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Ask Slashdot: Which Android Phone (and Carrier) For WiFi Proxy Support?
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)?"
Go download PDAnet
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I would estimate 90% of Android phones once rooted will be able to do this without a problem. Without rooting your phone your alternatives are: 1. Pay your phone company $XX per month to provide this otherwise free service. 2. Find a carrier that will allow tethering (The common name for phone proxy) by default (RARE). 3. Use an app such as PDANet (Limited functionality and some one-time cost, along with software being required on your computer).
There are ALWAYS risks to rooting a phone, but I for one believe that this one feature is sufficiently beneficial to proceed with rooting.
What is Wifi Proxy Support?
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!
Any android you can root you can NAT through, this is not a new feature. Look at Cyanogenmod for a distro option to start with.
If so, my HTC wildfire has that, bought it from the carphone warehouse here in England and didn't ask for anything special, I imagine it's likely to be similar in Ireland. The magic word you want is "tethering"; stupid name, but it's what people call it.
I am trolling
It really depends on what type of proxy you are talking about. Lots of phones support HTTP proxys but support for NTLM authentication is patchy. I have found lots don't support SOCKS proxys. Can you be more specific about what proxy you are trying to use?
Wifi Proxy Support isn't available on any Android phone that I am aware of by default. CyanogenMod supports it out of the box and as a result so does MIUI. But you will need to root the phone for this. Only way I know of. I use it on my MyTouch 4G (running MIUI) without any real issues.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Buy an unlocked phone, I got mine for 150e. I havn't had any problems with "tethering" and it allows me to create a wifi AP
Remember lads, unlocked phones are *not* expensive. Only if you buy them in a mobile phone shop that gets kickbacks for selling contracts
T-Mobile is a good choice. I have a T-Mobile G2 and it INCLUDES WiFi Tether out of the box (as well as USB Tether if you don't want to burn as much battery) without rooting, flashing, or anything else. Just add a valid data plan to your phone and tethering is included at 0 extra cost. Granted, Verizon seems to have better 3G coverage, and Sprint is slightly cheaper, but neither has WiFi Tether without an extra charge, rooting/flashing, or both.
In my case, I have 4G service in my town (a college town with 80,000 people during classes, and about 20,000 people during the summer, so not huge) and I have an ASUS EEE Transformer (rooted) so any apps that need root I run on the tablet rather than the phone, and simply tether to the phone running the stock ROM. Works like a charm.
I have a Motorola Droid X on Verizon in the US, and a recent code update to 2.3.3.1 provided an option to configure a web proxy for each SSID. Great if you use WIFI at both work & home and have different proxy environments. I don't know if it was Google, Motorola, or Verizon that added this feature.
It did seem that Google was aware of it, according to this recently fixed bug: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1273
Barnacle or cyanogenmod
Would you like an ethernet name server with your wifi proxy? Hurray! Let's mix OSI layers and services together into meaningless mash!
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 find the rom you want for your particular device. Most of the ROMS cooked up there have androids built in tethering functions enabled (Yes, Any stock Android ROM from 2.2 and onwards has tethering via USB cable, or wifi by default, it is under the network settings). Pick one with some fancy customizations, or just a plain stock Android build (hell you could build it yourself if you want, many devices already have the android source out there).
Once you have reimaged your phone, you can remove root access if you do not feel comfortable leaving it enabled (although there is currently very little risk, just be aware of what you install and you will be fine).
This message brought to you by my Samsung Galaxy S on ATT rooted and tethered using the stock android functionality, no additional software or apps required. Hell, it even supports using WPA for your wifi tethering fun.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
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.
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 the road browsing the web and reading email. No overheat issues, the phone was plugged in at the time. Overall the connection was far snappier than my experience trying to browse using the phone. The laptop I used runs Linux and I was using the latest Firefox and Thunderbird.
