I like to imagine that a special place exists somewhere on the Web where a bunch of unassuming “ordinary” folks get together to solve world technology issues. A brotherhood (that allows women too, of course) of sorts that uniformly scream, “HACK3RS UNITE!,” and then figure out how to stick it to the man. I’m not entirely sure anything that amazing exists, but there is something close – the XDA Developers Forum.

The latest philanthropic project taken on by these fine young men and women was to port Google’s new Navigation app (which comes pre-installed on the DROID) to the original Android Czar, T-Mobile’s G1. And low and behold…they’ve done it!

I don’t pretend to be any type of haxor whatsoever, so instead of trying to explain how to make the port myself (as if I could even make sense of any of it), I’d suggest giving this entire thread a read through. While they’ve outlined the process for all, it’s not for the faint of heart. With that said, let us know how it goes!

[via Engadget Mobile]

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Upon launching the application, Express News brought me to the general headlines display, listing 10 major stories that I would find atop any popular news portal on the web. A ‘get more stories’ button at the bottom grabs 10 more stories, listing them in ascending order from time published. From here, I checked out the article on Toys R Us’s acquisition of FAO Shwartz. It brought the article page at lightening speed (granted, I was connected over Wi-Fi), the story’s imagery intact.

Each story also has a “Share this” button, allowing you to send the link to your compadres via SMS or E-mail. It lacks a “Tweet this” button, which seems quite odd in the midst of the current Twitter-frenzy. If nothing else, it’d be nice if it tied into any of the Android Twitter apps already available.

And, for the sake of folks like me who can’t see 10 feet in front of them: You can change the text size quite easily.

Not only is the readability great, but the navigation setup is brilliant – but it needs a tutorial for first time users. Instead of going back to the main page or any category choice, users can ‘flip’ through articles and topics with a swipe of the finger. It’s a great feature for those who enjoy skim-reading; stories load fast enough that if the headline doesn’t grab you, the picture might. When, however, you do want to change the category of articles, just dropping ‘Express news’ bar at the top will display available categories including politics, general, and U.S. headlines to name a few.

Alas, it’s not all perfect. Our biggest qualm is with the lack of content customization. Though they claim to source from 300 sources, we’d like to be able to use this client for our sources – that is, RSS feeds. As far as we can tell, you’re stuck with what they give you.

The popularity and positive feedback of this quality application is most likely caused by its business model: instead of charging users, Express news is ad-supported. The advertisement is pretty non-intrusive, only seen at the top of the article selection pages. Free is great, but they really ought to figure out how much the average use brings in from ad-clicks in a few months or a year, and offer an ad-less version. Finally, if we can’t have RSS, at least give us localization. It’s a good news application; add local, nation and international news, and it’d be nearly perfect.

For the final price of free, this application is great; If you’re interested in the world around you and aren’t too interested in bringing in your favorite sites, it’s worth checking out. Everyone likes news, everyone likes free things; this app offers quality and no cost to the users.

What we liked:

• Great functionality, with a design fit specifically for the Android platform
• Incredibly performance – As I was playing with this app for an hour or so, I didn’t encounter one performance related issue
• News-paper feel, with flipping of the pages
• Ability to share articles of SMS and E-mail
• We like free things, everyone does

What we didn’t like

• No premium application, you’re forced to look at ads
• Lack of RSS feeds, or at least localization – This is a big minus

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Please note that before you update manually (This will not ‘root’ your phone, don’t worry about that), that this method is not supported by T-Mobile. We’ve done this countless times as new updates have rolled in, and its worked flawlessly – but if your phone explodes, it’s not our fault.

So, follow these steps exactly and you’re going to have a nice, delicious cupcake too! (not a real cupcake, just a bad-ass update)

• Rename ’signed-kila-ota-xxxx.xxxx.zip’ to ‘update.zip’
• Transfer update.zip to the ROOT of your G1’s MicroSD card. (For some reason, I couldn’t transfer the file directly from my desktop to the phone, I had to manually take the chip out and transfer it that way. The issue was caused by an I/O discrepancy.)
• Make sure your phone is powered off completely
• Hold down the ‘Home’ and ‘Power’ buttons From here it will bring up the bootloader.
• Open your keyboard and press Alt+L to bring up the bootloader command terminal
• From here, press Alt+S to apply the patch and let that sucker install!
• When it’s finished you’ll net to press Home and Back to begin manual reboot (note- not the power-button)

If you see the chip, everything went kosher and the radio is being configured and updated.

So, there you have it, just be patient while it boots up, the first time around it takes anywhere from 2-4 minutes. And I noticed that it was EXTREMELY slow after it became operation, however it completely subsided after 2 minutes or so. After the fact the performance has been nothing short of outstanding. The entire process took about 20 minutes from start to finish, and I’m a proud owner of a newly updated Cupcake. Now, I’m off to make senseless movies about my cat with the new video camera app.

