Google kills Android jailbreak with new Android OS RC30 update



Talk about a quick response.

Almost as soon as the Android development community happen to stumble upon a root-access “jailbreak” method for the Android OS, Google let loose their counter-punch. Google is now pushing out a new Android OS build that patches the current Android jailbreak exploit. The patch should make quick work of closing the security hole that handed over access to the T-Mobile G1’s file-system root.

As Gizmodo points out, Google’s patch to kill the Android jailbreak exploit isn’t as dire as it would be were Apple to seal up the iPhone jailbreak security hole (which is rumored to be happening with the new MacBook and MacBook Pro, by the way). The Android Market is already quite open to  software and Android apps are allowed almost-free reign over the T-Mobile G1’s (as well as future Android devices) hardware. While Apple iPhone users have to resort to the jailbreak underground to get at applications that Apple would never allow to hit the AppStore, Android users can expect to see fully functional application in the Android Market.

The new Android OS RC30 update is being rolled out as we speak and, by the sound of it, Google is working to make sure T-Mobile G1 owners get the update as soon as possible.

We’ve been notified of this issue (Jailbreaking of Android) and have developed a fix. We’re currently working with our partners to push the fix out and updating the open source code base to reflect these changes.

The update is being rolled out OTA (over-the-air) as we speak, so keep an eye out for an automatic update notification on your T-Mobile G1.

izvor

I purchased a G1
... and then I brought it back!



Being a big Linux geek I was intrigued by the G1 so I went and signed the 2 year contract and picked up the handset for $179 ($195 w/ tax) and went with the $25 a month plan since I'm not a big texting person.

Anyway initial impressions were the battery was utterly horrible. To put this into perspective, I charged this thing overnight and pulled it off the charger at 8am and by roughly 2pm it was completely dead.

My usage mainly consisted of light browsing, checking out market, and maybe messing about with a few applications. It was like clockwork everyday that this battery died.

Finally, at around day 3 I returned it for a new one hoping this issue would be resolved which it wasn't. Ok whatever, some other problems I faced were I had a huge echo whenever I was on the phone with someone, and I mean it was loud almost as if I was talking to myself.

Next issue, sub-par camera...I just couldn't take a decent picture to save my life. No matter how still I kept my hand every picture came out blurry. Another problem for me was while browsing I'd just touch the screen to move it down a bit and the whole page would scroll down which would annoy the piss out of me.

Yet another issue, sometimes when the phone went into standby it would take along time to come out like upwards of a minute...weird. The body of the phone seemed very flimsy and easily breakable.Also, the keyboard was nearly flush on the device making it hard to type. No ability to install apps to SD card! FFS, I was running out of space after only installing a few apps. No way to close out applications, after a while things seemed to run slower and laggier.

Some positives of the device now....good web browsing when it was working properly; probably best compared to the iphone in this area. Notification area was also a nice feature. Market was also another positive experience though sometimes it would take a while for downloads to start which I imagine is T-Mobiles fault.

Youtube was nice...seemed very high def. All in all, I feel Android has a lot of potential in the future, but as of right now it's lacking what most other mobile phones already provide. I do however look forward to seeing what future android handsets bring. Anyway, I returned my G1 after 10 days and I'm now back on my e51 =)

Oh yeah, one more thing I found odd was that you need a gmail account just to setup the phone!!!!



izvor

Crazy Android Bug Interprets Text Entries as System Commands



A strange yet somewhat shocking bug has been discovered in the G1 firmware RC29 and below. When I read about it I simply had to report on it. The bug interprets text entries as system commands which are then executed with superuser privileges! Crazy!

A bug report sent in to Google outlined the issue:

I was in the middle of a text conversation with my girl when she asked why I hadn’t responded. I had just rebooted my phone and the first thing I typed was a response to her text which simply stated “Reboot” - which, to my surprise, rebooted my phone.

Imagine the level of frustration after encountering this. You for whatever reason type ‘reboot’ into your device, and bam, your device actually reboots! I can picture my reaction to the event…it would probably be a stunned silence, followed by 2 or 3 more test ‘reboots’ to confirm the issue… Then the silence would turn to a few vulgarities and perhaps a few calls to some friends to rant about the issue.

To see for yourself if you’re vulnerable, from the home screen select Menu > Settings > About phone, and look for the Build number. If you see this: kila-user 1.0 TC4-RC29 115247 ota-rel-keys,release-keys, then you are vulnerable. Anything later than RC29 will be ‘fixed’.

Have RC29 or earlier and want to test it out? First, make sure you save anything you’re working on. Don’t want to lose anything here. Second, pop open the keyboard tray and ignore anything you see onscreen… Then type these 8 keystrokes: <return>-r-e-b-o-o-t-<return>. Your device should reboot if you’re running RC29 or earlier.

What a horrible bug! But don’t let this get you down, a new firmware update (RC30) is being rolled out to G1 owners to fix the issue… I hope

izvor

prvi macici se u vodu bacaju... 

