littlej

Hey All,

I have a Droid with Verizon, and I have been looking into how to root and create a wi-fi hotspot for your laptop. I am new at all of this, and am looking for more detail about it all and hopefully some help!

So my main questions are....

Is it possible to create a hotspot without having to root your phone? If so, how would I go about doing this?

Is Verizon going to charge me a bunch of money if I try to do this?

If I am a newer Droid user, is it smart for me to root my phone?

And what are the capabilities once you do root your phone... or I guess, what is the difference from having a rooted vs. a non rooted phone?



Thanks for all who reply! I really really appreciate it!

NiceGuysFinishLast

1. Yes, you can make a hotspot without root. You have to use VZW's app, and they charge you $20 for 4GB(I think) per month. To do it for free, you have to root.
2. VZW has recently been sending emails to people who are using unauthorized tethering, threatening to add the $20 to their bill. It seems they're cracking down on it. I personally haven't done it in months since I started seeing warnings show up on various forums.
3. Rooting is easy, painless, and doesn't actually change a single thing about your phone, except what YOU can do with it.

For the actual differences, try googling (or just typing into the search on this forum) "why should I root my phone?" This has literally been beat to death, and you'll get more information that way than I could type out here. Quick examples of things you can't do without rooting: over/under clocking, changing ROMs, using TitaniumBackup, taking screen shots of your phone, using the internal memory on your phone (though I don't think your OG droid has much internal). There's more than I could ever list, and plenty of threads with lists of apps to try. Try going to the market (or appbrain.com if you like to see things on your computer) and typing in "root" to get an idea of what kinds of root applications there are.