[Via Phandroid and XDA-Developers]

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To fully appreciate this software, I felt I had to find myself outside of my familiar surroundings and truly get lost. So, off to the foothills of Northern California’s Sierra mountains I went. My almost-aimless journey led me few miles west of Auburn, California, known most notably for it’s rich gold-rush history. The town was perfect to put TeleNav’s power to the test, with desolate roads and winding paths, it would be easy for anyone with no familiarity to find themselves turned around out there. Being of the XY gene pool, I have no skill or courage to ask directions, so I powered up TeleNav’s software to get the ball rolling on my trek home.

TeleNav’s G1 software is pretty set to go right ‘out of the box’. It acquired my location with near-perfect accuracy and prompted my destination address. I decided, instead of typing out the address, I would put TeleNav’s voice search to the test. It asked me for the city and state first, after 2 attempts it correctly acquired the destination city I sought
after. Following the city/state combination, it prompted me to search for the exact address of my destination. It correctly recognized the address the first time up to bat, so kudos for clear and almost-robotic speech on my part, I suppose.

After TeleNav knew where I was and where I intended to go, it’s navigation user interface loaded. Very sleek and quite fluid, the screen gave a print out out of the basics: The street I was currently on, the street my next turn would be on, the direction and distance of my next turn, the total mileage of the trek, and the roughly-assumed travel time.

Without any issue, TeleNav guided me with a soft female voice around every turn and change of direction (Also offers español support for those who prefer Spanish). Having it search for traffic issues every few miles was also pretty neat, but seeing how it was 11PM, I didn’t expect much as far as backups or traffic jams. Before I arrived to my destination I made a quick detour to a local burger shack for a milkshake (all that driving builds a monster appetite). Back on to the road, TeleNav re-calibrated the millage, destination time and directions without me having to touch one button. After the 30 mile drive, I arrived at my destination with a very warm greeting from the robo-lady and her smooth demeanor. Not too shabby, I was pretty well impressed with the entire journey. It was the first time I had intentionally gotten lost, only to instill trust in to a mechanical device I had never used before. Having no issues on my return trip was a big plus.

The TeleNav software for the G1 surprised me, I wasn’t expecting this kind of quality for a GPS system on a mobile phone. I own a Garmin Nuvi, and it’s always pulled its weight as a standalone GPS device. Having this option of going mobile, however, is really sweet. But, as nothing in life is perfect, there are a few flaws. TeleNav doesn’t offer any hardware holster, which has become a standard feature with many standalone GPS devices. I was left just tossing my phone in a cup-holder, hoping it wasn’t in the mood to jump out. On top of that, if you don’t have a car charger, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting this product to you for any use beyond the shortest of trips. The G1 is synonymous with god-awful battery life and the GPS/3G just butchered my battery. The 20 minute trip knocked 30% perfect off of the freshly charged battery, which is impractical any way you look at it. This isn’t something I can get passed, but it isn’t really a flaw of TeleNav’s anyway (Ahem, HTC). Another issue that really irked me was the traffic report details feature… I LOVE this, but was sorely disappointed when I had to flip out the keyboard and press 0 to obtain any information. As it may be normal and justified on any other phone, I feel that could have been much less arbitrary, specifically to the design of the G1.

Overall, I was impressed with its functionality, TeleNav’s G1 GPS navigator has some big shoes to fill with the likes of the standalone systems out there, but they’ve done a great job growing in to them. The GPS voice was soothing, the speed and functionality was pretty mind-boggling (on 3G, at least. If you’re on EDGE, it’s a bit of a drag, but still completely usable), and the accuracy was damn impressive. Now if you’re looking to grab this software, it isn’t available in the Android Marketplace quite yet (The spokeswoman at TeleNav confirmed that it’s on the way) but is available directly through TeleNav’s site. The pricing is pretty heavy and is only available through subscription plans. The plans weigh in at $9.99 monthly, $99.00 annually, and $249.00 for a four-year block (The monthly plan offers a 1-month free trial before purchase). This may seem a bit high, but in the standards of GPS hardware, it isn’t the most expensive setup out there. I, as many would, wish the pricing was a bit lower… then again, I also wouldn’t mind finding bargain-bin Filet mignon, aged scotch, or DeLoreans (with in-tact and functional Flux Capacitor, of course.)

I wouldn’t recommend this application for public-transit commuters, but this is a great tool for business commuters and adventure seekers alike. The price is pretty well justified with the features, being an application for a mobile phone, it’s a keeper for me for sure. Now, in the opinions of many, this could be just a bit too much buck for the bang.

