Filed under: Hardware, Wireless, How-tos, Mods
How To: Tether a Samsung BlackJack to get your Mac online
About a month ago I swallowed the poison and picked up a Cingular BlackJack, a new Windows Mobile Smartphone (I know, I know). I had been looking to step up to some sort of a PDA phone so I can surf and keep on top of WIN/TUAW business without having a MacBook sewn to my head, and so far it's been working out well. The one thing I haven't been able to figure out yet is how to use this cutting-edge HSPDA phone (a new high-speed wireless data network) as a modem - until now. While cruising Smartphone Thoughts (a good resource for other WinMo5 users in the audience) and their forums, I found this post at Mobility Today by David Ciccione that describes how to use a BlackBerry 3G Driver (of all things) to tether a BlackJack to a Mac for getting online. It isn't a simple process, but I just went through the paces and can confirm - it works.
Now before you run off and start tethering your BlackJack to your Mac all over the place, I want to add a few things to Mr. Ciccione's awesome work so everyone in our diverse audience knows what they're getting into. First off: if you don't have the proper data plan with Cingular, I have no idea if or how much they'll charge you per KB or MB for connecting, even if you're just testing this out. Try this at your own risk - we can't be responsible if you connect and start downloading movies from the iTunes Store, only to get a $300 bill for data next month. Call Cingular, like I did, before you goof around with this to make sure you have the right data plan. For what it's worth, I have the $20/month Smartphone unlimited data plan, which gets to fly under the radar of their ~$50 PDA data plan since it's a 'Smartphone' instead of a full-blown Pocket PC phone or data card for a notebook.
Continue reading after the jump for some add-on tips and gotchas to make this a smooth and worthwhile process.
Upon connecting the phone, you should see a new "Samsung CDMA Technologies" item under your available network ports in the Network System Preference pane (before you ask: I have no idea why the title is 'CDMA' when this is a GSM phone and service). After your first successful connection online, it should also get listed as an always-available port, right next to AirPort (like my screenshot here) and any other ports you have used in the past.
I would also like to add a 'step 11' to David's instructions, as the end of his post gets a little unclear, at least to me. In the Modem tab of the Network pane's configuration, be sure to check 'Show modem status in menu bar' (if you haven't already), otherwise you might have to use something like the Internet Connection app (in your Applications folder) to toggle your connection and get online. If all goes well though, you can select 'Connect' from the menubar item to get online. For me, connecting was pretty quick, though speeds aren't exactly like the ~ 6Mbps Comcast high-speed I enjoy at home. That might also be due to my residence just outside of Denver, CO, where we haven't risen to the ranks of HSPDA quiet yet. Fortunately though, I hear San Francisco is all but drowning in the high-speed wireless network, which means I can use this to get online during Mr. Jobs' keynote at Macworld '07.
So that, in a not-so-nutshell, should do it for getting your Mac online with a Cingular BlackJack. I have no idea if this will work with other phones, but if you have questions about this process or the BlackJack itself (which I'm really happy with, considering), feel free to fire away in the comments.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
leapinglemur said 9:12PM on 12-14-2006
Nice. I tether my MOTOKRZR K1m that i have with verizon to my MacBook Pro and i love it. It's not technically supported for me, either, but it works. Howardforums.com helps a lot if you have a phone you want to tether or mod.
I love having my phone DUN and get me internet anywhere. It's cool. Great to see the blackjack can do that.
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Sam said 9:15PM on 12-14-2006
Yawn. I've been tethering with this method for like a month now since I got this phone. I hook it up to my carputer. The real challenge is to get bluetooth tethering working. Find that out and post a story and then I'll be impressed.
As for tethering, if you have an unlimited plan, and you are using wap.cingular as your APN, you will not get charged. If you do, they will remove the charge. If they decide you're not on the right plan, they might drop you from it or make you upgrade, but they will not charge you for data if you have an unlimited plan and you are using wap.cingular. Unless they made a mistake.
If you're interested in BT tethering, then check out this thread for the ongoing bounty:
http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1054805
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adam said 9:17PM on 12-14-2006
it says samsung cdma because HSDPA is a technology that falls under the grander category of WCDMA which is the whole 3g category of data connections for GSM phones
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Tony Barnhill said 10:01PM on 12-14-2006
I tether to my Smartphone from my MBP over bluetooth with no problem. Wouldn't it be the same for the BlackJack? I have a T-mobile SDA.
