Must Have Android App: EasyTether Lite

EasyTether Lite is a free Android tethering application that allows you to share your Android smart phone’s internet connection with your computer or laptop. Using this application with your laptop allows you to hop on the web anywhere your phone has an internet connection.

I installed EasyTether Lite on my Android a few weeks ago and am already in love. The process is very easy to set up. You can access and download EasyTether Lite from the Android market to install on your phone. Once this is complete, you will be provided with a link to download the corresponding software onto your laptop. You will need internet access on your laptop to download the drivers; if you don’t have internet access you can use free Wi-Fi services at places like McDonald’s and Starbucks. If these are not an option for you, the EasyTether Lite application will walk you through the process of downloading the driver to your phone and transferring it to your laptop using a USB cable.

Once you have the application installed on both your phone and your laptop, connect the two together using a USB cable. You will have a small icon on your laptop screen to connect to the internet using your Android phone. Once you click the icon to connect, you’re online! It’s a fairly simple process and works like a charm.

I was very excited the first time I got to try it out. My husband and I were running errands and I was able to hop online while riding down the highway in the passenger seat. The pages load a tad slower than using a DSL connection at home, they load about as quickly as pages load when accessing directly on my phone.

Be aware that if you have a limited data plan, using this application will probably eat our your available megabytes fairly quickly. One reason is that when accessing websites on your Android phone, sites that have a mobile view will load that view by default. When you access on your laptop by tethering with EasyTether Lite, pages will load in their full, data rich view. Therefore checking your Yahoo email will use more data on your laptop by opening in the full blown view of the site, while checking your Yahoo email will use less data from your phone by opening in the mobile view. Be sure to monitor your data usage and use EasyTether Lite sporadically if you have a limited data plan so you’re not slammed with overage charges.

EasyTether Lite is free, however the developer offers a paid version simply called EasyTether. While EasyTether Lite blocks secure sites (sites that begin with https:// as opposed to http://), the paid version EasyTether allows access to secure sites.

EasyTether Lite is absolutely a must have free app for all Android users who like to access the internet on the go. Many other users agree with me, as EasyTether Lite has been downloaded over a million times and has four and a half stars out of five from over 15,000 users as of April 2011.

Sources:
EasyTether Lite, Android Market
EasyTether for Android, EasyTether – Android Tether Solution