Does your ping look like this when using Android’s sweet USB tethering feature? I tried lots of things:

• Disabling/Enabling USB Tethering
• Disconnecting/Reconnecting the USB cable
• Restarting the phone
• Disabling/Enabling the network interface on the computer
• Restarting the computer

All of this got me exactly no where. The phone is still connected to the interwho, but it’s just not sharing it with my laptop. So sad. So, thinking a little bit more laterally (read as, poking around looking for a sign from the gods), I tried toggling the data access of the phone. This means going to Menu > Wireless & networks > Mobile network settings > Data enabled and unchecking the box.

Why does it make sense to turn off data when what you want is data? Well… it doesn’t. But, if you then turn the data back on, the phone may well realize that it has been fraudulently denying your poor computer all the data goodness the marvelous (if mystifying) Android platform promises.  I say “may well” because with the fragmentation of the Android market and the amount of irresponsible hackery the carriers subject the OS to, this may not actually fix your problem though it fixes mine. I’m using a vanilla-tainted-by-T-Mobile-and-LG version of Android 2.3 running on the T-Mobile G2X. This phone also goes by the name of Optimus 2X. Soon enough I’ll ditch it for the Galaxy Nexus, but I digress.

This what I get trying to ping after turning back on the “Enable Data” option. Hooray. All it took was doing an action equivalently counterintuitive to the famous “Oh you want to shut down? First, go to start…” paradigm. At least this one is unintentional.

Also, you may be wondering why on earth I would be using USB Tethering when my phone provides WiFi Hotspot capability. The answer is that I’ve found the latency to be lower and the signal to be more consistent using USB Tethering. The bandwidth is also higher, which I suppose makes sense because one phone using the same wireless antenna for sending and receiving data probably isn’t sending as fast as it could be. I should be careful to specify that I don’t actually know that is what’s happening. Anyway, USB Tethering gives me a faster connection. The other perk is that my laptop, which I’m going to plug in when I get to work, can power the phone while it’s on USB Tethering. With WiFi Hotspotting, I’m pretty guaranteed to drain my phone to the point where I will have to plug it in to make it through the day. There you have it.