SubscribeSo today as usual the good users over at the XDA Developers forums managed to track down the OTA file used to update the T-Mobile G1 (USA) to the ever-so-mythical “Cupcake” release – for those of you not familiar with the G1 and it’s OS “Android” – it’s dubbed the “Google Phone” by many as Google is one of the big sponsors behind the Android OS and the Open Handset Alliance – with that said its OpenSource-ish Goodness – however this major code update has been a long-time coming and many people have gotten hot and heavy over it’s delays.
I snagged the link shortly after I woke, dropped it on my microSD and flashed my phone – the process took about 10 minutes from start to finish, rebooting about 3 times in total, I arrived with a updated G1 – the key new features seem to be all here – the ability to record video + improved camera (check) the on-screen keyboard (check) auto-rotate screen (check) faster browser (check) user interface improvements (check) – there are more but those were the key ones I personally wanted to see arrive.
All in all the updates work as described – still not a fan of on-screen keyboards, one of the primary gripes with the iPhone, the G1 has a fold out qwerty keyboard that works amazingly well, so while the on-screen method is there, its not going to be my first way of entering text, that’s for sure – the camera is doing a LOT better, I use the SnapPhoto 3rd party app, which offers some additional features thankfully they had a specific Android build – so was VERY happy for that, video too works, and the export to YouTube works as advertised, only tested over a Wifi connection, but I imagine a Edge/GPRS/3G connection will work just take a little while longer – only thing I’ll note, sound is very quiet.
My two suggestions to t-mo on all of this updapte fun is 2 things:
1) Create a status blog/twitter/facebook/etc. – something to keep users on-par with what’s going on, if there is a issue upgrading and engineers want to fine tune things, post a note, let the world know not guess from 3rd party sites who’s “insider @ t-mobile…” gives them some random untrue info.
2) I am unsure of how the whole OTA update process works, or how you “randomly” update folks – my suggestion? We all have My-T-Mobile, why not make it a opt-out process and each update have the option to NOT get it OTA, but a email when the update.zip is ready to upgrade to the next version, you signed-in on a Open Source OS, you have a army of code tweaking, open source loving fools ready and willing to update themselves.
I may have more to rant about on this later, but for now that’s my thoughts, it is running a lot smoother, but like several have noticed on the forums – it takes longer to charge the battery – but for me it also has kept the battery better charged, so yay for that – time will tell like the iPhone updates how well this update is truly received. For now I sleep.