How to Tether Your Droid 3 W/out Paying Verizon 20.00 a Month ( Possible More Phones). This Include Turning Your Phone Into a Hotspot Too!

Wireless Tethering is one of the main things I searched for in a smart phone. I specifically bought a wifi only Xoom because I knew I could just tether it to my phone. When I switched to the droid 3 believing it would come unlocked it was like a kick in face.

Recently I came across a thread from Team Black Hat describing a way of enabling free tethering on Verizon without root. In their write up they provide . Useless for us as we don't have root, or a recovery, but it got me thinking. All credit for this goes to Team Black Hat. They rock, I really hope they are working on rooting the droid 3 because they are android gods.

I'm not going to go too in depth here, because if you screw up you have the possibility to brick your pretty new device. Also, It goes against your TOS with Verizon, and who knows one day they might work out a way to tell who is doing this. The more people who know and use this trick, the more likely it is they will find some way of detecting and or closing the hole.

But I couldn't help but make an  instructable out of this loophole!  So with the standard disclaimer (I'm not responsible for anything you do, anything that comes of something you do, blah blah, you know the deal) I will outline the steps required to enable free tethering on our wonderful Droid 3s and possibly other phones too!

1st. You need the most recent drivers for your computer so that your computer can see your phone. You can get them off the Motorola website, same as if you were going to use adb or RSDlite. The file I downloaded from the moto support site was called MotoHelper_2.0.49_Driver_5.0.0.exe. and its free!

2nd. You need a copy of Radiocom. Radiocom is a piece of software thats supposed to be for moto employees only and allows you to read and write data directly to your software radio. You need to search the internet for it, because its a copyrighted file I can't post it for you. You need to find the latest version. The best version I found was RadioCOmm_v11.11.11_Install.msi - You also need the .net framework installed on your computer. You can get that from Microsoft's site for free.

Microsoft gives free updates and software for Framework

step 2-A. You need a droid USB cable and a droid 3.

Now... crack a beer or soda if your under 21 and lets get down to business.

1. Install the moto drivers and the .net framework. Install Radiocom. It will give you all sorts of errors, but it will install.

2. Next, find it under your start menu. Right click on it, and select "trouble shoot compatibility" I just ran with the suggested settings. Basically what this does is run the application under XP compatibility mode. Now take a sip of beer, you are gonna get some error messages but don't tweak.

a. You will still get the first screen that says do you want ot the following program from an unknown company to make changes on your computer - check yes.

b. it will say Motorola data-card drivers 1.5.9 : this installation is intended for 32-bit os versions only.please use the 64bit version on this machine. click okay.

c. Installation incomplete: the installer was interrupted before moto data card drivers 1.5.9 could be installed. You need to restart the installer to try again. hit close.

d. Warning: Motorola Datacard Driver installation package version mismatch. the version supplied with this tool does not match the installed version on the machine. WE cannot guarantee proper radio enumeration unless you install the latest version. the installation package will start again the next item this tool is started. Click OK

e. This version of RadioCOmm is more that 2 months old. This version may be out of date. Please visit the PDO compass webpage and download the latest version of RadioComm. - Click OK.

This part varies depending if your running windows 32 bit or 64 bit version of windows 7 

Radiocom will start you will have to select the Chipset at start: I selected CDMA 1x (MSM 7500) w/ Android. I don't know if this is the best or most accurate one. I actually spent 45 minutes trying to search for exactly what our chipset base was... but I decided to be brave (or stupid) and went with this one and it worked. after it boots, Under settings in radiocom, USB, Select PST USB Driver.

Just to note\-I tried it first on a 32 bit version and was unsuccessful , then I tried it on 64 bit version and it worked and really fast

Here's a link to what the radio comm software should look like  http://www.mydroidworld.com/forumimages/RC_Tether_1.jpg

Now, Connect your droid 3 to your computer and put it in PC mode. If you installed the drivers correctly you should get this cool little screen showing your phone and telling you some info about it that pops up from motos software. in radiocom software in the upper right of the screen right under the RC logo, the lgiht should turn green to show the phone is connected. You can test by pushing the GET button under the SW version. It should return your Android software version. DON'T PUSH ANY OTHER BUTTONS. YOU COULD REALLY SCREW SOMETHING UP.

Now a little background, you can read TBH's awesome explanation, but the quick and dirty one is that moto's software radio uses three different 128 char string identifiers for data requests. Thats how they can tell the difference between your phones web browser asking for data, and a laptop or Xoom connected to your phone asking for data. We are going to use Radiocom to make all three strings match the first string - so all data appears to be just for the phone. After doing so - your verizon installed hotspot app will work and the usb tethering option will too! ta da

If you have any questions or cant find the software i can help you out!

PS This SH*T works and its saving me 20.00 a month and I didn't even have to root my phone to do it !!!!