# Orange, android and creating wifi hotspots



## fractionMan (Jan 11, 2013)

Just a quick note to anyone considering the above combination. Orange have deliberately crippled the wi-fi hotspot functionality on the android phones they ship. It affects all HTCs with android 4.1 as far as I can tell. I've got a HTC one X which is otherwise a great phone.  It probably affects other devices.

Fortunately there's a workaround but it took me bloody ages to get it to work.


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## Mapped (Jan 11, 2013)

It works fine on my Orange Samsung S2. Maybe it's an Orange+HTC issue?

I think they charge extra for tethering on an iPhone as well.


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## fractionMan (Jan 11, 2013)

Have you upgraded the OS?  People are reporting that it happens when they upgrade.


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## mrs quoad (Jan 11, 2013)

Mapped said:


> It works fine on my Orange Samsung S2. Maybe it's an Orange+HTC issue?
> 
> I think they charge extra for tethering on an iPhone as well.


t-mobile do, too.

I wonder about the extent to which it might be contract-specific? IMU, the way that it works on t-mobile is, erm... it's effectively remotely enabled / disabled. I can switch wi-fi hotspot on, but I *think* that if I do that in a given month, I'll receive an extra £7 on my bill (whether I use ten billion terabytes or 3kb of data).


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## gentlegreen (Jan 11, 2013)

What is this used for ?
Sharing with friends down the pub ?


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## Mapped (Jan 11, 2013)

fractionMan said:


> Have you upgraded the OS? People are reporting that it happens when they upgrade.


 
I haven't. Mainly because I hate that piece of shit software Kies and everything I need works well without the upgrade.

This sounds like one more reason not to upgrade.


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## Mapped (Jan 11, 2013)

gentlegreen said:


> What is this used for ?
> Sharing with friends down the pub ?


 
You can connect your PC to 3G internet whilst out and about


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## joustmaster (Jan 11, 2013)

gentlegreen said:


> What is this used for ?
> Sharing with friends down the pub ?


Connecting a laptop/pc/another phone to the internet through a wifi link to your phone.


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## joustmaster (Jan 11, 2013)

fractionMan said:


> Just a quick note to anyone considering the above combination. Orange have deliberately crippled the wi-fi hotspot functionality on the android phones they ship. It affects all HTCs with android 4.1 as far as I can tell. I've got a HTC one X which is otherwise a great phone.  It probably affects other devices.
> 
> Fortunately there's a workaround but it took me bloody ages to get it to work.


What did you do? Sick another rom on it?


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## fractionMan (Jan 11, 2013)

gentlegreen said:


> What is this used for ?
> Sharing with friends down the pub ?


 
It's my main internet connection.


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## fractionMan (Jan 11, 2013)

joustmaster said:


> What did you do? Sick another rom on it?


 
Luckily you can do it without so much faff or root access.

What you do is create a new APN (access point name), copying all the information from the existing one. You then add in a username and password (Orange & Multimedia) and force it to use your access point definition. You can't edit the existing ones, presumably because orange have locked them down.

It took me ten minutes to work out how to get to the APN configuration screen


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## fractionMan (Jan 11, 2013)

Mapped said:


> I haven't. Mainly because I hate that piece of shit software Kies and everything I need works well without the upgrade.
> 
> This sounds like one more reason not to upgrade.


 
I upgraded straight away (to android 4.1) so never tried it out of the box on 4.0.


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## joustmaster (Jan 11, 2013)

fractionMan said:


> Luckily you can do it without so much faff or root access.
> 
> What you do is create a new APN (access point name), copying all the information from the existing one. You then add in a username and password (Orange & Multimedia) and force it to use your access point definition. You can't edit the existing ones, presumably because orange have locked them down.
> 
> It took me ten minutes to work out how to get to the APN configuration screen


nice workaround


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## Mapped (Jan 11, 2013)

fractionMan said:


> I upgraded straight away (to android 4.1) so never tried it out of the box on 4.0.


 
I'm still on 3.2. The shitness of Kies has put me off upgrading entirely.


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## fractionMan (Jan 11, 2013)

Ah, not used that.

In fact, I never really plug my phone into my PC.


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## gentlegreen (Jan 11, 2013)

fractionMan said:


> It's my main internet connection.


Oops - forgot they don't offer WIFI down the canal.


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## souljacker (Jan 11, 2013)

Mapped said:


> I'm still on 3.2. The shitness of Kies has put me off upgrading entirely.



Every post that slags off kies or Mark Larewnson gets a like from me.


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## Mr Smin (Jan 13, 2013)

Bought my Ace sim-free exactly to avoid this sort of crap. Glad people have posted their workarounds though as I always have them in mind if I ever get phone from a network in future.


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Jan 13, 2013)

Worth noting that if you get a phone from a third party company on contract you normally get the sim free model with no bloatware or restrictions.


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## mwgdrwg (Jan 13, 2013)

They've done the same to my Blackberry even though it has wi-fi hotspot functionality and I have a 500mb dataplan. When i phoned up the cunts they said I had to pay £1 a day or other such bollocks.


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