I'm wondering if anyone manages to live without a home internet connection and just use their cell phone's browser. I'm with Verizon and am considering getting a Droid with an unlimited data plan and cutting my home internet service to save a little money - $30 for Verizon versus $40-50 for home internet. My wife uses her blackberry way more than our computer. Would the connection be too slow for viewing TV shows and youtube videos? I don't play online games so that's not an issue.

6/3/2010 9:35:22 AM

if you get full bars at your house, it's probably not bad.

6/3/2010 12:05:26 PM

probably depends on how often you're on the internet and what you're doing.

I couldn't go with just my blackberry. I have a pc in my room and a laptop that I use downstairs via wireless. I will use my BB fairly often in lieu of the laptop if i'm just looking something up real quick. Anything that's gonna take some time, and I turn on the laptop or go upstairs. Same with anything I want to actually get a good look at.

I sure as heck wouldn't watch a tv show on a droid, or any phone for that matter. But that's me.

So no, I couldn't go without internet. Although, I use it fairly extensively for work purposes - or have in the past. But, I went without cable for yrs... so it just depends on what you do and what you spend your time doing.

My recommendation: Keep your internet for now and try not to use it at all. only use your phone for a few weeks - month. If it works out, cut it off.

6/3/2010 3:34:45 PM

My parents do this. They live out in the sticks so they still had dial-up. Got the promotion with the palm pre plus where you get free wifi tethering. Works out great for them.

6/3/2010 4:13:42 PM

Quote :

"I sure as heck wouldn't watch a tv show on a droid, or any phone for that matter. But that's me. "

I'm not gonna put words in the OP's mouth here, but I didn't assume that he meant he was going actually use his phone for surfing and just pack his computers away.

You do know you can use cell phones like modems, and share the internet with your computer, right?

6/3/2010 4:20:44 PM

I think I use my droid more for general web browsing than my computer. The screen is large enough to browse comfortably and watch the occasional youtube video. If you're going to tether it to your a laptop to watch sites like hulu, it'll depend on how good your signal is. My parents have a Verizon Mifi in a poor signal area and it does a decent job of streaming online stuff but likes to buffer occasionally. The legal tethering method (not available on the droid yet) runs $30 on top of the $29.99 data plan and is only for 5GB/month. You could use pdanet or root and use wireless tether but I wouldn't go overboard on the tv shows. Browsing on the phone itself is "unlimited" for all intents and purposes but they could easily assume your violating your TOS by tethering if you're using a lot of data each month. Also don't forget that you can't use internet and talk on the phone at the same time. So if you receive a call, your data connection is gone.

6/3/2010 6:11:41 PM

Just don't do it if you have AT&T, starting on 7 June.

6/3/2010 6:56:43 PM

whenever cell phones have 24" screens I'll switch

6/3/2010 7:18:27 PM

Quote :

"You do know you can use cell phones like modems, and share the internet with your computer, right?"

I did. But I don't know anyone that does it. I guess because most of the people I know either have an ISP or just don't really use the internet. So I don't really have any first hand experience with it or how well it really works. I know how slow things can load for me on my bb tour through verizon sometimes. that kind of speed would drive me crazy for what I use the internet for and the extent to which I do so.

And am I wrong that tethering is somewhat limited depending on the provider?

6/3/2010 8:57:17 PM

i do about 70% of my internet stuff on my HTC Touch Pro 2
(and 100% of my pron viewing )


the screen is big enough and clear enough to handle most stuff comfortably, including TWW. Actually, 90% of my posting on TWW these days i do on the phone.

I can watch youtube videos just fine.

it all depends on what you plan on doing online with your phone, and what websites you frequent the most. i dont consider my phone my computer per se. It's more like a smaller netbook.

6/4/2010 2:03:11 AM

It's good that people out in the sticks somewhere can get good cell phone service for tethering.. my folks live out in the sticks and have poor Internet AND cell reception. Well, Internet's gotten a bit better.

I only do tethering when I'm on the subway, but it's great, I tell ya.

6/5/2010 10:11:53 AM

Quote :

"that kind of speed would drive me crazy for what I use the internet for and the extent to which I do so. And am I wrong that tethering is somewhat limited depending on the provider?"

At my parents house they can only get 1.5 Mbps DSL max. I usually get close to double that when I tether to my iPhone.

6/5/2010 10:17:26 AM

i've been tethering my laptop to my phone on verizon while my cable has been out. for the most part its fine, but some large websites are a little sluggish. streaming video is ok but it buffers occasionally.

i would say to add it for a month and try tethering before making the switch completely, a lot of it depends on your location.

6/5/2010 10:46:56 AM

Just for a moment, I'd like us all to stop and marvel at the fact that tethering wirelessly to the Internet is even possible.



God damn, I love the future.



Back to the thread.

6/5/2010 11:56:01 AM

i've been doing that shit for like 10 year

although it was like dialup speeds back then

6/5/2010 12:13:01 PM

Yeah, sprint, version and att all had some sort of wireless tethering for business use for quite a while now, but they were godly expensive. I like how the windows smart phones had that feature years before anyone else and no one knew about the app, then here comes apple and people went back into the stone age with a dumb "smart" phone. Gee only took them a little over 3 years to get the phone atleast acceptable to what the tech industry was already getting on other phones, maybe not in a sleek or multi touch interface.

I will be awaiting the 4g HTC with sprint when I get back to Raleigh in a month. Can't wait for that shit. Pretty sure there'd be some hacks on it to have a tethering ability without paying 30 a month. I don't need 8 devices hooking up to my expensive wireless interneting phone.

6/5/2010 2:00:24 PM

i actually used it first on nextel lol

i don't remember much about it though. sometime after that i used it on cingular but if i was tethering my phone wouldn't ring so i'd miss tons of calls without knowing so that was pretty annoying

6/5/2010 2:05:14 PM

reminds me of the dial up days and having only one phone line. That was brief till my dad got an ISDN business line to the house. Oh those were the awesome Low Ping Bastard (LPB) days before broadband took hold.

6/6/2010 2:36:42 AM

I still want an ISDN line for audio stuff

6/6/2010 2:39:48 AM

^haha, my neighbor ponied up for dual ISDN lines - we used to always surf and download files at his house

I needed to download a 'small' file out in the STICKS. Spotty 3G at best, and all they had was dialup. After a quick calculate suddenly that 10MB file was turning into a day-long event

6/6/2010 3:48:36 AM

it was awesome the first time we used ISDN at the house, I invited all my friends over and loaded cisco's website instantly. They were like 'woah'. lol

6/6/2010 3:52:37 AM

I use an HTC Touch Pro with an unlimited data plan from Verizon (on it now) and I use a WinMo program that basically turns my phone into a wifi router with my Verizon data connection. I have RoadRunner too, but whenever I'm on vacation or out sailing or on the road, I can use my phone to get my laptop online, similar to mobile broadband I guess. I suppose I could go without the Roadrunner at home, but I download a lot, so I keep it around. I definitely get my money's worth out of my data plan though.

[Edited on June 6, 2010 at 10:02 AM. Reason : .]

6/6/2010 9:45:33 AM

^^lol i remember my first friend who got roadrunner and was able to dl at like 400kB/sec.. i couldn't believe it actually i didnt even know what it was at that point. unfortunately my parents house still doesnt have access to cable and the DSL that is available is awful. i get maybe 100kB/sec downloads there at best

6/6/2010 1:12:19 PM

yeah, when roadrunner first came to our neighborhood, we were one of the first ones to get it. 10+ megs download and actually faster than 44KB upload before they put the cap on.

6/6/2010 2:05:43 PM