RSSAndroid grows too large for G1
By Tim Conneally | Published August 18, 2009, 5:59 PM
Even though T-Mobile continues to deny it, the Android community has resigned to the fact that the T-Mobile G1 (also known as the HTC Dream) will not receive any significant upgrades beyond "Cupcake," the Android software update from last April.
The simple fact is that there is not enough memory on the G1 to support a much bigger OS, and even equipping the device with Cupcake was reportedly problematic. "We knew that internal flash space was going to be very tight on the G1 and we kept the system partition tight on purpose," Jean-Baptiste Queru, a software engineer at Google said on Twitter last week.
"As much as I'm hoping that it'll be possible to somehow continue updating the G1, I can't promise anything," Queru added.
T-Mobile then issued a statement which said, "We plan to continue working with Google to introduce future software updates to the T-Mobile G1. Reports to the contrary are inaccurate."
Unfortunately, T-Mobile's language is vague and could mean that it will continue to issue security updates and fix bugs but not push out the next versions of Android called "Donut," "Eclair," and "Flan."
This is terrible service. I guess we all know about the telecom "planned obsolescence" issues, but it's pretty bad when the phone can't be updated before it's minimum service contract term.
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|Ummm G1 users all you have to do is Root your phone. Theres an App on the market and or guides off youtube on how to do this. Then head over to XDA dev's and find a rom you like and update it manually. Forget google and tmobile and their lame updates. XDA owns.
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|HTC and T-Mobile should have known this before they designed a high tech cell phone like this. I own one and let me tell you that this is not the only problem with this phone.
1. not enough Internal phone space for apps.
2. battery life is extremely terrible especially when a cell phone like this has the internet and where you can download so many apps, and games for your phone, the battery life only lasts for about 5 hrs If your lucky.
3. It could run the internet quite faster.
final thoughts T-Mobile and HTC want to compete against apple's Iphone well then I suggest they design a cell phone upgrade to the G1 that doesn't have these problems, and allow the current G1 owners only to upgrade to a better cell phone like blackberry because of these problems.
last note: I read on the T-Mobile forum that a person who brought the G1 said that If they had known about all these problems they would have brought the iphone instead of the G1.
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|If thats the case.... THIS SUCKS!!! g** d***it HTC!!!!
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|hmm.....how about MyTouch.
tmobile MyTouch have 512 MB ROM and 198MB RAM
where the unlocked version sell outside of USA have 512MB MB Rom and 288 MB RAM.
So hopefully mytouch since it has bigger ROM but "less" RAM can still see some updates.
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|The mytouch is immune. They learned from their mistakes on the G1. The problem is that there's just no space to copy the files that are required to update the phone. Kind of like trying to install say, for argument sake Windows 7 on a 4GB partition. After the OS copies the files from the DVD there is just not enough space to install the software. There is a fix/workaround BUT it requires wiping everything on the phone which I don't think Tmobile will EVER allow users to do. If you're into hacking your phone then XDA has technical workarounds and such, though they probably won't help much for the next-gen stuff like donut and flan.
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|What a dumb move on HTC's part not to include space for future features on such a young OS.
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|Dumb of early adopters, more like it.
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|I don't know - HTC is trying to provide the products for extremely cheap prices to the cell providers. The unfortunate problem with this is they don't have the durability (my HTC Touch from Verizon has cracks all over the edges of the screen, yet it's not been misused by any stretch of the imagination). Because of this, if you can put a smaller RAM / ROM chip in and not have any short term repercussions. In essence it's not HTC's fault for this - it's Sprint, Verizon, ATT, etc.
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|Being that the G1 was the first out there, it would be more difficult for T-Mobile than for HTC to determine what was appropriate. After all, HTC makes various smart phones and should have had some guidelines to storage usage. Add to that the fact that Google's software is always a work in progress and would grow, they should have provided more insight.
Buyers were just looking for something new and the hype said that Android phones would be equivalent to iPhone but "caveat emptor" applies to anyone getting the first version, doesn't it?
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|I think they did it on purpose. Unlike the Iphone which adds actual major functionality to some of the hardware with new models, the G1 is nearly perfect in terms of it's functions. I use that word loosely of course, and in comparison to the other Google phones from HTC.
What I mean is that typical users would be less inclined to buy new 'G' phones as all they'd ever have to do is update the phone's firmware/OS.
The first Iphone didn't have 3G. The Iphone 3G didn't have the hardware for video recording or a camera with auto focus or voice control.
The G1 has everything the other 'G' phones have, except? That's right...space and some speed.
Everything else has been there since the G1.
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|"Buyers were just looking for something new"
That is a $1500-$2500 "new" toy every 2 years.
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