I have a Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile and it has been great for tethering/proxy support. The ability is built into the phone and very easy to use. The only down side with T-Mobile is they will slow your connection when you get within a certain amount of data usage. We've used this ability to link the laptop and keep the kids busy while on the road. It's one of my favorite features of the phone and android. I've had the phone for a while, but Samsung has a new phone available which looks really good. I would assume that tethering would work on it as well.
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.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
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/
-Darkseer
BOFH, My model for being a sysadmin :)
...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.
Just jai- sorry, root the phone. Then you can do whatever you want.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
I don't know if this is what the submitter means but my university is part of the Eduroam consortium. But to access the web on their network, certainly as a "local", I should send all traffic via their webcache.*.ac.uk server. My Android (HTC Desire, running 2.2) has Enterprise WPA just fine but no option to set a proxy for that connection. A certain fruit phone does, I gather, but Droid seem not to. So I'd certainly like to know if there's an app for this, as they say, or a manufacturer who has fiddled with the OS to add such a setting, or indeed if it is in stock Android and I've not found where. (I gather you can set a proxy on the mobile data connection, just not on WiFi)
My Sprint Xprt (Droid pro) has proxy support.
Happy Halloween!
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
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.
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.
TMobile,
The Samsung Galaxy S 4G on TMobile supports WiFi Access Point for 5 devices and Tethering via USB or Bluetooth out of the box.
I use the feature all the time when I'm traveling.
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.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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
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).
No rooting required. It works great!
It's smart enough to associate the proxy with the connection, which is better than most computers handle it.
When I'm connected to WiFi at work the proxy gets me right through the firewall, seamlessly.
When I'm at home or out and about on WiFi or the data network, no proxy required - none engaged.
On my laptop I either have to disable the proxies or VPN into the corporate intranet. What a pain.
I have other friends with gingerbread on other phones and no proxy support. Also one guy with an Atrix that hasn't bothered to upgrade to gingerbread - no proxies. So, somehow it seems to be a combination of gingerbread and Motoblur. I don't think AT&T has any bearing on the issue, so I would expect Bionic on Verizon or Photon on Sprint to work as well.
I think the majority of commenters don't understand that you literally mean web proxy support. This is strangely lacking from most android devices. I've been using the ProxyDroid app for a web proxy over Wifi and it works well.
Using privoxy+squid cache on a linux box for the backend.
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.)
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.
If I buy a non-carrier phone, how do I get a data plan without a subsidized phone? I asked at an AT&T store about plans without a phone, and they were just as expensive per month as plans with a phone. The only other nationwide GSM carrier in my country offers a cheaper plan without a phone, but that'll probably end once it finishes selling its soul to AT&T.
Even with the Honeycomb support for WiFi Proxy, apps or may not be able to take advantage of the new proxy support, and might have to be updated (at least at that time, that was case). Common example: set a proxy on your XOOM and your could browse the internet, but the mail app, and other apps that relied on http connectivity, would not necessarily work without modification by the developer).
Motorola (and perhaps other manufacturers) have included proxy support in their phones. My Bionic has it, but I no longer need it, and haven't tested it. I'm not sure who else provides it. I think some of the other tablets, may be the Galaxy Tab include a way to set the proxy, but again, if the app doesn't know how to take advantage of it, it's gains you nothing, beyond web browsing.
Even the oldest of Blackberries I used supported proxy settings on WiFi. It boggles my mind that Google would allow such a glaring omission to last for such a long time, especially when it has a huge effect on Android's adoption in the enterprise.
Works great with my Iconia Tab A500 and the university's bluesocket pile of nonsense.
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 can set up bluetooth as a DUN modem, which is limited by tethering, but this is a different protocol. Maybe Android enabled it with its recent OS build, and Verizon is not aware of it due to lack of exposure (most laptops don't have bluetooth).
Or maybe one day I'm going to try this, and it just stops working, due to Verizon finally catching on (this post won't help). Or maybe they don't have any contingencies to catch and stop this kind of tethering. I don't know what is going on. All I know is I'm currently tethering for free, easily, with no mods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_area_network
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
OP is asking about proxy support for the phone's wifi connection. The college that I work for uses a proxy and devices need to set their proxy settings in order to access the internet while on campus. Android started supporting proxies in version 2.3. Basically any phone with Gingerbread or higher will work.
