G1 News

In a final act of defiance against the evil leakers of his HTC Hero firmware, G1 developer Haykuro has released his own version for download!

Installing this isn’t for the faint of heart, but seeing as we T-Mobile G1 owners might never get this officially, enjoying the awesome new menus and interface of Android via this new firmware is an opportunity too good to pass up!

It’s not perfect with some features such as Bluetooth not working as yet, but as he says he has homework to finish, I’m going to cut him a bit of slack…because Rosie is amazing!

Okay, it’s up on XDADevelopers now for download, as are the instructions. I’m about to try and do it, will let y’all know how it goes, maybe even a video demo how-to!

Installation is as follows:

Installation:
1. Download http://www.droiddeveloper.com/hrbuilds/app_s.zip
2. extract “app_s” into your sdcard’s ext2 partition.
3. Download http://www.droiddeveloper.com/hrbuilds/hero-signed.zip
4. Place on regular sd card.
5. Reboot into recovery, wipe and flash.
6. Enjoy.

Farewell Cupcake, I hardly knew ye…

UPDATE: Check the comments for some detailed instructions, courtesy of AB. Cheers, but use them at your own risk!

Source: Android Central

If you aren’t as technically savvy as a NASA control centre operator and just want Cupcake in your G1 early, it seems like you can do it without rooting your G1. I know, right? Great news!

Oddly, you do need the Blighty version of Android 1.5, but it will work okay in your US G1…provided you follow the darned instructions!

This is courtesy of bigfoot85t and Android Central, by the by, full disclosure and all that!

1. Head over to the T-mobile Forums to download the UK version of Android 1.5 Cupcake
2. Put the downloaded file into your SD card
3. Turn ur phone off and re-boot it holding the home button
4. When you see the triangle hit alt+L
5. Then alt+S
6. Press home and back when it tells you to (to reboot your phone)
7. It’ll say installing Radio after you hit home+back (thats normal)
8. It’ll reboot a couple times and after you see the new Android loading screen, you’ve got Cupcake.
9. When Android 1.5 for the US comes out repeat the process with the US download

Being the UK version of Cupcake, you see how hobo-fabulous us guys in the UK live, without snazzy things like Voice Search and Amazon MP3. Them’s the breaks, but you know that you can upgrade to the real deal when it does come out, so worry not and enjoy early!

Jealous that I’m riding on the crest of a Cupcake wave whilst some of you are still waiting for it to come out?

Let Mr. SmileyMan from Google show you round Android 1.5 (albeit on an HTC Magic), and see the virtual keyboard and video recording skills in motion!

Stay strong, my brothers and sisters. Your turn will come.

Source: Android Central

Is your G1 playing up? Found mine becoming really laggy and quite annoying to use recently. Might be all that early Cupcake fiddling! Found that a good way to clear the cobwebs is just to restore the whole device to factory settings. Also good if returning it for any reason and you need to remove all traces of nefarious activity!

Here goes:

1. Turn off the G1
2. Press Home Key and End key at the same time for abuot 15 seconds, until you see a triangle with an exclamation point with a picture of the G1.
3. Slide out the QWERTY keyboard and press Alt and W at the same time.
4. That’s it! All done!

To do a soft reset, just press the Home and Back buttons when you see the triangle with an exclamation point and a picture of the G1 on the screen.

Thanks, Android Central!

Since the T-Mobile G1’s October release, the only thing that has disappointed me about the supposedly-open operating system Android is the relative lack of customisation. I mean, I had the Ed Hardy custom theme on my jailbroken iPhone, complete with Intelliscreen for my mail…whilst the G1 just looks at me incredulously with that damn Malmo clock!

Well, with the release of Open HomeLite, we can retain the cool feel of Android, with a new lick of paint on the front end. Some of the best themes created by xda-developers forum members have been lifted and placed on the Marketplace for free, and now the G1 can have one of six new fascias, plus support for widgets!

Check it:

I know, there are other apps like aHome which switches up the G1’s interface, but if I wanted an iPhone, I would continue to use my iPhone!

Source: AIsForAndroid

Wanna see why everyone is so disappointed with the T-Mobile G1 RC9 update? Want to wonder where Google Latitude (above image) is? Install it yourself with this handy zip file, and our T-Mobile G1 manual firmware install guide!

http://andblogs.net/downloads/signed-TMI-RC9-from-TMUK-RC8.a37580e9.zip

- Rename it to update.zip – move it to root folder on your SD card, which is still inside your T-Mobile G1.

- switch off the G1.

- switch on whilst holding down the ‘Home’ key.

That’s it! As usual, be careful and do it right, or no G1 for you!

Bored of waiting ages for the new firmware updates for your T-Mobile G1? Download and go get them yourself! It’s not easy, but you’ll be able to get it done if you pay attention to this guide from modmyGphone!

The firmware version can be checked out at Settings > About Phone > Build Number

Just to be on the safe side like all types of update, ensure the battery is fully charged, or at least above 75%.

1. Rename the archive to “update.”

2. Copy the file to the SD Card.

Note : Connect the phone to desktop and then transfer the file. Don’t use a card reader, nor should you remove the card from the G1.

3. Turn off the phone. Press and hold HOME and POWER button. The phone will start in recovery mode. You should see an exclaimation sign when it starts.

4. Press Alt + L, it will take you to the boot menu.

5. Press Alt + S, to start the update process. It will take a while so be patient.

6. When the update completes, it will prompt you to press HOME + BACK to reboot.

7. After you reboot, the update will complete and then automatically reboot.

Thats it! Be sure that you have the right firmware for your handset beforehand, so don’t come crying to us if you fluff it up!

