Sprint Hero and my experience and bugs with android-wifi-tether (using wireless_tether_2_0-pre5.apk)

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Which device (manufacturer, type)?
Sprint HTC Hero

Which firmware is installed?
Latest stock, rooted with asroot2 from Unlockr
(http://theunlockr.com/2009/11/07/how-to-root-your-cdma-htc-hero-sprint-verizon/
)
- no mods

What version of wireless tether are you using?
wireless_tether_2_0-pre5.apk

I just rooted my Sprint Hero, then installed wireless_tether_2_0-pre5.apk,
which is the latest at the moment.

My experience so far is that everything works great and out of the box -
it's an amazing product, which seems well polished - huge props on that
(donation incoming as soon as I figure out the following problems). I have
no connectivity issues through WiFi whatsoever - it's blazing fast and robust.

After playing with the options and using it for half a day, I do, however,
have the following problems:

  * the most important issue is that when I turn off tether in the app,
there's a big chance the phone will crash and reboot. I hooked it up to
ddms and looked at the logs when it crashed but saw nothing indicating the
reason. I will try to save them next time and post here.

  * the WEP key, if entered and WEP encryption enabled, doesn't do anything
- the connection is still unsecured and never prompts for the key nor shows
anything related to WEP

  * the screen never turns off, no matter what the wake-lock option says.
It always dims after a while, as expected but never goes dark. The only way
it goes dark is if I press the power button

  * it seems that sometimes the connected client list is cached or
remembered longer than it should be and doesn't correspond to the truth.
For example, at one point I had my laptop, my friend's laptop, and some
other signal connected (2 of which I approved in the access list). Then the
phone crashed, we left the train, and arrived to work. I turned tether back
on and the app immediately showed 3 clients connected, whereas that would
be impossible (only my laptop may have connected). This is a minor issue
but worth mentioning.

  * I tried the Bluetooth mode but couldn't figure out how to connect using
it. I pre-paired the phone and the Win7 x64 laptop, but in the connection
options (in the Win7 BT menu), the only options are to connect for audio -
nothing for networking or Internet. I couldn't find related documentation
for this here, so I left it alone for now. It would be really nice to get
it working to save battery though.

Donation incoming, as I mentioned, once the crash is fixed - the rest are
non-critical problems. Thank you for all your work again and let me know if
I can be of further help, at least as a beta tester. 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by archon810 on 19 Feb 2010 at 8:22

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Also, I'd like to add that the Hero still runs Cupcake (1.5) and none of the 
download
links mention Cupcake at all, yet it still works... for the most part. It was a 
bit
confusing to me when I was picking the file to download, so I just went for the 
most
recent one.

Original comment by archon810 on 19 Feb 2010 at 11:10

[GoogleCodeExporter]

*WEP*
Wep-encryption is broken for all hero-devices. We developers don't have such a 
device
available for testing and we were not able to figure out what's going wrong. 
Please
remember: Big parts of the firmware which is used on the hero is closed source 
- that
makes it not easier for us.

*Wake lock*
Tested it with my HTC Magic and it's working fine for me. Please submit a log - 
"adb
logcat".

*Connected Clients*
The information you see in the client-list are taken from the lease-file of the
dhcp-server. When a client disconnects (and it doesn't send a 
DHCP-release-command)
that client will show-up in that list as long the lease is timed-out. So, it 
does not
show connected clients but clients who have received an ip-address and are not
timed-out. After a system-crash an old lease-file is probably readed.

*Bluetooth*
Can't remember if bluetooth was working on Android 1.5. 

The version you have installed is under heavy development - so there are still 
bugs.
Regarding hero: Let's hope Andriod 2.0 is coming soon and this will hopefully 
fix a
lot of those issues.

Original comment by harald....@gmail.com on 20 Feb 2010 at 11:00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for the responses, Harald.

I will try to trace what happens further and provide logs when possible. I have 
a
feeling the crash actually has something to do with enabling WEP. I will test 
more
and report back. If not, do you know what I could do to help you trace the 
crash -
it's really the only critical issue here.

Alternatively, can you recommend the stable version that works on the Hero? 
Perhaps I
can stick to that, as features are not as important as not having phone reboots 
:)

Makes sense about Connected Clients - the only thing is, upon first start is 
there no
way of pinging or checking otherwise if those clients are actually connected 
and not
showing them until they do?

Thank you.

Btw, where you are guys from? I am willing to provide my Hero for testing 
locally
(I'm in San Francisco Bay Area).

Original comment by archon810 on 20 Feb 2010 at 11:22

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Re: phone restart. I think I narrowed this down to having the WEP on. If I 
don't turn
WEP on (which doesn't work anyway, so there's no point at the moment), it no 
longer
crashes the phone on tether stop. Hopefully this will help you narrow it down a 
bit.

Original comment by archon810 on 24 Feb 2010 at 3:22

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by harald....@gmail.com on 25 Feb 2010 at 2:48

• Changed state: WontFix