With the furore over the HTC Magic, T-Mobile G1 owners might be wondering whether the halo has shifted from their original QWERTY handset to this new HTC usurper. While the external hardware is obviously significantly altered, under the hood it’s a case of different software, not different components, the most obvious being the new on-screen QWERTY keyboard. Over at Geek.com they’ve been playing around with the latest Cupcake build of the Android OS on the G1, and have shot video of not only the keyboard but the Linux shell and the game Snake.
Somewhat worryingly, tester Brian Jepson reports that the on-screen ‘board proved trickier than expected, describing it as difficult to use one-handed and “definitely a bit buggy” . The former is hopefully a symptom of the G1 form-factor – as you can see from our gallery, the Magic is considerably thinner and more hand-friendly than the G1 – whereas we can only assume that tweaking in some extra stability is top of HTC’s priorities before the Magic’s Q2 2009 launch.
Still, it only crashed when trying to use the video app – which, when we saw it demonstrated on the HTC Magic, didn’t encounter any problems – and generally felt stable. Check out the video for all the details.
_john
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look at the sidekicks.. everytime you upgraded to a new sidekick, t-mobile/danger required customers to re purchase apps and ringtones all over again
you'll think customers would stop upgrading to newer sidekicks, but they didn't
i think cupcake will run on g1, not only cause i saw a few demos but cause they're not shouting out g2, g3.. they're saying "android"
e.g. "flash is coming to android by 2010", "cupcake by the end of 1st quarter will be coming to android", etc etc
now how much of cupcake will we be getting? i don't know.. maybe a keyboard, video recording, i doubt the new bluetooth feature will be ported but then again who knows
i could see newer phone models having better hardware to handle ad2p bluetooth, etc etc
but in any case, if anybody wants cupcake that bad who knows how to root, you can root to cupcake, for those who can't root or don't want to root, give it by end of march
the sidekick lx didn't originally have video camera, that came in via ota and then they released the sidekick 08, so they may be doing the same thing with the g1(cupcake via ota) and g2(pre-installed with cupcake)
Its as easy as downloading a file on your PC. Renaming it to update.zip, putting in the SD card of the G1 and then pressing couple of keys on the g1. bam! there you have root
One of the main reasons Apple Iphone did very well was because the company never abandoned it, they kept pushin new updates every now and then and adding some new functionalities. Google has been already doing that, and this is not about T-Mobile business, this is google keeping its reputation for a solid and well supoprted OS. Once of the failures of Microsoft towards Windows Mobile, and they have been heavily criticised for it. Just like they keep updating their Windows XP while Vista has been released to the market, its the same concept. From a Business prespective to grab customer's attention they need to give in more hardware changes and options. Software wise its no longer the big deal anymore.
If flash comes out for the G2 and it "can't be ported, according to t-mobile" it'll be a done deal, ours will be on e-bay within the day.
They're money is really in the plans, so if shady business practices start coming, the only thing we can do as consumers, is vote with our $$$, and if the G1 stops getting useful updates, then that is a company I don't wish to do business with.
If flash comes out for the G2 and it "can't be ported, according to t-mobile" it'll be a done deal, ours will be on e-bay within the day.
They're money is really in the plans, so if shady business practices start coming, the only thing we can do as consumers, is vote with our $$$, and if the G1 stops getting useful updates, then that is a company I don't wish to do business with.
To each his own, but I prefer to not get bent over every six months. Drive on, fanboy, drive on...
To each his own, but I prefer to not get bent over every six months. Drive on, fanboy, drive on...