proxy setting only appears to affect applications that know that this setting is there. The web browser works flawlessly with this; the Facebook application for Android does not - to name two examples.
Two cheap options (Score:1)
I'm Irish, and can suggest two phones if you're looking for something... cost-effective ;).
Samsung Galaxy 5 Europa, 45 euro: http://three.ie/shop/products/samsung-europa-black.html?_selectedTariff=prepay&_defaultPriceplan=9 [three.ie]
Vodafone Smart, 60 euro: http://www.vodafone.ie/offers/vodafone-smart/ [vodafone.ie]
Why do I recommend these? Well, a disclaimer: I develop unofficial CyanogenMod 7 ports for both of these phones ;). Although CM7 doesn't support wifi proxy natively, you can use a third-party app such as TransProxy
Any webOS phone (Score:1)
You mean wi-fi tethering? Using as RNDIS modem? (Score:1)
Reading comprehension (Score:2)
Android does not have this as an inbuilt feature, he is asking for an app which would enable this. I think it is unlikely this is a carrier issue, just a missing feature.
Also a lot of
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Ummm... couldn't resist pointing out that your reading comprehension is not quite right either...
You wrote:
he is asking for an app which would enable this
but what the OP actually wrote was:
I want a new Android phone which provides this
...just sayin'
Otherwise, I agree with you and add the point about how ironic/moronic it is that when people don't have a clue what you're talking about they jump to the conclusion that you don't know what you're talking about. The OP asked a legitimate question about proxy support and then more than half of the responders started talking about tethering support...
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Happy Halloween!