Froyo and data tethering

E61, the first business phone with full QWERTY support from Nokia. I just loved this phone just for one of its feature; IP Passthrough. It allowed me to connect to the internet from my laptop at a time when wireless broadband was a distant dream in India. But sadly none of its successors nor the superior models from Nokia like the N95 et. al, supported this cool feature. Even iPhone ignored this feature. Finally after wireless broadband networks started to emerge the need for this feature started to diminish. Now I surf full time with a wireless broadband service.

But Google has put the life back on the mobiles, thus enabling people like me carry one device less.

The next update for Google’s Android mobile operating system, Android 2.2 (codename: Froyo) will support data tethering via USB and Wi-Fi. The tethering function will let one share their phone’s data connection with other devices. This is exactly what I wanted. One can either hook it up via USB and acting much like a 3G USB dongle, or you can create a Wi-Fi hotspot like the MiFi personal wireless router which is more cool.

This would definitely make my current USB powered wireless modem, obsolete. Hope that Froyo powered devices arrive in India soon and also are affordable.