G1 News

Well, Google only have themselves to blame. They shot their mouth off about how the T-Mobile G1 update (nicknamed ‘Cupcake’) would allow Android phone owners to enjoy a wealth of new features, special powers and years of clear skies and enjoyable mobile phone usage. But it still isn’t out yet, and the troops are getting restless.

They set up an Official Cupcake Thread to allay everyone’s fears that Cupcake wasn’t a cruel hoax and would prove the quantum of solace that G1 owners without a virtual keyboard would need. Obviously this thread descended into chaos and anarchy and had to be locked, as is the case with all rabid fanboy threads.

So now they have set up another thread (amusingly titled Cupcake Thread of DOOM™!), to field all questions and queries surrounding Cupcake’s sweet imminent release. The result? Almost no relevant info, but lots of pictures of cupcakes! At least they are keeping themselves occupied in anticipation of the inevitable release of the new firmware update…

Yes, I did use the term ‘quantum of solace,’ contextually correctly and without a hint of irony.

UPDATE: Word has it from the GoogleAndBlog that the Cupcake update could be giving some Over-The-Air loving to T-Mobile G1 handsets any time from mid-January! As soon as this weekend, we could be revelling in Android glory! Fingers crossed, folks!

Forgotten why Cupcake will change your life? See below for the full list of revisions! Not got a G1 yet? Check out our new T-Mobile G1 deals page here!

• MMS
  • New features
    • Save attachments from MMS.
  • Significant bug fixes
    • Faster conversation list scrolling

• Email
  • Significant bug fixes
    • Accounts that were marked “never check” are not auto-checked.
    • Date & time displayed using user preference (e.g. 24 hr vs. AM/PM).
    • cc: displayed in message view.
    • Relaxed POP3 parser rules so it works with non-compliant email servers.
    • Password quoting bugs in IMAP.  Makes it work for users with funny chars in their password (e.g. spaces).
    • Various sources of errors in auto & manual account setup.
    • Improvements on how we report various connection errors. Makes it much easier for user to diagnose failed account setups.
    • New-mail notifications for POP3 accounts.
    • Properly recover from POP3 connection failures, so that the next connection has a chance of working properly.
    • Remove automatic accounts setup entries that were broken or not testable.  Minor fixes to a few of the remaining entries.  Improvements to warning dialogs used for a few special cases.
    • New accounts are now set to check every 15 minutes (instead of defaulting to “never”).
    • Fixed a bug causing approximately 1 in 25 outbound messages to freeze up the IMAP connection (to a Gmail based server) when transferred to the Sent folder.  This broke the entire connection so new messages could not be downloaded either.
    • Unit test framework so Email can be extended & tested more reliably.
    • Fix IMAP manually-created accounts so message delete works properly.

• Alarm Clock
  • Significant bug fixes
    • Alert now plays audio/vibe directly, rather than through AlarmManager. AlarmClock alert starts playing audio/vibe in its IntentReceiver, rather than on activity start. These changes should prevent alarms from being blocked by modal dialogs.

• Camera/Gallery
  • New features
    • Video recorder mode
    • Share intent for videos
    • Video thumbnails
    • Local file playback

• New features
  • Support for HTTP codes 301, 302, 303 and 307 (redirects).
  • HTTP code 503 is now handled, with support for retry-after in delay-seconds.
  • Downloads that were cleanly interrupted are now resumed instead of failing.
  • Applications can now pause their downloads.
  • Retry delays are now randomized.
  • Connectivity is now checked on all interfaces.
  • Downloads with invalid characters in file name can now be saved.

• New features
  • Support of touch events in WebView.
  • New JavaScript engine (SquirrelFish) in WebView.
  • Input method framework, for soft keyboards and other on-screen input methods.  Includes new APIs for applications to interact with input methods, and the ability for third party developers to write their own input methods.
  • Access to the raw audio data for playback and recording from application code.
  • New PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT option.
  • Support for top-level boolean resources.
  • Tactile feedback to the LockPatternView. Tactile feedback can be enabled/disabled by going to Settings > Security & location and then checking/unchecking “Use tactile feedback”. Note that this can be used independently of the visual feedback of the lines (”Use visible pattern”). Thus it gives users a middle ground between showing the lines on the screen and having no feedback at all.
  • PackageManager changes to support un-installation of partially installed applications. Added new flag PackageManager.GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES to include partially installed apps in all relevant PackageManager api’s. ManageApplications screen now lists such partially installed apps and the user can uninstall these applications completely.
  • Support third party updates of system applications. New menu options in Settings->ManageApplications to list updated system applications.
  • Framework support to list current running processes. New API in ActivityManager.
  • Framework feature to declare required configurations by applications. New manifest attribute uses-configuration in android manifest.
  • Hardware accelerated video encode (video recorder) in opencore.
  • Simplified SREC speech recognition API available.
  • Streaming audio I/O for applications.

• Significant bug fixes
  • Fixed issues with saving state in the view hierarchy, so that you can properly subclass from something like TextView and create your own state that inherits from that provided by TextView.
  • TextView now implements onKeyMultiple(), so that flinging the trackball will result in accelerated scrolling. This required some changes to movement methods, and included some improvements to the acceleration computed when flinging.
  • Framework bug fixes in PackageManager to share/un-share permissions for applications with shared uid’s.
  • Significant rework of Settings->ManageApplications Performance and UI enhancements.
  • A number of settings in android.provider.Settings.System were moved to android.provider.Settings.Secure. Only system software can modify these settings. Additionally, a new permission, WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS, is required to access these settings. The old constants in Settings.System have been deprecated.  It is possible to read settings values via Settings.System using the deprecated constants. However, attempts to modify these settings via Settings.System will result in a log message and the setting value will be left unchanged.
  • Many bug fixes in the media framework
    

Bluetooth

• New features
  • New kernel based on Linux 2.6.27.
  • Improvements to the wakelock API.
  • Work to transition to the USB Gadget Framework underway.
  • Basic x86 support.

• New features
  • SIM Application Toolkit 1.0.
  • Green CALL button is no longer a shortcut for “add a new call”. This has been a rarely used feature and confusing if triggered accidentally.
  • Longer in-call screen timeout when using the speakerphone.
  • “Show dialpad” / “Hide dialpad” item added to the in-call menu, to make it easier to discover the DTMF dialpad.

• Significant bug fixes
  • An obscure case where the Phone UI could cause the device to not go to sleep on its own. This would happen if user bails out of the in-call screen by hitting HOME, followed by the call disconnecting remotely.
  • Don’t allow a single tap to open the in-call dialpad. It is now required to touch and drag it.  This makes it much harder to accidentally open the dialpad by touching the screen with your face.