Source: modmyGphone

It was my birthday last Friday, and I was lucky enough to get a G1 from my auntie, awesome! I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I already had one…

Anyway, here are some tips straight from Laptop Mag to enjoy your G1 straight out of the box! Plus, I’ve had mine for ages and didn’t have any idea of a few of these!

1. Voice Dialling
The T-Mobile G1 supports voice dialing, and you can easily call a friend by stating their name if you press and hold the Send key on the G1. Bonus Tip: If you want to conference call that stuff while you’re on the phone, press the Send key while in a call.

2. Use an MP3 as a Ringtone
Open Music > Songs > and hold your finger on your song of choice. Next, select “Use as phone ringtone.” Notorious B.I.G.’s Juicy, your only option.

3. Access the Applications Menu from Anywhere
If you’re surfing the Web and want to quickly bring up your music player to switch songs, you can quickly do this by holding down the Home button on the G1. This will quickly bring up your Applications menu. If you want to go directly to the desktop, just press the Home button once.

4. Turn on Wi-Fi
Phones don’t just automatically have Wi-Fi capabilities turned on. To do this, press the Menu key while you’re on the home screen.

Next, click Settings > Wireless Controls and select Wi-Fi
Open Wi-Fi settings to force the G1 to search for available networks.

5. Put your phone in stealth mode, instantly!
You just walked into a movie theater a few minutes late, and you want to quickly put the phone in silent mode without browsing through menus to do so. Avoid this by toggling silent mode without opening the G1. Simply press and hold the End key to put the phone in silent mode.

6. Add songs to a playlist
When you’re the DJ on a long road trip, the tunes are very important. Make the song selection smoother by creating a playlist in advance. Open up Music > Songs, and then touch and hold any song that you want to add to a playlist. A menu will pop up, and you’ll want to select Add to playlist.

7. Install a microSD card
You can install a microSD card for adding more storage or using your phone as a portable hard drive (see tip 9), and here’s how. First open the keyboard. Next, look for a small memory card cover below the Send key on the G1. Take your microSD card and slide it forward with the gold teeth facing down.

8. Typing Shortcuts!
Insert special character: Press ALT + Spacebar
Delete entire line of text: Press ALT + Delete
Turn on all caps: Press Shift Twice
Move cursor to end or beginning of text: Press Alt while scrolling Trackball
Insert a Tab space: Press Alt + Q
Highlight text: Press Shift and roll Trackball

9. Use your phone as a portable HDD
The G1 supports high capacity microSD cards, which means you can add up to 16GB of storage to it. That’s as good as carrying a portable hard drive around with you. To treat your G1 as a portable storage device, you need to turn on mass storage.

Plug your G1 into your computer using a USB cable. Navigate to the home screen and select Menu > Settings > SD card & phone storage. Next, select Use for USB storage. Now a folder will pop up on your computer, and you can drag and drop music, videos, or any file of your choice onto the phone.

10. Cut, Copy, and Paste Text (in your face, iPhone!!!)
Copying, cutting, and pasting text from Web sites or documents is easy with the G1.
To Cut, press Menu and x.
To Copy, press Menu and c
To Paste, press Menu and v.

Phone Dog does a great review of Shazam for the Android. Shazam is a application that first appeared on the iPhone and identifies any song that is being played simply by holding your phone up to listen the music. Shazam then records the song and compares the information it received from that recording with that stored in its database it then returns song title, artist, links to YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook and Amazon if you want to buy the song.

The guy from Phone Dog is impressed with Shazam but points out it works out much better in quiet environments. For instance he went to a discount clothing store but Shazam was unable to identify the song that was playing there. There is about a 90% success rate in the video but it is in a quiet room and he is sitting next to the speakers. Would it work so well in a noisy nightclub for instance?

Unfortunately the video doesn’t compare Shazam on an iPhone compared to a G1? Has anyone used Shazam on an iPhone or the G1, comments please.

PhoneDog

Much easier than you would think to import your fave musical playlists from iTunes onto your T-Mobile G1, without breaking (much of) a sweat. You do however, need a PC/Mac to get going, and it is a bit of a homebrew solution, but it works…

1. Connect your T-Mobile G1 to the computer.

2. If a ‘Music’ folder doesn’t already exist on the memory card, create one! Calling it ‘Music’ would be a wise choice.

3. We are simply going to drag-and-drop the playlist from iTunes into the G1, so create an appropriately named playlist folder.

4. Open up iTunes, and bring up the relevant playlist.

5. Tap CTRL + A / Command + A on a Mac to select all.

6. Simply drag and drop the entire list onto the G1’s playlist folder. This moves the actual tracks, rather than the specific order of play (the order will be done in a sec!). The files will then move across to the handset.

7. Next, go back to iTunes, and right click on the playlist, and select ‘Export Song List’. Export it as an XML file, and save it to the desktop.

8. Close iTunes, and go to http://www.davidlomas.com/playlistconverter/. Here is a playlist converter!

9. Where it says ‘iTunes song list to convert,’ click Browse and select the XML we exported.

10. Click ‘Okay,’ but the newly file doesn’t get the .m3u suffix it so desperately needs, rather it just gets renamed to the first word of your song.

11. That’s okay, just rename the file to your required playlist title, and add the ‘.m3u’ suffix manually. It’ll say some jive, but it’s okay because you want an .m3u file!

12. You now have your playlist! Go back to your G1, take the .m3u and stick it in your folder! It’ll be the same songs, in the same order!

13. Enjoy your musical wonderland of iTunes playlists in your T-Mobile G1!

Source: TodayIFeelLike