Turn your Windows Mobile phone into a wireless hotspot!

Despite 2007 (and most likely 2008) being the year of the iPhone, some of us are still loyal to Microsoft and the Windows Mobile platform.

The current lineup of Windows Mobile devices are actually pretty good and more reliable than previous generations.

Every operator in the US has at least one Windows Mobile powered device, some even 3 or 4.

Since the first Windows powered phones were released there has always been a way to “tether” them. Tethering essentially turns it into a modem, that allows you to piggyback off your cellular connection using a desktop or laptop computer.

When Windows Mobile 6 was launched, Microsoft decided to upgrade the technology behind “tethering”. They removed the limited modem connection and replaced it with the “Internet Connection Sharing” application (ICS).

Sadly, ICS has a few drawbacks. It requires the Bluetooth “Personal Area Network” profile on your PC, or a USB connection. Neither of which are very practical, plus there are quite a few devices that just don’t support the Personal Area Network method. In my experience it’s also quite unreliable to connect using Bluetooth, on my Sprint device it disconnects every 5 or 6 minutes.

This is where “WMWiFiRouter” comes to the rescue. This amazing program turns your (WiFi enabled) Windows Mobile phone into a wireless hotspot.

You’ll need a few things to be able to use WMWiFiRouter; a compatible Windows Mobile device with WiFi and a cellular plan that allows data connections.

Before you go on, the developer has made a list of devices known to work with WMWiFiRouter:

Tested and confirmed to work:

• HTC TyTN II (Kaiser / Tilt / MDA Vario III / P4550)
• HTC Mogul (Titan / XV6800 / PPC6800 / P4000)
• HTC Hermes (MDA Vario II / Dopod 838pro / 8525)
• HTC P3600i
• HTC S710 (Vox)
• HTC Polaris (Touch Cruise)
• HTC Universal (Qtek 9000 / MDA Pro / SPV M5000 / Xda Exec / JASJAR all on Windows Mobile 6)
• HTC Apache (XV6700 on Windows Mobile 6)
• Samsung i600
• Samsung i760

Tested and does not work:

• HTC S620 (T-Mobile Dash)
• Samsung i730
• Samsung i780

Once you’ve confirmed that you have the right phone, getting the application working is actually quite simple. Previous versions required some manual tweaking of your phone (and PC), but the most recent version does almost all the hard work for you.

Step 1 – Download the program

The homepage of the author can be found here. You have several ways of getting it on your device.

The easiest way is to point your browser to the CAB download link. Email the link to your phone and click on it, and your browser will download and install the application. You can also opt for downloading the .exe or .zip versions and installing it using Activesync/Mobile Device Center (on Vista). In all cases please make sure you have WiFi on before starting the installer (don’t ask me why, it’s just a requirement of the program).

Step 2 – Start and configure the program

Start the WMWiFiRouter program. You’ll find it in your programs list.

In order to make connecting to the device a little easier, we’ll have to change a few settings in the program.

Click on options, configuration, then enable “Use DHCP Allocator”.

This allows the PDA to automatically configure certain parts of the connection you’ll be setting up on your PC.

Without it, you’d need to manually configure the IP address, the Gateway and your DNS address, so this makes life quite a bit easier.

Step 3 – Connect to the phone using WiFi.

The next step is an easy one, it involves turning on your PC and configuring the connection to your phone.

Open whatever you use to find and connect to WiFi networks. You’ll see a network called “WMWiFiRouter”, that is your phone!

Connect to that network, open your browser and check if the connection works. To be sure you are using your phone, and not still connected to a different WiFi network, click on this link. That will take you to the “DSL Reports mobile speed test”, and more importantly, it will show your IP address.

You’ll see “IP address” followed by “DNS”. The DNS will show the name of the provider you are currently using. It will say something like “mycingular.com” for Cingular, “vzw.com” for Verizon, “spcdns.com” for Sprint or anything else that mentions your carrier.

Next, run a speed test on the same site to check the speed of your connection. If you are using T-mobile or a different provider with (slow) GPRS or EDGE, you’ll see results under 150kbps. ATT when using a 3G phone should be around 500kpbs, Verizon and Sprint (when using EVDO) should be around 650kpbs. Of course, these are average speeds, your mileage may (and will) vary depending on your location, and how busy the network is.

And that brings us to a very important message. Unless your plan specifically says that it is ok to “tether” always be careful how often you use this. Most providers do not permit tethering, even though it usually works. In reality, Sprint and ATT won’t bother you. T-mobile dedicated data plans are fine, but Verizon is a real stickler when it comes to using their data for anything other than browsing on the phone itself. People have been disconnected for using too much. So, keep it light, don’t download too much, stay away from streaming video and most important of all; don’t use any P2P applications when tethered.

Step 4 – Secure the connection before doing anything else.

Up till now everything we did was using an unsecured WiFi connection between your phone and PC. That’s fine for a simple test, but it’s not a good idea for anything else you plan to do. Thankfully it’s very simple to enable security on the connection.

	Step 1:Open your “settings” panel and select the “connections” tab.
	Step 2:Hold down your stylus on the WMWiFiRouter connection, and select “edit”
	Step 3:Skip the first page, and on the second page select the level of encryption you want.WPA is the safest option, and the one I recommend, but if you have no other options you can also pick WEP, it’s better than nothing.Select a Network Key (and remember it!). Then click Next to save the settings.

Next time you connect using your laptop, you’ll be prompted for the network key you just entered.

Your machine will remember that key, so this is the only time you should have to enter it.

If something goes wrong…

It’s not completely impossible that something will go wrong, that the program doesn’t work, or that you simply don’t understand my ramblings (half the time I don’t either). Thankfully WMWiFiRouter has the support of the excellent XDA Developers community; this large group of developers, users and fanatics are a friendly bunch so feel free to post any questions you have on their board.

Finally; I’d like to thank the author of the program, it really has helped make tethering to my phone much easier, and I am confident it will do the same for you. When you are on his homepage, please consider sending him a donation for his hard work. I’ve watched this program grow from a messy application into a stable and well designed program, and that hard work deserves to be rewarded.