Round-up of Tether Apps for Android Phones

Now that the Android Marketplace has been available for a couple of months, I thought it would be a good time for a round-up of the tether apps currently available. I have mentioned in an earlier post the types of tethering available and different configuration options with your G1 phone. I also wrote about the first unofficial tether app GWifi which I was able to get successfully working, but it wasn’t the simplest of installation processes. Since then I have installed a couple more tether apps directly off the Marketplace, both of which were very easy to download and use.

Over the course of 3 months, I’ve been impressed with the evolution of tether apps and the quality of their user experience. The downside of having so many tether apps on the Marketplace is trying to figure out which one works best. Everyone has their own needs and uses for tethering. Fortunately there is enough variety of apps to meet most customer requirements. 

Let’s start with a comparison chart showing what tether apps are available on the Marketplace. Some of the information in the below chart is from the wonderful site Cyrket.com which allows you to browse through the Marketplace using your computer rather than solely going through your Android phone. Other parts of the table have come from the vendor’s site or my own experience with the app. 

Looking at the table, I broke the features down by what might be most appealing to certain consumers. For example, just going down the list of rows you can pretty much filter the apps based on the key differences: price, need for root access and connection type. Extra things like WiFi security and, current rating in the Marketplace and changing the SSID may also be relevant in your decision making process. The last row has a QR code that you can scan using the Android barcode scanner to go directly to the Android Marketplace and install the app.

You’ll notice in the above table that I also included the USB tether app PDANet. The one downside of WiFi tether apps is the requirement of having root access to your phone. As easy as it may be to gain root access, it is a reality that not everyone wants to root their phone. For those individuals, the PDANet might be the best option. It was recently announced and is in beta for Windows only.

Because of the nature of a USB tether app, only one client can connect to your phone at any time. In addition, that client must have the tether app software installed on it. These are a couple of the biggest limitations of USB tether apps. But as I said, those without root access to their Android phones will just have to be happy with tethering through USB. 

Of the above WiFi tether apps, I have successfully installed and used aNetShare and Wifi Tether for Root Users. The others require purchasing them which I really have no interest in doing since there are two very nice free ones. I should note the Marketplace does offer a 24 refund on apps so trying the paid tether apps are almost risk free. Based on the feedback in the Marketplace for tether Wifi and Toggle Tether, both work and are worth the price of purchase. Also, I am assuming that all of these apps will work on any Android phone and not just the  T-Mobile G1 from HTC.

I have listed all of the apps I was able to find that matched the ‘tether’ term in the Marketplace and the table is accurate based on the resources I mentioned earlier. If there are any mistakes in the above table or if there are other tether apps that should be included, then feel free to keep me updated and I can updated the table.

After  so many tether-related posts, I am planning to take a break from writing about tethering unless something really interesting comes on the market, like WPA for WiFi tethering.

Tags: android, anetshare, g1, htc