My Motorola Atrix on Gingerbread has the ability to set a proxy server on an individual basis for wifi APs. I suspect this would be the case of most recent Motorola phones.
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.proxydroid&hl=en
I use it to get through my proxy at university, and it allows you to set individual proxies for different networks.
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.
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Proxy settings is an already existing application for configuring the proxy for wifi access, just search in the android market (works with google nexus one at least)
As other have noted, there are multiple options including third-party software (which may require root, not sure if they all do) to running a stock firmware or something based on one (e.g. Cyanogen for HTC and others, TeamWhiskey for some Samsungs, etc.) and using the built-in mobile hotspot.
One thing to be wary about is usage patterns - depending on what solution you're using it may be possible for carriers to ID the OS you're using (ex. "Passive Operating System Identification from TCP/IP Packet Headers" http://www.ll.mit.edu/mission/communications/ist/publications/03_POSI_Lippmann.pdf), particularly if tethering is normally only available as an expensive added feature or separate product thus making it worthwhile. Tethering may also make it more likely that you'll hit or exceed whatever data caps your carrier may have, drawing either extra charges, throttling/slowdowns or simple disconnection. I suspect that this is less likely to be an issue if you're an occasional tethering user for minor items, but I've seen a couple of people decide that T-Mobile's 3.5G implementation in the US was plenty of speed for home use until they ran up against bandwidth caps.
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.
Karnal
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
Vodafone Smart, 60 euro: http://www.vodafone.ie/offers/vodafone-smart/
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 on CM7.
P.S. I recommend the Samsung phone - it's better than the Smart, despite the lower price.
I have an "unlimited" data plan with t-mobile, and I have been tethering off and on for about 3 years. Although I am careful not to get close to their 4/6 gig soft cap, after which the speeds get reduced to what many say is below dial up speeds.
As far as I know they have no clue I am tethering, as they have never said anything. And really thats how it should be. I pay for the bandwidth and the phone, why should they tell me whats programs I can run and which ones should cost more?
I even streamed netflix through it a couple of times when AT&T screwed up and shut off my DSL for two weeks (it took two weeks for me to get fed up with them saying they would fix it and get another ISP).
Palm/HP Pre/Pixi/Veer + Preware + freeTether No muss, no fuss, no rooting. kthxbye
I am posting this comment using wi-fi tethered to my desktop using HTC Desire H. This phone is "unrooted" and did not any third party application and running on Gingerbread. I can tether both 3G internet as well as wi-fi internet (in this case must be connected to the computer using USB cable). At the moment the speed its showing is 9.7 Mbps. For this to work as Remote RNDIS device, you must have appropriate usb driver. Installing HTC Sync should solve this problem. I could do this on any OSs Windows XP and up. I am still trying to figure out which driver to install on my another computer running on Windows 2000.
If your talking auto proxy like in the setting under network in a browser (like firefox or anything) android sadly has pathetic support for this.
Non-root way (limited use) install any cut and search for Proxy. it will give u a pop up window to set an http proxy. vpn support is pptp
Root and install auto proxy from XDA-Dev (google it) and you can set ftp/http/socks and use pptp/vpn and many more this set up will allow you to match proxies with wifi connections
the standards have slipped a bit hey? so many people commenting on something they do not even understand. i think half the audience here belongs on digg.
Decompile Android apk files http://internetgadgetandtricks.blogspot.com/2011/10/decompile-android-apk-files.html
Couldn't you use a vpn instead?
Wow /. reading comprehension has dramatically fallen, the OP wants to connected to a proxy server whilst using wifi (as is required on most corporate networks).
/.ers seem to think that Android does not support tethering, which is part of the default install, I have yet to see an android phone which does not support tethering (including my Nexus S that I got on a plan).
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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