As anyone who has spent some time with any recent HTC-made Windows Mobile phone ought to know, HTC has a serious knack for taking mobile OSes and customizing them – and there’s no better OS for that than Android. After cranking out the Dream and the Magic with only limited modifications, all signs indicate that HTC is going all out with the tweaks on the upcoming HTC Hero.

Over the past few weeks, a build of the HTC Hero ROM has been floating around, albeit closely guarded, amongst the developer community. A hacker going by the name of Haykuro would port it to the G1, then demonstrate the new features on video. Eventually the build leaked without without Haykuro’s permission, and it spread like wildfire. It’s a buggy beta build and lacks some of the features we’ve already seen (like the Rosie UI home screen), but it’s relatively functional and gives us a sneak peek at some of the cool things to come from the future HTC Android devices.

One of the most striking changes is the general interface. If you thought the default interface on Android was a little bland, you’ll be happy to know HTC has spiced things up a little bit with some splashes of toxic green, grays and blacks. Not enough to rattle your snake? How about integrated Facebook, Flickr and Twitter clients? Even better, when you log in to your Facebook account from the application, you can then link your contacts to their respective profiles. That makes it even easier to add that embarrassing picture they uploaded of themselves after they’ve had one too many drinks. Status updates can also be sent directly from the application.

Each contact entry pulls information from the accounts you have linked. So say you link up the Facebook profile of your best-best-best-friend-twice-removed forever; their birthday, e-mails, status updates will all readily be available. Also accessible directly from each contacts screen is a little icon bar that lets you switch over to view any text messages, e-mails, photo albums (from Facebook or Flickr) and recent calls.

Anybody remember Footprints, that crazy geo-tagging application HTC debuted on the revised HTC Touch Cruise? It’s been ported to Android, and appears in this build. Footprints essentially allows you geo-tag photos, categorize them by places you have been, and rate them.
Other Changes:

• Huge calendar revamp – the calendar app is gorgeous now.
• Much improved dialer
• As we’ve been seeing in any non-”With Google” HTC phone to hit the shelves, it has Exchange support

If you have a rooted G1 and one hell of an itch to dabble, you can find the ROM here. If you can’t read Chinese, you can just download it directly here. Beyond just being rooted, you need to have Haykuro’s new SPL installed that increases your system partition, the newest radio, a recovery image.. in other words, this isn’t for the faint of heart, nor do we recommend it. Props to Haykuro for making this possible. While we can’t officially give props to xdan for leaking this prematurely, we’d probably give him a high five when no one was looking.[PSGallery=2asyo3vcs8]

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The system, however, is slightly flawed. It appears that no one is really moderating these comments, and they usually end up turning into heated debates on the most futile of topics. So, rather than let these little gems go to waste, we’ve run into the middle of the battle, and emerged somewhat unscathed with loads of half-baked comments for everyone to enjoy.

Note: These have been copied as-is from the Android Market, with minor censoring.

• AndroidCan Connect: “Bored. Hit me up at ***@gmail.com and we’ll talk” by katie.
• Biolines: “Like a clingy ex-girlfriend that keeps re-installing itself. Seriously, how the heck do you remove this permanently? Worst app ever.” by Erin.
• Deflektor Remake: “Im not gonna bash it but that is no classic pac man is classic and how about the ball that breaks the blocks i forget the name arkonoid i think” by duane.
• Zombie, Run!: “i love hot naced girls” by Robert.
• Port Knocker: “RandumAccess you’re the biggest retard since Hilary Clinton. Go back to sticking your sisters arm up your dads **** passage” by Jamie.
• My Med Box: “Yea this ****in blows **** and to the ladies that blow ****….hit me up at ***@gmail.com” by greg
• More Cowbell!: “I need a cow bell 2 smack the developer….this shyt is stupid!!!!!” by rocky!
• Text-to-Speech Library: “Quickest way to get friends on your g1 = www.G1Profiles.com” by Jerome.
• DailyHoroscope: “Oh my god i love this very thing thay said about aries is so ture i love this keep up the work and keep up with the updates” by felicite.
• NeoCore: “Gangsta graphics yo mabe if i could play it. O well since i cant do dat u think i can get some homegirls 2 chat with ***139gmail” by steven.

There you have it, just a small dosage of the magnificent Android Market comments. How long until someone develops an app that bricks phones for people who comment “FIRST!!!1″?

