Bluetooth Tether with Droid X and Droid 2
For the longest time, I have been fixated on tethering my PC to my Droid phone to access the Internet via WiFi that I overlooked an obvious way to make this work using Bluetooth. This process uses the built in features in the Android OS and no app is necessary to make this work. You can use your phone to access the Internet with your Notebook with the built in Android tools without adding anything to it.
First, you need to pair you phone with your notebook. Go into the phone’s Bluetooth Settings and set the phone to be discoverable (will start a countdown to make it discoverable for the next minute or so). Then go to your PC’s Bluetooth Icon in the System Tray and add a new device. Your phone should show up at on that list when your PC searches for it and it will have you go through a pairing process to connect the phone to the PC (you will probably need to enter a randomly generating number on the PC into the phone).
When this is done, you will see your phone shows up in Devices and Printers on the PC and you can right click on this this phone, select Connect using -> Access point. Viola, you are now connected to the Internet! When you are done, right click on the phone and disconnect. Note if a voice call comes in, you will lose connection to the Internet. The Droid X (Verizon) cannot use the phone service and data service at the same time. The call will come in if someone calls you, but the data service will drop during the call.
I have tried this and found it works with the following configurations:
PC:
- Windows 7 SP1
Phones:
- Motorola Droid X on Gingerbread
- Motorola Droid 2 on Froyo
