Battery life is a huge issue plaguing the Palm Pre. Using My Tether to enable your (PhoneNews.com tested, FCC approved) Wi-Fi tethering doesn’t help. While downloading files, you actually can wind up draining more power than what USB can provide. If this sounds familiar, you may have been using the HTC Mogul/Titan… it was the last device in recent history to suffer a similar fate.
Fortunately, Palm did work in enough power management to allow Bluetooth PAN to tether, and at least keep the battery where it is while charging. You won’t suffer battery drain while using your phone as modem.
So, how do you get My Tether to talk to Bluetooth PAN? It’s actually already supported. Just toggle over to USB and hit the On switch, enabling My Tether over USB. The device will power cycle (necessary to enable Palm’s USBNet service). After that, all you need to do is pair your laptop, and connect to Bluetooth PAN.
(Be sure to go back to My Tether and turn USB tethering on, before switching on the Bluetooth PAN connection on your laptop. Otherwise, the connection will fail.)
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Bonus Tip: Unlike My Tether Wi-Fi, you can shut the screen off completely. Pressing the sleep/power button will not interrupt a My Tether Bluetooth PAN session… saving even more power.
Nice. This is exactly the kind of application and consumer functionality that the new FCC Net Nutrality rules are expressly designed to protect. ESPECIALLY for Wireless.
I can only hope the Republican-sponsored bill to cut off funding for this FCC initiative DIES a a slow, horrible death.
Yea, i was reading on the net neutrality rules. ATT and Verizon are both going to fight it saying that the wireless networks wont be able to handle all the traffic if this happens. My answer to that is, make the networks better and more efficient. Plus with 4g around the corner this shouldn’t be a problem. Im all for allowing the pre and all other great smartphones out there to be free to do what they were intended for, a Great Web expirience.