Here's how:
http://justinblanton.com/2006/01/mac-os-x-windows-mobile-bluetooth-modem
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ECHO said 10:05PM on 12-14-2006
It'd be cool to tether my Samsung A990 to my powerbook and use the EV-DO access, but knowing Verizon it will probably cost a fortune and I'm not even sure if my crippled bluetooth will allow data access. The sacrifices you make for decent call quality... ::shakes head::
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Sam said 10:27PM on 12-14-2006
"I tether to my Smartphone from my MBP over bluetooth with no problem. Wouldn't it be the same for the BlackJack?"
Unfortunately not. The blackjack does not support the bluetooth DUN profile as it has the latest version of WM5 which has the PAN profile instead. Guess what - OS X doesn't support the PAN profile.
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ilmari said 1:05AM on 12-15-2006
if you can find all the appropriate intel can you do any kind of mac/blackberry info because i got a pearl and the blackberry community is less than informative about how to get msupport for my mac
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Alex said 1:40AM on 12-15-2006
Ho Hum, this is so last years ago. Anyway you should have just bought a Treo, PalmOS version. Ages ago.
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Borsch said 7:16AM on 12-16-2006
Are you sure you are connecting to the HSPDA network and not the regular EDGE network? Did you add on the $20 extra/month Medianet plan or something else? I didn't know they had a smartphone HSDPA tethering service for only an extra $20/month. If so, thats an incredibly good deal.
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tnkgrl said 3:20AM on 12-15-2006
I've been tethering my BlackJack with my MacBook (via USB) and with my OQO (via both USB and Bluetooth PAN) since I picked it up about a month ago (the day it was released)...
So this is nothing new. What would be new and exciting is a hack for OS X to support Bluetooth PAN (Windows XP is ahead here, shudder) so I could enjoy Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (which both the BlackJack and MacBook support)!
Alternatively, a hack for Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU3 devices (like the BlackJack) to support Bluetooth DUN would be welcome as well :)
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NICCAI said 6:26AM on 12-15-2006
RIM is suing Samsung for trademark over this phone also.....
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David Chartier said 8:15AM on 12-15-2006
Guys, please stop with the "oh I've been doing this for a year standing on my head cuz I had this phone before Samsung even designed it" comments. Besides sounding like an arrogant ass, you aren't providing anything useful to the conversation. You didn't even link any instructions or tips, regardless of whether you figured this out for your self.
This is a brand new phone, and a Windows Smartphone which the Mac community typically doesn't deal with much in the first place. If you've been 'doing this for a month' - congratulations. Believe it or not, the greater majority of people have yet to buy this phone and tinker with it. While this may be old news to you, it isn't to the rest of us.
Either get off your pedestal to help, or stay up there and let us get back to the conversation.
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phi said 1:20PM on 12-15-2006
someone needs to figure out how to tether the T-mobile Dash properly to OSX! I'm dying here!
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Alan said 12:28PM on 12-15-2006
Nice, good work David.
And Alex, I know that Palm doesn't have an HSPDA phone... D'oh!
One thing I have found from Cingular is that if you are connecting to certain services and you're on the Smartphone data plan, they will charge you additional. I used my company Treo last July to access the internet and downloaded some files, but a month later I got a call from our Telecommunications manager saying that we were billed $300 additional because of that. Cingular has an unlimited plan for computers that apparently removes this restriction... So I would check your bill online just in case... it may have changed.
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Nick said 12:37PM on 12-15-2006
Be careful of what data plan you are on, ulimited data plans are for data use on the phone, not for lap top connections. If they find out you are using a ton of data because you are tethering it to your laptop they can and will back date charged and rape your wallet.
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tnkgrl said 3:10PM on 12-15-2006
David, I apologize for coming across dismissive, but the information you posted really is readily available on Howard's forums.
Also I supplied a link to my blog where I've documented tethering the BlackJack with OS X (just click on my name).
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David Chartier said 5:19PM on 12-15-2006
#16: tnkgrl, that isn't the point. There are a *ton* of people who either have no clue what Howard Forums are or don't want to deal with them. Our job as news aggregators and bloggers is to sift through all this stuff and bring as much of it as we can into the light. Sometimes it's a month late, and sometimes that's just the way it goes. Because *you* found it a month ago doesn't mean everyone else in the world did too - and that isn't a bad thing. It just means we all need to keep some perspective when dealing with this stuff.
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tnkgrl said 5:03AM on 12-16-2006
Good point, David :)
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Pauld said 6:37AM on 12-16-2006
Hrm, this phone gives my E61 a run for its money. Finally, a 3G phone with Windows Mobile that can be tethered to a MBP!
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Eve Liebi said 2:54PM on 12-19-2006
From what I've seen, Leopard will bring a host of improvements to the Bluetooth stack, including A2DP (for stereo BT audio) and Bluetooth PAN. I've seen the Blackjack tethered via BT in Leopard. While still buggy, it works.
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