I was locked out of the office this morning, I left my keys at home in the rush to get out the door at 6am for a segment on Today Show. Not to worry, as other members of staff arrive at 8:30am. I decided to get breakfast at a café up the road and while doing so tested out some of the new features on the HTC Desire with the new froyo 2.2 up-date.
I love internet tethering. The ability to use my mobile phone’s data connection so my laptop can get online and operate as if I was in the office, is a must-have feature for me. The Desire had the ability to tether via a cable to the USB port of the PC, but with froyo tethering can be done via a micro wifi hotspot created by the phone.
I have used this feature on the Samsung Galaxy S since I got it and have received data throughput speeds of 3MB download and 1.5MB upload. This is ample for most tasks bar video conferencing and heavy file downloads.
Connecting via the Desire is easy. You open the app, punch in a network encryption key (I used the same user name is my PC access) and you have your hot spot. On your PC you turn on your wifi antenna and connect to the wifi signal. You are now online and securely, and don’t need to worry about all the Firesheep security breach potential that can come with the café’s open wifi connection.
I immediately opened Speedtest.net to run a network speed analysis. It burst to 4.5MB download and 1.5MB upload. The time was 8:30am when I ran it, and the area was buzzing with business people going to work, but this is definitely not the most congested time of the day for the network.
All that said, the experience is fantastic. My laptop is extremely snappy with opening and downloading webpages. Trying to up the data congestion through the phone by downloading a YouTube movie and running a patch up-date for Windows 7 (at the same time) are happening quickly. Even adding in the downloading of my email and reading a webpage, the experience is fast.
The HTC Desire wifi hotspot update is part of the Froyo up-date package being pushed out for the Android platform by Telstra (although I am using Optus for the network access). The App allows up to two concurrent connections, which is fine for my notebook PC, and my Galaxy Tab to be connected at the same time.
Well, it’s now 8:45am and the office is open, off to work I go.