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Ask Slashdot: Which Android Phone (and Carrier) For WiFi Proxy Support?

Posted by timothy on from the good-luck-with-all-that dept.

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)?"

4 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Official ticket by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, 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

    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).

    1. Re:Official ticket by frisket · · Score: 3, Informative
      Thank you...it looks like a Galaxy S2 or Prime will do the job.

      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.

  2. Re:Stop calling it "proxy support" then by pedrop357 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:What is Wifi Proxy Support? by frisket · · Score: 3, Informative
    It's when a wireless access point sends packets to the Internet via a proxy server. This is standard on all large-scale wireless networks (eg industrial, campus, conference centre, etc). Lack of proxy support means I can connect to the AP, but my web/mail/twitter/etc requests go nowhere because the device is sending them to the AP instead of to the proxy.

    All comments below about proxy support being something to do with tethering are complete rubbish.