What we like:

• Awesome response time and pin-point accuracy
• Instant re-calibration for pit-stops, milkshakes, or human-error
• Soothing female HAL-like voice
• Solid voice-search functionality
• Weather-report feature
• Live traffic-incident reports on most major roads and highways

What we didn’t like:

• Telenav doesn’t offer a G1-friendly hardware holster
• Poor battery life with GPS/3G use
• Pricing plans only as subscriptions
• Traffic-incident details can only be viewed by pressing 0

The search function for businesses and places

The GPS travel user interface

The traffic and incident report features

The weather feature, GPS location by default but can be changed to any city or area

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Lookie, lookie. It seems that HTC’s next Android handset couldn’t avoid the geek paparazzi. We hear that this phone is the rumored HTC Hero and might get a release sometime in Q3 of this year, which sounds ’bout right if working handsets are already in the wild.

The overall design countiunes the cues set by both the G1 and Magic, but this incarnation doesn’t sport a track ball on the trademark chin. Also, it seems that this HTC handset might have a real life 3.5mm jack. Given HTC’s track record of Internet leaks, we’ll probably see more of this handset before too long.

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Read the rest of this entry >>

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The question raised is this: will apps have to comply with all carriers’ terms of service once Android is on AT&T, Sprint and the like? That could lead to a lot of confusion. At the moment it’s hard to say since only T-Mobile’s terms apply, but it had better get hashed out soon or developers are going to get antsy.

If you’re savvy, you can still get the app and code here.

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If we are to believe this Vodafone ad (and who are we to doubt the Internet), the European carrier will be the exclusive provider of HTC’s next Android phone, the Magic. The phone does somewhat resemble early spy shots so we could be looking at the real deal, folks.

We hear it comes packing with HSDPA, WiFi, GPS, and a 3.2 digicam. Perhaps Vodafone and HTC were planning a MWC09 announcement or even a CTIA reveal. After all, as it seems that most handheld manufacturers are announcing their first-gen Android handsets, we can think of no better time to announce HTC’s second go around at the OS.

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arron la via Talk Android
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T-Mobile is set to bring the G1 to more even more counties. Germany and Poland will be the first counties outside of the US and England to receive the Android-based phone with a launch of February 2nd, 2009. Eventually though, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Austria will all have the phone from the region’s T-Mobile branch. Pricing for every region, except Germany, haven’t been announced yet. Germans, however, will be able to pick up the G1 for 1 Euro with a two year contract.

All of this is pretty mundane expect for a statement from T-Mobile’s Chief Executive Hamid Akhavan. Click through for the utter lie.

Akhavan declined to disclose precise numbers but said the G1 was the most successful phone ever sold in the United States.

WHAT?!?! The most successful phone ever? What? ROFL. Erroneous, my friends. Erroneous. It is widely known that iPhone is the most successful phone after dethroning the Motorola RAZR. In fact, I have only seen one G1 in the hands of a non-gadget blogger. Ever.

Granted, T-Mobile probably had a great G1 launch thanks in part to the tech blogging crowd, but until some solid numbers are produced that prove the G1 is “the most success phone ever sold in the United States,” I will call Mr. Hamid Akhavan a big, fat liar.

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We saw a Pink Floyd-themed G1 multi-touch video a little while back, but it wasn’t very illuminating. This one is much more in-depth, and the (Canadian?) narrator reminds me myself, so it was relaxing as well. Plus, his page explains in minute detail what’s going on and what we can expect from the device.

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RemoteDroid allows you to use the touchscreen and keyboard of your G1 as inputs for your PC. I’m trying to think of a situation in which this would be handy and not just cool, but I can’t. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s totally awesome. Actually, it could be useful for a home theater PC setup, or for making people think your computer is haunted.

You’ll need to install the “server” on your Windows machine, and then of course the app on your G1. After that you’re only limited by your imagination. And some other stuff, probably.

[via Engadget]

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We’re still too far away from the launch for exact details. There is a chance that the mobile might not see a Stateside release as the tidbit doesn’t mention that side of the Pacific at all. This comes Tony An, Garmin’s Asia Pacific Marketing Director,

Garmin will launch Nuvifone, its first GPS-enabled handset, in the Taiwan market in the second quarter of 2009, An noted. Garmin also plans to launch self-developed Android handsets in the second half of 2009, with production to be outsourced

Chances are though, the device will be available here in Garmin’s home country – hopefully. Perhaps, 2009 will be a big year for Garmin as well. We would love to see more mobile devices from the firm with their industry-leading GPS support, something the G1 is notoriously lacking.

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Curious as to why Sony Ericsson (and 13 others) might have hopped on board with the Open Handset Alliance? Take a look at the November numbers of HTC, the folks behind the only Android handset currently on the market, and it all becomes clear.

This morning, HTC is announcing that they managed to pull $528.57 million in profit during the month of November. That’s right around 10.8% higher than October, and an ultra impressive 22.1% better than they did in November of 2007. According to Digitimes, a significant chunk of the revenue growth stems from sales of the HTC Diamond and, more notably, the Android-powered G1.