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So what does all this mean, exactly? For the time being, not a whole lot. This allows G1 owners to flash their devices with unauthorized (or “unsigned”) firmware builds, which is something that is still at a fairly early stage. That said, it shouldn’t be too long before we start to see some awesome alternative firmware builds (even non-Android – think Linux, or if you’re looking to commit an act of heresy, Windows Mobile.) start to stem from this.

A word of caution from the source:

If this goes wrong, you WILL DESTROY YOUR PHONE. Seriously. It will go PTHHTHTH. So don’t interrupt it, don’t let the battery die, etc.

Heed those words. Installing this could completely brick your phone, so proceed with a big bag of caution. We’ve tested it on our own devices, but your mileage may vary.

Big ups to dream_kill, cmonex, and JesusFreke for their amazing work on hacking up the G1 and Android.

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To nab one of these, you’ll need to register as a developer on the Android Market site, pay the one-time $25.00 registration fee, and slap down $399 big ones for the hardware.

Google plans to expand the territories that it’s available in, but initially you may purchase one if you are located in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary.

Google is advising that these dev phones are just that: phones for developers. They’re not intended for the general consumer, as unguided firmware flashing is a quick way to wind up with a fancy paper weight. Speaking of fancy, check out that battery cover. How much for just that part?

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Roadmap:

• Multiple windows
• Downloads
• Configurations
• Clear application history and cache
• On-screen keyboard

The creation of this project is still very new, so don’t expect it to blow the Underoos off the built-in browser just yet. That said, it’s definitely an application to keep your eye on, if only for that on-screen keyboard the developer says will be in the next release. You may want to continue using the default browser for now as Steel is lacking customization settings and a few other features like overview zoom, but if you absolutely need auto-rotation, then give it a whirl.

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Feeling as if your G1 is a little bland in the animation department? Want those fancy sliding animations generally reserved for Google’s demonstrations? Worry no longer – afbcamaro from XDA Developers noticed that you can use a development package from the Android SDK that allows for you to access some fun features (such as sliding transitions) that didn’t make their way in to the end product.

What you need:

• T-Mobile G1
• APKInstaller (download it from the AndroidMarket), Development.APK (Download link), and a MicroSD card.

How to do it:

1. Make sure you have APKInstaller from the Android Market, and Development.APK from here (If you want, you can point your browser directly to that link from your phone and bypass all the following steps. Thanks to Mark Murphy for the tip!).
2. Put the Development.APK in the root directory of the MicroSD card. In other words, put it at the very first section of the card – don’t go making a folder named “root”.
3. Launch the APKInstaller, navigate to the file you just placed on the MicroSD card, and install it. This will install an application called “Dev Tools”
4. Open Dev Tools, then select Development Settings. Scroll down to the bottom, and change Window Animation Scale to 1x, and Transition Animation Scale to 1x (or play around with them for varying effects).

Enjoy!

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Whenever the G1 vs iPhone debate gets underway, iPhone purists are quick to flag the G1’s lack of multi-touch input support. Turns out, it might just be able to handle it after all -on the hardware end, at least. Whilst tearing his G1’s workings apart line-by-line, a crafty coder going by RyeBrye came across an interesting artifact. It seems the driver for the Synaptics touchscreen has some code commented out; after recompiling the kernel with said code back in, he was able to track two finger presses at once.

So if the hardware supports it, why no multi-touch on the G1? Patents, presumably. While this in no way actually enables to you to do any kind of multi-touch funnin’ immediately (nothing made for the G1 is currently coded for use with multi-touch, afterall), it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Though we probably won’t see any official support for multi-touch on the G1 any time soon, someone with a bit of spare time to tinker will probably figure out a way to make use of it before too long.

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It was only a few days ago that we tore into the 20 dollar IM+ application for being overpriced, buggy, and lacking anything that justified that 20 dollar price tag. At the tail-end of that review, we expressed our hopes that an IM app done right would come along soon. Enter Meebo for Android, brought to you by the same people behind the awesome browser-based IM application of the same name. It’s got a clean interface, is dead simple to use, and best of all: it’s FREE. Game over, IM+.

Meebo is a true replacement for Android’s out-of-the-box IM client, supporting simultaneous logins for AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, and Jabber. Through a day of fairly rigorous testing, Meebo ran smoothly in the background without any notable hiccups. I always fear that I’ll miss an important IM when a chat app decides to silently off itself – fortunately, Meebo plops an icon onto Android’s notification bar as an “Ongoing” alert, providing a bit of constant reassurance. Just like the taskbar on your computer, Meebo’s icon will reflect if you have messages and display them for a short time to see if they are worth replying to.

