Google To Sell Truly Open Android Dev Phone 219
binary.bang writes "Google has announced an unlocked version of T-Mobile's G1 for sale at the same unlocked price of $399. The Android Dev Phone 1 is the G1, except being truly open: no SIM-lock, no hardware lock. Feel free to flash your customized Android build — the bootloader won't be checking for signatures. Don't be misled by the word 'Dev,' looks like all you need to qualify is an Android Market account. This looks like the Open Handset Alliance delivering the promised Open Handset: yes root, yes flash-your-build, no contract, no strings attached. Anyone else relieved & thrilled?"
cool pattern (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FCC (Score:5, Interesting)
Like all cell phones, you are not legally allowed to hack the actual modem. Ultimate protection is at the modem layer.
Personally, I think this is another huge step for Google/Android. I've already bought a G1, and the software from Google rocks. Unfortunately, the hardware from Taiwan's HTC sucks big-time. I'm eagerly awaiting Motorola's Android offering next year, and T-Mobile's G3 roll-out in NC. The iPhone is awesome, but Android is a huge threat.
Wireless attack platform, yessire. (Score:5, Interesting)
This and it's descendants is going to be really useful for hacking/pen testing. It's the perfect platform model for wireless attacks. Imagine walking through a crowd with one of these in your pocket, compromising computers and phones as people stream around you. Or, you could use it as a deniable relay, penetrating a 802.11 network via a cell connection to the phone. Or as a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Box [wikipedia.org], enabling control of a rootkited server via a cell connection. That kind of stuff will be a lot easier to pull off with this kind of platform. Yes, i have a perverted mind. *sigh* But i think people with similiar minds will put this one to some real clever uses. I mean, all the heavy computing can be moved to a host behind TOR hidden service, or in a "bulletproof" country.
T-Mobile are fine (Score:3, Interesting)
Most euro operators won't bat an eyelid if you bring your own phone, and t-mobile US seems to be the same way.
T-Mo US even has an unsupported handsets division to help you get unsupported handsets onto their network.
I want Grand Central/Google Talk intergration (Score:5, Interesting)
One really awesome thing for which we could use more help from Google would be this: You get one GrandCentral number and if your phone is connected to a Wifi spot, your calling is by default VoIP. You'd only use the cellular network if you somewhere out of reach of a hotspot.
There should be a way to configure Grand Central to be sensitive to the context of your handset and route the call in the optimal way, automatically.
Since I spend about 90% of my time in some sort of a hotspot (I work at a university), it would mean that I would probably cancel my monthly contract altogether and switch to a prepaid minutes/data plan. That savings would go a long way towards paying back my unsubsidized four hundred bucks for the handset.
Re:FCC (Score:5, Interesting)
"I've already bought a G1, and the software from Google rocks"
Uhuh.
The POP email client is dysfunctional; not retaining downloaded mail in the Inbox but making me reload it every time I launch the app. It does keep the 11 or so OLDEST messages, and will not delete them. Yahoo! Mail works great, and GMail of course also. So why not POP? Also, the POP client regularly shows a connection error despite my mail server being readily available to the rest of the Internet. K9 doesn't show connection errors, but handles the Inbox the same way. Even in IMAP.
Cut & paste is beyond difficult to use. Just ain't ready for primetime.
Browser has a wierd habit of not honoring a touch on some web page links, but requiring you to click the trackball instead. Go figure.
There are other rough edges. Lack of A2DP is probably temporary, but if it ends up being a failure, that might get me to send this back. We'll see if I can.
If the G1 RC30 software 'rocks' for you, God bless you. It ain't rockin' my world.
And yet, I'm strangely attached to this device. My life as a happy BlackBerry user has evolved into a Linux phone struggle. Not-quite-right software, waiting for the next release, and of course the ever-helpful advice from the community.
It's my fault. I admit it. Step One.
Re:Wireless attack platform, yessire. (Score:3, Interesting)
So why can't everything you have just described be done with a jailbreaked iPhone? Or any of the windows smarthphones? Or a cell phone tethered to a laptop?
p.s. i was one of the HTC phone reverse-engineers (Score:1, Interesting)
just to clarify: i was one of the people who did reverse-engineering on HTC phones, including the ipaq hw6915, the sable, the blueangel, the himalaya and the universal. i own about nine smartphones, all of which bar one (the eten G500+) are HTC devices.
e.g. this:
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Ipaq6915 [xda-developers.com]
Re:FCC (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure you can just reflash the Calypso GSM firmware used on the Openmoko [openmoko.org] - e.g. see this Openmoko thread on firmware hacking [openmoko.org] Though apparently it's all based on leaked docs, and may be illegal.
Re:FCC (Score:2, Interesting)
Now this is just funny.
I use the IMAP server that also hosts my POP. It answers both protocols. T-Mobile BB, GMail, Yahoo!, and my Outlook clients all work fine. Android E-Mail is not so happy.
That's why I blame the client. All others are fine. It isn't the herd that's wrong in this case.
I don't choose between G3 and Edge, since I set the phone to use G3 and it does if it can. I spend a lot of time in marginal G3 areas (home and work, go figure), but even with a solid G3 signal I have these issues.
WiFi is more problematic. I could not set up an account over WiFi. Had to go to the TM network to do it successfully.
I am not mentioning anything unheard of in the community. The issues of failed accoutn setup over WiFi (SMTP bombs), Inbox not keeping recently downloaded emails (both POP & IMAP), limit on retrieving 25 msgs at a time (have to keep loading more messages), and connection errors (POP for sure, IMAP I haven't really tracked) are well known throughout the active user community. Not hard to look up.
It's really not me. Do I look that stupid to you?
No keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of us want to do more than play swishy windows to impress our friends, and don't care if our phone isn't a BlingBlock (that's what I call iPhone-like devices that sacrifice function to get the "clean" look). Some of us want to type stuff, fast. Flipping and sliding forms allow big screens and space for controls at the same time, so they're not necessarily bad things.
The G1 dev edition is a nice phone that I'm seriously considering as my next phone, but to me any phone without a keyboard is a deal-breaker. Lack of a touch screen would also be a deal-breaker, and multitouch would be nice, but as someone who uses their phone like a computer, I NEED a keyboard.
- Treo user (can't you tell?)