June Fabrics, the makers of PDANet, today announced that they have acquired FoxFi, the popular Android tethering solution. And, the newly-branded PDANet+ 4.0 is now available.
PDANet+ now incorporates USB and Bluetooth DUN tethering, as well as Wi-Fi tethering on Android 4.0 and earlier versions. It does not work around the blockade that Google added to Android 4.1/4.2, Jelly Bean, which disables the circumvention method that FoxFi used to enable tethering without phoning home to the carrier, to check for a tethering plan.
Before FoxFi was acquired, it pushed out an update that stripped the app of freeware status, and PDANet+ continues that downward slide. PDANet+ is a $6.97 app, not free. But, like FoxFi, it will work for 30 minutes at a time in a trial mode, which requires manual reactivation of tethering every half hour.
It is likely that this sale/transfer of FoxFi to PDANet marks the original team’s giving up of devising a solution to allow unrooted, stock Android Jelly Bean devices to tether over Wi-Fi. While Google benefitted from the evangelism effect of allowing geeks to tether for free (at the ire of carriers, which ultimately led to FCC consent agreements at times)