For a first release, it’s already well on its way in the right direction. The only gripe we have at the moment is the lack of configuration options for away messages, notifications.. or anything else, for that matter. With that said, it still obliterates IM+ and the default IM application on Android. Check it out on the Android Market and give it a whirl!

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Sending and receiving messages is easy enough. It’s just how you would expect it, although I strongly dislike how it throws all of your contact lists on one screen. I’d prefer to see them separated by service rather than one hefty list of buddy groups, or at least, let me make it that way through an option. Oh well – Some folks love the big collective list. That’s kinda worth twenty-dollars, right? No? Anyone?

With any new application, you’re likely to come across a bug or two. IM+ is no exception. The most notable issue we noticed is that if you switch screens or change the device orientation then go back to a conversation window, it occasionally doubles the text as seen in the picture above.

Are you one of those people who prefers to sign in and out of their IM client rather than just going away for a few minutes? Then you’re in luck. Otherwise, not so much. After many, many days of testing and trying, it just wouldn’t maintain the connection if the application wasn’t in the foreground. We were hoping that perhaps this was a limitation of the trial, with background connectivity saved for the full application. Again, nope. That’s totally not worth twenty-dollars. Once a nice background service has been developed for this app, then maybe, just maybe it will be worth it.

Unless Jabber, ICQ, or Myspace IM are crucial for your communication needs, skip out on IM+ – it just doesn’t bring anything to the table to make it worth the entry fee. Hopefully it won’t be too long before someone from the Pidgin or Adium camps grabs an Android handset and pushes out something worthwhile.

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Update: Though this guide is written for updating to RC29, it should work for any official update. We have tested it up to RC33.

If you’re constantly glancing at your G1 to check if T-Mobile has graced your handset with the oh-so-slow-to-roll-out RC29 update (”By November 11th”? Pah!), you might be glad to find out that there’s now a way to expedite the process. All you need is a computer, internet connection, a way to transfer the firmware to your Micro SD card and half a brain.

Mandatory warning: Updating firmware can be a delicate procedure, so continue at your own risk. Always back up everything. Unless you’re able to check the hash or otherwise verify a firmware’s source, downloading it is your own risk and not the responsibility of anyone else. Whenever possible, download it directly from Google (as you will in this tutorial). Also make sure that your battery is charged so as to keep it from fizzling out mid-update, and that you don’t have the G1 hooked up to your computer while updating.

1. Grab the RC29 update from Google here RC33 update from Google here.

2. Rename it from signed-PLAT-RC33-from-RC30.f06aa9b3.zip to update.zip, and place it in the root of your Micro SD card.

2.5. If you added the file to your microSD card by connecting the handset to your computer via USB (rather than using a microSD card reader), make sure to unplug it now. (Thanks for the tip, Cole!)

3. Turn off your G1, then turn it back on by holding the Home+End keys until you see an icon popup after the T-Mobile G1 logo.

4. From the icon screen, open the keyboard and hit Alt+L. This will display the log saying what is happening (although you can skip this step).

5. Now press Alt+S to begin the update. Remember, the update needs to be in the root of the Micro SD card and needs to be named update.zip.

6. Once it finishes, just follow the onscreen instructions and press Home+Back to finish.

7. The G1 will reboot a few times to flash different parts of the firmware.

If all went well, you should now be running the latest update, RC33. To make sure all your hard work wasn’t for nothing, hit Menu > Settings > About Phone > scroll to Build Number. You should see RC33 in there somewhere. Congrats!

Notes:

• According to this post, some folks are having issues with the microSD card which came in the box, while it works for others just fine. If you have mounting issues with one card, try another.

Update -T-Mobiles official word on the matter:

While I understand that many of you have downloaded this update and seem to have it working, T-Mobile cannot support you in doing so. If you download and attempt to install this or any other update (regardless whether its from Google or not) to your device, and it is rendered unusable, you are out of luck. Even if we do exchange it, you will be without a device for several days (or possibly even weeks).

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The interface needs some remodeling, and the key mapping is going to need some work as well – but the first emulator on any given platform is always an important landmark, and things can only get better. As the legality of emulators is somewhat dubious, some questioned whether or not such an item would be allowed in Google’s Android Market. AndroidBoy’s success in making it to the market is a great sign of things to come.

