Pretty Amazing! Used my cell phone for online gaming

[Doggiedog]

My cable modem seems to be down and just for kicks I decided to tether my Sprint phone to my desktop.

I tried out Left 4 Dead 2 and I got pings of about 150ms and the game worked quite well.

I was pleasantly surprised. I never thought it would work.

 

[Schadenfroh]

That is about what I used to get on a good day in my dialup days with Quake I. Nice to see that you can play FPShooters with it. I thought one would be limited to WoW's auction house.... which is where I spent most of my time anyway.

 

[Raduque]

I used to use my cellphone's EDGE connection to play Eve on my laptop It worked surprisingly well.

 

[Karsten]

As long as it is not twich gaming even wireless works... sweet! I need to keep that in mind when my comcast goes down the next time!

 

[Doggiedog]

I think Sprint caught on.

My connection stopped working and my phone said connection dropped by the source.

Oh well...

 

[dguy6789]

Are there any special cables or devices you have to purchase to connect your computer to your cell phone and use your cell phone's internet connection? Will just connecting the two via usb be all you need to do on the hardware end?

 

[Elcs]

Are there any special cables or devices you have to purchase to connect your computer to your cell phone and use your cell phone's internet connection? Will just connecting the two via usb be all you need to do on the hardware end?

Typically no special cable is needed.

For my old LG phone it required an LG application to be installed via disc to work and dial up. I have no idea about ms but I got about 400kbps speed out of the line and that was 2 years ago.

With my HTC Blackstone and my new HTC Leo, both running WinMo 6.5, they have an Internet Sharing application on them which allows you to plug in via USB cable provided with the phone (cable does charger/file transfer/internet sharing) and it simply dials up for the net.

Depending on your phone's OS, you may be able to locate a free internet connection bandwidth monitor to make sure you do not exceed any fair use conditions with your service provider.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Are there any special cables or devices you have to purchase to connect your computer to your cell phone and use your cell phone's internet connection? Will just connecting the two via usb be all you need to do on the hardware end?

Depends on the phone, you'll want to make a thread in the gadgets/phone section and ask.

 

[ImDonly1]

Many windows mobile phones allow you to tether through a usb cable or some can even turn the phone into a wifi router.

The one thing to look out for is the carrier detecting it. If they do they can charge you close to $1000 depending how much data you used. Verizon and other foreign (European, Canadian) cellphone companies run software on the phone in the background without you knowing and can tell you are tethered or not. There was some threads on this on ppcgeeks.com a while ago. Sprint doesn't check though. It can be easily removed too.

 

[slightlyhuman]

my rooted g1 turns into wifi. never really use it though.

 

[Doggiedog]

I'm on Sprint SERO so data is unlimited.

My phone is an old HTC Touch with Windows Mobile 6.1. You need a USB cable and Activsynch on the PC or laptop and once it's connected, all you need to do is turn on Internet connection sharing and it works.

It stopped working about an hour after using it though. I'll have to try it again to see if it's actually dead or not.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Careful with doing that on SERO. Yes it has unlimited data, but not in the form of tethering, which is against the TOS. They canceled plenty of accounts for it. And they will use any excuse to get rid of SERO accounts.

Granted I'm on SERO and tether, but don't have the balls to try online gaming...

 

[Doggiedog]

Thanks for the heads up. I didn't know that.

 

[ImDonly1]

Also FYI, it is not really unlimited if you use too much data they will cut you off. I believe the limit is 5GB. Sprint does not have a limit on 4G data though, they say it is really unlimited, but there are no phones with 4G yet only the wireless laptop cards.

 

[xCxStylex]

Verizon are nazis. You must pay an additional fee for tethering before it is permitted, regardless of your data plan.

Thankfully, my work pays for my phone and tethering

I've played TF2 with about 100 ping, it was really good and playable actaully.