Debian gets ported to the G1, makes nice with Android



Recent firmware updates may have aimed to shut down such shenanigans, but it looks they were a little too slow to stop Jay Freeman (a.k.a. Saurik) from going to town with his newly jailbroken G1 and installing Debian on the handset. What's more, he apparently even managed to get Debian and Android to play nice with each other, letting you have a completely normal and unassuming phone by day and a nerd machine by night. As you might expect, however, it's not exactly as simple as installing an app from the Android Market, but anyone with a little experience in installing Linux distributions on unconventional devices should be able to follow the instructions fairly easily, although actually turning it into something useful is another matter

izvor

Build Your Own T-Mobile G1 for $143.89



I love the guys over at iSuppli… So when they took apart the T-Mobile G1, the techno-dweeb inside of me got giddy and started laughing.

They took the unit apart piece-by-piece, and calculated the build of materials (BOM) cost. As you can tell from the lovely title of this post, the BOM cost of the device is $143.89. I should note however, that this estimate includes only the component and material costs for the G1. This doesn’t account for other expenses including software, R&D, manufacturing costs and more.

So, in theory if you had the bulk discounts, knowledge and know-how, you could technically build yourself a G1 for that price. That is, if you bill $0/hr for your labor, manufacturing and R&D time on the project.

Key components and their cost:

    * Baseband - $28.49
    * Display - $19.67
    * Camera - $12.13
    * Radio Frequency (RF)/Power Amplifier (PA) portion - $9.84
    * Remaining components - $73.76.

With the G1 selling at just under $180, are you surprised at the BOM cost for the device? Is the price-tag good value for your money… in your eyes?

izvor

White T-Mobile G1 not coming until after Thanksgiving?



Oh sure, a few remarkably lucky and / or well connected individuals out there are yapping it up on a white T-Mobile G1 right this very moment, but for the bulk of us, coming across one is basically impossible; in fact, the white G1 isn't even listed on T-Mobile's website currently. TMO News has it that the lightest hue of the HTC-built handset isn't expected to ship until at least the US Thanksgiving holiday, meaning that you've still got some serious time to kill before wrapping your paws around the increasingly enviable mobile. Rumors have been rampant that a paint chipping issue is at fault, and while we've yet to hear any confirmation of that, we have seen problems with white paint throw a wrench in the production plans of other mega-corps in the past. There's always the black G1 + Colorware if you're really impatient, you know.

izvor

Android-powered Sciphone Dream G2 is neither dreamy nor the G1's successor



The G1's taken some flak for being just a little less fashion-forward than the hottest handsets on the market, but as retail Android handsets go, it's the most beautiful thing going -- and we think that illustrious title's safe for the time being. Meet the "Dream G2" (groan) from China's Sciphone, a brick of an Android-powered handset promised for a November 28 release featuring EDGE data, WiFi, 4-megapixel cam with autofocus, 50MB of internal memory, microSD expansion to 16GB, FM radio, a QVGA display, and "the most advanced software ever engineered." Without a physical keyboard (as far as we can see, anyhow) and no software support in Android promised for a few months at minimum, it's unclear how you'll input text, but hey, the release is still a good ten days away -- maybe these guys are good at thinking on their feet.

izvor

T-Mobile G1 touchscreen can do multi-touch, but doesn’t



When you’re a wireless carrier vying for the hearts and minds of the smartphone-craving masses, it’s probably a good idea to throw caution to the wind and pack your smartphone to the brim with all the latest bells and whistles - like multi-touch. The T-Mobile G1 ushered in the age of the open-source Android OS with a refreshing capacitance-based touchscreen. Amid a sea of pressure-sensitive (resistive-based) touchscreens, the T-Mobile G1’s glass touchscreen is a welcome iPhone-esque feature. Too bad it doesn’t support the pinching and twirling multi-finger inputs that has made the iPhone’s UI so popular.

Or, does it?

An intrepid Android developer, RyeBrye, has discovered that the T-Mobile G1’s capacitance touchscreen hardware is actually capable of supporting multi-touch inputs, but chooses to suppress that the feature. Like a vestigial tail, the G1’s Synaptics touchscreen driver has had its multi-touch code shriveled up and commented out - serving no real function than to remind users of what once was.

RyeBrye brought the multi-touch code snippet within the Synaptics touchscreen driver back to life with some judicious use of the “delete” key, and found that he could actually log multi-touch inputs from the touchscreen. The development proves that the G1 can actually handle snazzy multi-touch controls a la the iPhone and iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, the Android OS doesn’t yet make provisions for any multi-touch support. Hopes are high, however, that Android developers will figure out a way to free the inner multi-touch beast that lies in wait within the T-Mobile G1.

But, the real question here is why would HTC and T-Mobile choose to banish the multi-touch feature to realm of commented-out code. Patent conflicts could be an issue.

izvor

Flash 10 working on Android, HTC G1



Well, damn. I guess all that open source stuff with Android paid off awfully quick, because here we have a video from the Adobe MAX conference of Flash 10 running on the T-Mobile G1. It demos full zooming, panning and interactivity, which unlocks a whole segment of web content typically inaccessible to mobile browsers. Big name platforms like the iPhone and BlackBerry still have yet to pull this particular rabbit out of the hat, but Windows Mobile has supported Flash Lite since OS version 5.0. No dates for a proper release were mentioned, but the fact that developers are toying around with it now leads us to believe Flash on Android will be a solid reality in the very near future.

izvor