I'm am looking at a new phone, but I need to tether it to my laptop, which my N85 does without a problem. Is it true to say with an iPhone I have to pay extra to tether it, but with most other phones (thinking of a HTC Desire) I won't have to pay (apart from a contract with a data allowance)

Cheers,

Not sure on any others, but yes on an iPhone you do have to pay. On O2 it's either £15 or (I think…) £20 for a big chunk of data, but they have also just launched a sort of 'pay-as-you-go' option where you have a £2 a day limit but no monthly contract. Good for if you only use it sporadically. I've just signed up to the latter one and am very impressed with it. Not something I'll use a lot but good to have.

Fooking hell, that sounds expensive! I use tethering every day, is it similar charges for the HTC phones too?

It's a contract restriction, rather than a phone one.

If you were using it sporadically for small amounts of data then it is unlikely they'd spot it in my opinion.

On any suitably-equipped S60 Symbian Nokia, you can use JoikuSpot (free version) to tether.

Works perfectly on my E71 – but it does get quite hot running Wi-Fi and 3G together.

you don't pay extra for data with t-mobile on the i-phone. it's basically an add-on that you have to pay for but you can't not have it (well it's pointless not having it)it's unlimited so would have to go some to piss them off and invoke their fair usage policy.
you can't tether over blutooth though like you can with a nokia but i just use a short usb cable which i prefer as it charges the phone at the same time.

you can't tether over blutooth though like you can with a nokia

http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/tethering.html

well i tried it once and the phone wouldn't talk to the laptop and vice-versa. so didn't bother trying again as the usb cable worked.
put this down to the iphone not being officially available through t-mobile (even though it was purchased through them they don't like to advertise the fact as it pisses apple off)

When you enable tethering on the iphone, what sort of connection it sets up depends on the settings.

Mobile providers set them so they dial into a specific server, thus enabling them to charge you extra.

It is however possible to set an iphone to use it's standard access point for a tethering connection (that you don't/have already paid for). However, it's a little tricky and (I think) requires jail breaking.

On windows mobile, android (and I think nokia) phones, the existing connection point is used, so the mobile provider has no way of knowing if you are tethering or not.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/18/how-to-tether-your-iphone-running-os-3-0-without-jailbreaking/

Oh well, it looks like it's going to be an HTC for me 🙁

Why the 🙁 ?

HTC Desire / Google nexus one is much better than the iphone in my opinion anyway.

T-Mobile state that you are not allowed to tether in their terms and conditions, but I would imagine that is more to discourage people using their phones as their only internerd connection more than anything. I believe they also attempted to get Google to remove a load of tether apps from the Android Market too… not sure if that's still the case, so they don't like it too much. But as stated above, I don't think they can tell you are doing it, unless you start tunning torrents and like through it.

O2 charge as has been stated above…

Vodafone are quite happy for you to tether, but their data-allowances can be quite low..

I've got no idea about Orange…

Oh, and nothing wrong with HTC, I got a Desire on Saturday and it's very lovely indeed…

Thanks for the info. I looked at vodafones pricing for iphone tethering, and if I understand correctly it would be quite expensive to do on a regular basis. I like the look of the HTC, the only thing that's putting me off is the cost of the 32gb memory card (£100(ish)). I might run it with the 4gb card for a couple of months till the cost of the 32gb cards drops.

HTC on Orange

No extra other than my plan data