Okay, so I’ve been desperately trying to make my phone (Samsung SGH-i780) work as a modem in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) and finally managed to! For those who’ll possibly stumble upon this post and who are interested to know how to make it work – here’s how to do it:
First of all, a small introduction. When you want to use the phone as a modem, you usually connect the phone via USB and then use it as a modem device to dial your ISP to get connected to the internet using pppd, gnome-ppp, etc.
Well, I’ve spent hours trying to define my i780 as a modem… But I was surprised to know that all you really need to do is:
- Connect the phone via USB
- On the phone: Start->Programs->Internet Sharing (Note: you must have at least one profile for connecting to the internet and this is usually being taken care of by your carrier. When you insert the sim card, you essentially receive all settings via Push-message)
- Choose internet connection to use and click ‘Connect’
And this is literally all you need – your computer should be connected to the internet. The phone is presented with one of eth devices (eth2 in my case) in the system. No pppd nightmare, no nothing – it’s that simple 
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