I wonder when the Apple App Store will get an emulator? Oh wait, that’s not going to happen.

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Title: Twidroid

Summary: One of the first, and best Twitter clients out there for Android so far. Twidroid does what you expect it to, and has some great features in the works, such as photo uploading and background updating so you can always get the latest tweets. Replying to your fellow Twitts is a breeze as well, just press the direct or public reply button.

The Good: Easy to use, clean interface.

The Bad: The photo feature isn’t quite ready for the masses, but they decided to leave it in there anyway. Sometimes gets stuck loading tweets.

Worth the download? Definitely. If you use Twitter and don’t want to do it through the web interface, this is the best alternative so far.

Title: LOLcat Builder

Summary: Exactly what it sounds like: you can build your own LOLcat images on the go. You snap a photo, open it in the program, and add text. It’s already formatted so no scrounging through Photoshop to find the perfect LOLcat font. It’s already done for you. You then have the option to share the images you’ve created with your unsuspecting contact list, who will soon come to hate your guts.

The Good (or the bad): This application could create a whole new method of picture messaging fun. Why just plain text when you can LOLcat text?

The Other Bad: No camera button in the app, so you’ve gotta have your photos ready when you launch the app. Also, there seems to be an alignment bug that cuts off text at random.

Worth the download? Probably. Not for everyone, but there’s an audience for it. And if you have friends that are far, far outside of said audience, it’s a great way to drive them up the wall.

Title: SpellDial

Summary: SpellDial is a simple application that allows you to search for contacts without requiring you to open the keyboard. Enter the contacts name T9 style and it will start narrowing them down.

The Good: Simple to use, and can replace the normal dialer. Not having to open the keyboard to search for the contact is fantastic. It also supports keyboard input, so it really can replace the standard dialer fairly well.

The Bad: The only way to backspace in numeric keypad mode is to swipe left, and the icon for the program is ugly.

Worth the download? Definitely. Great if you want to quickly find contacts without opening up the keyboard.

Title: BudgetDroid

Summary: With the economy the way it is right now, everyone is watching what they are spending. It’s not always easy, so that’s where BudgetDroid comes into play. This application aims at helping you budget your money better by splitting it into categories. Each category has a limit, and you are free to create as many new categories as you need, such as Entertainment, Books, Groceries, Expensive Girlfriend and whatever else your life requires. It also features a history view, so you can view recent purchases that you entered all in one fell swoop.

The Good: Helps manage your money more wisely.

The Bad: The UI is hideous. When entering in your purchases, the dollar and cents are entered separately instead of in one box.

Worth the download? If you are looking to start purchasing more wisely, then this is a great app. It requires discipline though, since they haven’t coded in the sucker punch feature when you go over your budget.

Title: Krystle II

Summary: In the developer’s words, Krystle II is a “simple pet application” meant to give “a little life” to your Android handset. In our words, it’s a close up shot of a shag carpet which giggles when you touch it.

The Good: It might make you smile the first time you play with it.

The Bad: It’ll only make you smile the first time you play with it.

Worth the download? If you’re deathly afraid of animals but want to experience the warmth of a pet’s love through the cold, hard touch screen, then yes. If you’re deathly afraid of giggling carpets, then no.

Title: CallerID by Whitepages

Summary: Are you sick of answering the phone, expecting important calls, when it’s actually a machine calling to tell you the warranty on a car you don’t even have is about to expire? CallerID is here to try and help fix that. Using the 3G/WiFi connection, it runs in the background and attempts to identify who is calling you, as long as the number is listed in the Whitepages. If it’s not, it will display the geographical location of the number instead.

The Good: Lets you answer only the calls you want to answer.

The Bad: May enrage credit collectors, scammers, and your aunts and uncles. Actually, that’s probably not a bad thing in most cases.

Title: SantasWorldWar

Summary: I think this game was supposed to be like Mario, but totally missed the mark. You play Santa who is bent on destroying the Russian leader who has overtaken the North Pole.

The Good: Uh.. Hrm. Oh! As moving in this game is quite hard (you need to roll the trackball really quick), it could be a great hand workout. That’s about it.

The Bad: The graphics are awful, the controls are awful, the coding is awful.

Worth the download? If you’re looking for something to make you really, really angry at your handset, sure. (Editor’s note: Seriously, this game made me want to punch myself in the eyes.)

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