While Android 2.0 has been floating around on Motorola DROIDs for over a week now, one important chunk of it has been under lock-and-key: the source. Even amongst manufacturing partners, we’re told, Google hasn’t been completely open; outside of Motorola (and more recently, HTC), most of the other handset manufacturers have been left out in the cold with nothing to keep them warm but Android v1.6. Until tonight, that is.
As the sun set over the Silicon Valley last night, Google pushed the source code for Android 2.0 to the Android Open Source Project. Within two hours, the endlessly able Android community had it up and running on the eldest Android of them all, the T-Mobile G1.
See that lock screen to the right? It doesn’t look like anything too special, but that’s the world’s first screen shot of Android 2.0 running on the G1.
According to leading Android hacker Cyanogen, everything is running “really well, fast and smooth”. The only thing not working properly at the moment is audio/video playback. Considering that they’ve gotten this far with just a few hours of porting work, it doesn’t seem too likely that will be an issue for long.
I’d assume it’ll be at least few days before they work out all the kinks and make the download/tutorial available to anyone willing to root (read: hack) their phone – but it’ll still probably be faster than waiting for an official patch from T-Mobile.
Most importantly, does Google now provide Marketplace and Google Apps to Android products like the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android from 1.6 or not before 2.0, considering the Archos Android Tablet uses a 800×480 medium density screen and virtual home/menu/back buttons, no camera/compass/telephony but instead 720p video playback including Youtube HD, a HDMI output, Bluetooth keyboard?mouse input as I am typing this comment using the iGo Stowaway foldable keyboard…
As Android 1.5 was made to work only on a couple or three HTC phones and 1 from Samsung, now with 1.6 and 2.0, hopefully Google is quickly allowing hundreds more products to have the full Google Experience from 25 manufacturers all actually competing on the prices instead of just immitating the overpriced iphone carrier plans.
Thus with 2.0, will we get $100 Android phones and Laptops like this one I filmed http://techvideoblog.com/reviews/80-android-laptop-menq-easypc-e790/ with Chrome Browser app and the rest of the full Google Experience, as it would not make sense if Google were only playing ball for the exclusive benefit of big mobile phone carriers that charge $2500 or more for 2-year cell phone contracts.
Is your fullstop key broken?
read william faulkner for true run-on sentence glory ..
This is normal, a new OS might encounter a glitch just like any on the past. on the other hand, google should have pay attention for that problem. Anyway, I still keep good faith about android 2.0 OS as the fastest OS on the planet :D
http://bit.ly/android-2-0-flaws
Droid App creation here we go
Just waiting for the other competitors to match.
My G1 I screaming yeahhh in my hand.
Mine already drained half its battery in anticipation
Anyone know if they’ve got it on the droid eris yet? I might buy that, but I want android 2 on verizon for free ($100 rebate)
Nothing is free. Man up and buy the damn Motorola Droid if you want Android 2. It kicks the Eris’ ass anyways in terms of speed.
Note that “Google pushed the source code” should really read “Jean-Baptiste Queru, the long-suffering engineer at Google responsible for the AOSP, pushed the source code after close to 100 hours of work in 6 days to get it out”. The guy deserves credit…
Yes he does.
Shall we have a whip around and buy the guy a present from all of us? He likes popcorn, right? Maybe one of those 3 sectioned popcorn tins with charming winter scenes painted on it. When you are done with the food it becomes a trashcan! :)
Should we see this SOON for the HTC Hero? Anyone, would love to have this before Christmas!
Again, thanks for everyone’s hard work to. bring us all the latest and greatest news…. Great Job!
cd28rc
i’ve heard hero will have 2.0 by february…
Common Motorola get that out for the Cliq asap. MotoBlur aint doin it for me.
Daym Cliq was such a fail…
no, motorola is a failure… they even managed to ruin droid: no trackball, stupid keyboard, and a stupid big button on the right of the keyboard… FAIL
In all fairness, there are not that many changes from android 1.6 to android 2.0..
That’s my understanding. All of this hoopla over Droid are from people who are either not familiar with what 1.6 had, or are smitten by its hardware. All the comments from new Droid owners have me saying “Duh, my Android already had that”.
2.0 was feature frozen when 1.6 was. Google knew that the Droid would be shipping with 2.0 while everyone else was getting 1.6.
So much for being ‘open’ eh? It’s already a disjointed mess.
Our Hero’s are running 1.5….ANY update to this phone would be great!!!!
Excellent. Waiting for a stable Cyanogen mod update so I can run 2.0 on my G1.
that’s awesome that the community ported 2.0 so quickly… but why can’t the community fix other issues?
riddle me this:
i bought a droid on Friday when it came out. why can the android operating system not open an .ICS (meeting invite) and add the event to the calendar?
My 5 year old pearl could obviously do this out of the box.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257
Read through some of the other bugs too. Google has known about a LOT of the Android suckage for a long time, but nothing is happening. I didn’t realize that the calendar was such a disaster too. That is just embarrassing.
As I mentioned before, the Google stuff usually worked a-ok – if you do nothing but use gmail and google calendar and google talk, it’s probably just fine. For the rest of us? What a disappointment.
Most of us here probably have some money to play with, right?
If you’re an Android user OF ANY KIND, especially a G1 user, please give Cyanogen $10 or $20 or even $50 for all his hard work. This guy is amazing.
I just did precisely that an hour ago. I installed 4.2.4 last night, and I can’t believe I waited that long to try it out. It’s a rejunivation for an already aged phone…
Great work Cyanogen!
Cyanogen’s been adding bits of Eclair in for a few releases now. Oh .. an 4.2.5 is out with even more 2.0 goodness. Just check out CM Updater
Where can I find the steps to install android 2.0 n G1 ?
Just waiting for the other competitors
It will be interesting to see how the game changes once the virtualisation of the mobile devices starts to kick in. Along the lines of hackintosh, which allows PCs to run mac os, I’m envisioning windows mobile running iPhone apps.
There’s also been talk about vmware getting into the game.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/614668/vmware-demos-mobile-app-virtualisation
Cyanogen is reaching legend status in the googlesphere.
Just one big question… will 2.0 allow you to run apps from the memory card…