Posts Tagged G1

I spent about sixty minutes last night rooting my T-Mobile G1 and it (so far) has been an unqualified success.  For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, I’ll explain.

The G1 is the first mobile phone to use the Google Android OS (operating system).  The good news is that Android is open source and developers are free to to write whatever kind of apps they want for it.  The bad news is that T-Mobile takes the OS and adds a bunch of junk to it and then releases updates for it in their own sweet time.  Very similar to what Dell does with Windows.  When you buy a computer from Dell, you get a Windows OS but it is a Dell modified version.  That way you get all those annoying programs on your desktop when you start it up for the first time.

Rooting is the process of replacing the version of Android on a phone with a different version .  There are all sorts of available versions from a number of different people with names like JesusFreke, The Dude’s Cupcake and Haykuro Builds.  Some are highly volatile and not good for everyday phone use.  Others are quite stable and provide an expanded group of features not available with the stock OS.

It’s a bit risky and if anything goes wrong you can’t go crying to T-mobile, you have to turn to the online community for help.  But I am now liberated from the control of T-Mobile, setting up my phone the way I want and there is something to be said for that.  It really isn’t any harder than upgrading the OS on a computer.  If you are so inclined, I suggest you give it a try.

Interestingly enough, my wife wouldn’t let me near her phone.  Chicken.