Slashdot Mirror
iPhone 3.1 Update Disables Tethering
jole writes "The newest iPhone 3.1 update intentionally removed tethering functionality from all phones operating in networks that are not Apple partners. This is not limited to hacked or jailbroken phones, but also includes expensive 'officially supported' factory-unlocked phones. To make the problem worse, Apple has made it impossible to downgrade back to a working 3.0 version for iPhone 3GS phones."
Tethering was never supported in the US. So the FCC would have no interest in this particular case.
Developers: We can use your help.
Um, I've been doing that for a long time now on Windows Mobile using home brew ROMs. I really hate hearing about all these awesome innovations by Palm and Apple that I've been using for years, but nobody cares because it's Windows Mobile! I'm also on Verizon, so I've had faster and more widespread network coverage as well (at least everywhere that I need my phone to work in the US).
The only crap, expensive software I have on my Diamond 2 is... Erm... Oh, wait, I downloaded a cooked community ROM with all of the rubbish removed and installed the apps I use. The WinMobile community is HUGE, with a large amount of free software for the platform.
XDA Developers is somewhere you want to look before considering purchasing any smartphone, especially one you want to toy around with.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
They changed their plan, the basic(Smartphone Basic that is) $70/month plan includes unlimited mobile-mobile now.
Ha ha, just kidding. Welcome to America.
Sprint's Unlimited data actually means unlimited...on phones. Their data cards and official tethering plans have a 5gb limit, but if you have the right phone and know how to tether it (WinMo can do it, rooted Android as well), you can download all you want.
A hack that has been disabled at AT&T's request, just like it would be on any other phone that has updates. Apple didn't "remove a feature" - the iPhone can still tether just fine - as long as your carrier supports it.
Does it suck? Hell yes. Is it unexpected? Hell no.
This was in all of the betas, and known about two months ago. If you were "in the know" enough to install a hacked carrier profile on your device, then you should have been following closely enough to know not to install the update. (Oh, and the Pre and it's "free" homebrew community? What about those mandatory updates that install themselves after ten days? And the data collection Palm does? Apple doesn't even do either of those.)
Throw this down at AT&T's feet, not Apple's. Apple certainly has no interest in you tethering or not. If anything, it makes their device more valuable, so they have an interest in allowing it. But clearly AT&T would rather rape you at an unspecified future date for an unspecified amount of money. All the more reason for Apple to leave AT&T as soon as possible.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
It really looks like Palm doesn't want homebrew tethering http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/15/palm-webos-system-upgrades-mandatory-hacking-scene-forbidden-fr/
There are homebrew tethering options for pretty much every unlocked phone. People were installing proxy servers on their iPhones before Apple added their tethering option.
The Sprint Simply Everything plan doesn't include tethering, if you get caught tethering you will be billed $40/month(or whatever Sprint is currently selling tethering for). Where did you get the $1000 figure from?
http://www.iphonewzealand.co.nz/2009/telecom/warning-for-xt-users-iphone-os-3-1-disables-tethering/ explains why your tethering stops working
The Nokia E90 Communicator looks like an even better phone but we're not going to see it in the USA, presumably because it has similar features. Other than the shiny Apple interface and the difficulty with making it work with a US provider, the E70 was a superior phone to the iPhone for my particular needs. If I could be guaranteed that the E90 would work with a US provider and would not have its features intentionally brain damaged by the telcos, I would drop my iPhone in a heartbeat for one.
The technology has been there for years, it's the telcos screwing things up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Did you RTFA? Apple disables tethering for companies that aren't Apple partners. It has nothing to do with whether or not the carrier allows tethering. Apple is still living in a world where they can shove an authorized provider down their customer's throats, as if they weren't doing business in Europe, where the phone and the service are supposed to be separate.
You're right, the lock occurs in the phone's baseband. That's why the next *sn0w unlock by the iphone dev team will probably modify the .ipsw file so that you can update your phone to 3.1 WITHOUT updating the baseband, thus allowing both tethering AND downgrades to 3.0.
TFA is WRONG. I have a contract in my country which allows tethering and while it's true that tethering stopped working immediately after the 3.1 update, my provider unlocked tethering a few days later.
Because you were man enough to post your opinion with your actual user name, I'm going to respond. I love Apple, and I'm a fanboi. I used to run an old Samsung phone that was the first generation to have a color screen and texting capability (don't remember what model it was, just that it was big, had an antenna and camera, and was blue). Bought that back in 2004. I resisted the whole smartphone/iPhone rush up until this year because I was on T-Mobile, I loved their service, and I didn't want to pay assloads of money. But my wife got an iPhone and was on AT&T, and she loved it. So finally this year after much nagging by her, I left T-Mobile, went to AT&T, and got an iPhone 3G for $99 plus the standard 2 year service agreement. So now I pay $15 more a month now with AT&T for unlimited data and voice than I did with T-Mobile for just 400 minutes and unlimited texts, and I get all the versatility and features that the iPhone has. I also refuse to jailbreak it because I do not want to waste my time having to dodge getting my phone bricked. It does everything I want it to do. I really don't care how much a year I'm spending, because it's within my monthly budget and I'm getting far more in terms of features than I used to. Plus, once my two year term is up, AT&T's lock on Apple will be over, and I'll be able to go back to T-Mobile with my iPhone. So now that I've bored the absolute fuck out of you with my long-winded summary, let me say this - I love Mac and iPhone because it does what I want it to do, when I want it done, with a very low minimum of hassle and cost in my opinion. This is obviously not your sentiment. But I would ask that before you just badmouth us Mac fanbois again, you consider that SOME of us chose Mac not because it's anti-MS, but because it meets our needs. Now get off my lawn :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
...until now (well it's is coming "Soon (tm)"). The new Nokia N900. A truely open mobile computer (with a phone). It's Debian under the fancy Maemo hood. Albeit not x86.
