In the past, you did not need to root to tether. You could download and app called Easy Tether or there was another one called PDA net or something like that.
How is the sound quality so far (being that we are on day 2 now)? I am a little concerned about the comments of "scratchy" on the earpiece and "muffled" on the speakerphone.
Not scratchy at all. As for the speakerphone, it sounds pretty loud to me, much louder than the evo 3d, but a bit shy of the photon. Still loud and clear though for the most part with one exception, if you cover the speaker on the back of the phone, there is a DRAMATIC reduction in sound, then it WILL sound muffled, because it is, literally.
My starter case I got from sprint the day of has a hole cut out for the speaker, if someone gets a case that covers the speaker though, prepare for a dramatic reduction in speaker volume, my finger covering it alone can reduce the sound what seems like 70%.
The most important part of the audio to me though is headphone jack quality, and I still need to test it out with a bigger range of media and music, but my preliminary judgment is that it sounds adequate, but not fantastic, does not seem to convey as much dynamic range on the sound compared to say, my desktop, but I'll do more tests later on. The reports about that on this phone seem spot on, I never heard the headphone quality of the original galaxy s, so I have nothing to compare it to, but that seems to be the only non top class aspect of the phone. I can live with that, but I won't when I upgrade a year or 2 from now. Top class (preferably cowon level) personal audio device quality is what I expect for a future upgrade, but the rest of the phone IS top notch.
This is the new baseline, a galaxy s ii class phone, that should be the future baseline for all future phone purchasers and competing manufacturers.