.deb, open xterm, sudo gain root, and viola! Or you can enable R&D mode using the flasher (firmware updater) utility.
Getting a root shell using the building Xterm is very easy for those that want to do it, and are a bit technically inclined. Add a certain repo, add the rootsh
Yep, it's gone. I'm in the US, where AT&T is still dragging their feet on tethering and MMS. I didn't jailbreak my iPhone, but I did download the Network configuration file that unlocked Apple's built-in tethering capability. After reading this story, I went and checked it in the Settings; still there. I switched it on. Nothing happened. I go back into Settings, and now the tethering option is gone. They spiked it.
Tethering isn't disabled. What is disabled is tethering without the carrier giving you a signed configuration bundle to use.
I've talked to a few people who use AT&T and still have tethering on their iPhones after upgrading. They got the new configuration bundle and have no problems.
Apparently, this was a request from almost all of the official carriers to prevent the iPhone from tethering without their permission (which can be had for another $20 or so per month). This was originally aimed at supported carriers, but it is also affecting unsupported carriers too.
That's what happens when you tie the hardware to the provider.
AT&T disabled tethering for AT&T customers. Tethering is working fine on 3GS on Fido before and after the 3.1 update.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You can buy the developer version of the android from google directly that comes with root access.
You see there's this stuff called the fine print, and it explains that "unlimited" means unlimited time, as opposed to how the ISPs used to work - which was to bill $5 per hour of use and/or limit customers to XX hours per month (like Netzero does). A lot of customers make the false assumption it means unlimited gigabytes, and I suspect marketers LIKE that misinterpretation, but that isn't what your contract states - at least that's not what my Verizon contract states.
"Unlimited" means "unlimited". It indicates that there are no limits on what you can download or upload.
Bow-ties are cool.
I must say that having developed for Android and iPhone, iPhone was much more enjoyable of an experience. I think Android has a good platform, but its not all there yet. I like the feel of my iPhone apps much more, whereas like most non-Apple GUIs and window systems, Android feels clunky and non-standard. Android, however, hosted my app immediately whereas Apple takes weeks and weeks of unknown approval status to either a) give you some bullshit reason your app isn't accepted, so fix it and start the process over or b) allow your app in the store and then watch as everyone says "great but *bug*" and quickly scramble to fix the bug and then wait yet again for Apple to approve your new bugfix version.
it may also be easy to rob a bank but that doesn't make it legal.
Is a blackberry a smartphone?
AT&T:
BlackBerry Personal plus Tethering $60
How about a "PDA?"
AT&T:
PDA Personal plus Tethering3 $60.00
http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/popup/dataconnect-comp-table.jsp
AT&T is just the first carrier I happened to look at. But I think they offer tethering for smartphones. Really expensive tetherting, but tethering.
The iPhone does have a 99% satisfaction rating.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
"I believe that the typical iphone customer is a "look at me, I have a cool iphone" idiot."
I'm a typical iPhone user and I would like to give you another perspective. Let me take you back in time to the pre-iPhone days. I was a Verizon customer and I was constantly pissed off because every single phone I had with them would not allow me to sync ANYTHING with my Apple computer. I couldn't sync my contact, my music, my ringtones, nothing. I constantly saw all these neat little tools that allowed Windows users do this, but I was left out in the cold. I don't know if you ever had re-enter all your contacts in your phone manually, but I had to do this about 3 times and it sucked.
When the iPhone came out, I willing dumped Verizon and switched to AT&T. Not because their service is better, but because the iPhone actually allowed me to use the phone like I wanted to. Is Apple perfect? No. I think a lot of what they do is great, but things like this (disabling tethering) sucks. I'm not sure if it's completely Apple's fault. My guess is that they receive pressure from the carriers to do certain things. That's just a guess. But either way, my experience using a "phone" is about 1000% times better than what it was prior to the iPhone. Not sure if that makes me "cool" or not.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Actually, I believe it really is 'unlimited,' as they're assuming you're not tethering and only using the phone to do your browsing. If you get a data card, or a tethering plan, then you'll see that limit imposed. There are scores of people who use their Pre's to listen to Pandora all day, and regularly go over 5 gb/month and never have a problem. Might that change in the future? Yes, but so far it's not a problem.
No, it's not all providers. Tethering still works fine in 3.1 on providers that support it, such as Fido/Rogers in Canada.
For example, my iPhone from Fido running 3.1 still has tethering support, just like it always has.
Tethering has only been disabled in 3.1 for providers that don't officially support the iPhone. That sucks, certainly, but let's not engage in hyperbole. If you buy a phone not supported by your carrier, you run the risk of this sort of thing. That's true with any phone, not just the iPhone.
I mean, come on, seriously. ANY time you;re doing something with an Apple device that's against the EULA or the provider's terms, Apple ALLWAYS turns off that function in the next release.
Further, you were TOLD WEEKS AGO that 3.1 broke the provider file hack and that only jailbroken devices and phones runnin 3.0.1 and older would be able to maintain tethering.
The hackers will win out and fix it soon enough, that is if AT&T doesn't start enabling it now anyway as they're doing with MMS.
Plus, adding tethering to an iPhone is $25 more per month, not $60 like it is on the crackberry or the Pre.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
All of those "cool little tools" for Windows users cost far more money than they were worth. ($99 to sync my contacts to the computer? Then another $99 for a different sync program if my replacement phone wasn't the same one as my previous phone? Really? Okay, I'll pay a neighborhood kid $10/hour to do it for me and it'll be done for $20.) Your problem wasn't that there was no Apple phone. It was that you were on a non-GSM provider. You could have gone to AT&T or T-Mobile even before the iPhone was out, and stored your contacts on your SIM card, and taken them with you from phone to phone - and not had to call your provider to switch phones, either.
Yes, I'm aware that there are other things people think are advantages to the iPhone. I just wanted to point out that you could have made your experiences with cell phones 500% better just by doing some goddam research instead of waiting for Apple to hand you a ready-made solution.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Sprint lowered the cost of their everything plan to $70/month. Big difference there.
This is the internet. You can think before you start typing. No need to type "Um", which usually means "I'm about to say something". If you're using text to speech, you can edit out those extra filler words to make your post more clear.
Unless you used it in the "I can't believe all of you are so completely stupid" sense. In that case, you're right, nobody cares.
Nobody gives a fuck about your has-been shitty ass Windows Mobile Bullshit. We've all had or used Windows Mobile phones. I've had several. A Verizon xv6600, xv6700, several Wince2003 PDA's, and they all had one thing in common. They fucking SUCKED! Random freezes, crashes, you name it. And it always seemed to happen when you needed it most. I bought my WinMo phone because I needed a device to connect to the net on site at a moment's notice. Heh. Picture this. I'm there in the middle of work, need to look up information on a piece of hardware I'm dealing with, whip out my trusty WinMo phone and hit Pocket IE and bam! the whole phone freezes. Then when it gets over having it little cow, a helpful little balloon pops up telling me the modem was disconnected. Reboot time. There is no recovering from the modem disconnecting (whatever that means). So I reboot, will it come back up? Or will I have to pull the battery out for 5 or so minutes? Who knows? Never a dull moment with WinMo.
Really, I could go on and on but as a WinMo user, even if you are in some kind of sick abject denial, you know how it is. So now I have an Android phone. And, let me tell you, it's like when Dorothy went out of black and white and stepped into color. I never knew a phone could be as slick, intuitive and fast as this. Opera Mobile on Android is 10 times faster in Edge on T-Mobile than PIE was in EVDO on Verizon. No joke. It is over for WinMo. Only the sad fan boys like you are left holding the bag that Microsoft made.
I would say "keeping up with the Joneses". No apostrophe. You are not keeping up with something specific of theirs, but rather them as a group. If you were talking about your phone keeping up with the Joneses' specific phone, then that would be correct, but just keeping up with them on a status quo level, would not require an apostrophe.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
Sorry, couldn't help myself. But seriously, iPhone users are going to rate it on how "pretty" it is, not how functional it is.
Seriously, hasn't the run gone on long enough Gerald?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367713&cid=29413213
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1191051&cid=27497355
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1344921&cid=29164957
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1178961&cid=27369683
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=970931&cid=25092275
and probably more, I tired of looking
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aslashdot.org+we're+evil.+But+our+stuff+is+sooo+good.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
I noticed that the tethering functionality enabled by the profile from http://help.benm.at/tethering.php stopped working after my upgrade to 3.0.1
The use of this profile works on even an un-jailbroken phone.
They did it in a rather sneaky way. The UI for tethering is still there, and active. It even says 'tethered', when plugged in â" but the update causes the iPhone to ignore DHCP requests for an IP address from the external device, which then times out.
The problem was immediately resolved by revving back to the 3.0 firmware.
I tested both jailbroken and un-jailbroken, on both 3.0 and 3.0.1.
3.0 tethering works, jailbreak or not, 3.0.1 tethering does NOT work, jailbreak or not.
Shame on you Apple. If you're going to intentionally break functionality, at least be man enough not to lie about it.
It's worth noting that in Europe we don't count incoming SMS messages, only outgoing messages are paid for/deducted from our message allowance.
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
Meanwhile, my "dozens of tiny little buttons" allow me to use my phone much more productively. And they don't get crap stuck beneath them, either.
Oh, and WinMo hasn't had a desktop UI since long before it was actually called WinMo.