Now, the HTC Diamond could coast by on looks alone. The G1? Yeah, not as much. Without aesthetics on its side, the draw here has got to be Android. Interest in Android drives the sales, and the royalty-free licensing keeps it from dipping into profits. It’s win win – and after posting a $32 million dollar loss for Q3, that probably sounds pretty good to Sony Ericsson

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Google is now formatting AdWords text and image ads for Android and iPhone mobile browsers. The ads can include mobile-only calls to action, and can be created from standard Google ads run on the Web. The ads will also work on other phones with full HTML browsers in the future as they become available. (Both the iPhone and the Android G1 have full browsers based on Webkit).

By sticking with full HTML browser phones, the links in the ads can continue to point to regular Web pages and still work in a mobile context. Advertisers can also run one single campaign across the Web and advanced mobile phones, and see where they get the best response.

More at the Google Mobile blog.

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More info at the developer RyeBrye’s blog.

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After yesterdays announcement that Adobe was working on Flash for both Windows Mobile and Android, we mentioned that a brief demonstration of Flash running on the G1 was shown. Don’t believe it? The proof is in the pudding. The delicious streaming video pudding.

While there are a few apparent framerate stutters, this is by all indications a work in progress for Adobe. The element was embedded on a bare page, without any other elements whatsoever – not exactly how they’re generally served. This is presumably to ensure that this not-yet-optimized version of Flash had as many resources as possible for the demo, but hopefully the final version will be able to handle more than standalone SWF files.

[I4UNews via AndroidForums]

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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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Oh, how I love these product tear down price studies, wherein some research company grabs a product, rips it apart piece by piece, and pins a pricetag on each individual component to announce a somewhat shaky cumulative price. With at least a couple of the components in any given device being proprietary, a bit of it is educated guessing. Whether they’re dead on or completely wrong, how would we know? It’s not as if any major company is going to come out and say “Pfft, what? Product X actually costs [amount here] to make, thank you very much.”

Whatever – they tear it down, I just report it. Research firm iSuppli has stripped the T-Mobile G1 down to its naughty bits, and has emerged with a number: $144. That’s $35 bucks less than the subsidized 2-year contract price of $179, and $255 less than the full retail price of $399. While that doesn’t take into account R&D, labor, shipping, nor the money T-Mobile makes on a monthly basis from plans/contracts, I’d imagine that the numbers work out in their favor in the long run.

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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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Word of T-Mobile’s Holiday line-up just came down the wire, and it doesn’t look like they’ve kept any Christmas surprises up their sleeve. Anything that hasn’t been announced officially has been leaked for a few weeks now, so this pretty much just serves as one big confirmation.

• Motorola ZN5: Pictured on right. Announced and released 2 days ago. It’s a quadband candy bar. While it doesn’t have 3g capabilities, it does have WiFi and a 5 megapixel camera with xenon flash. Not too shabby for $99 on a two year bloodpact.
• Cameo: Leaked a month ago. It’s a $100 7-inch digital picture frame with its own SIM card and number. Send pictures to it via picture message, and they show up on the frame. Cool idea, but the $10-dollars-a-month fee seems a bit steep. Available in “the coming weeks”
• Samsung Behold: Leaked last month. For those who follow Samsung’s overseas lineup, it’s essentially an F480. Touchscreen display, TouchWiz user interface, 3G, Bluetooth, and a-GPS. Last we heard, it’ll hit the shelves for $149 on November 10th



• Samsung Gravity: We haven’t said too much about this one, but it’s not a well kept secret. It’s a nice little QWERTY slider with specs that keep it accessible on a budge – when they list “Phone book” and “Vibrating alerts” as features, you know it won’t break the bank. You can grab one for $49.99 on a 2 year deal starting November 17th.

Of course, they’ll also be pushing the T-Mobile G1 and the BlackBerry Pearl Flip throughout the season.

To help up the sales numbers, they’re also giving away complimentary “companion tickets” to fly you around the country this holiday. Rather than confusing anybody and botching their legalese, I’ll just quote the deal straight from the release:

With the Free Companion Flight promotion, T-Mobile is offering complimentary companion plane tickets from Nov. 19 through Dec. 24, 2008 to new and existing customers who sign up for a two-year service agreement. Those on a family plan will receive a companion ticket for each line of their family plan, up to five tickets, so it’s easy for the whole family to enjoy a trip together.

Companion tickets have no blackout dates, provide travel to and from more than 100 origination and destination cities, and are good for a year (travel must be completed by Feb. 15, 2010).

While I doubt anyone most people would be crazy enough to sign a 2 year contract just for one free “companion” ticket, it certainly sweetens the deal a bit if you were looking to nab a new device from T-Mobile anyway.

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With hundreds of thousands of G1s already pre-ordered, it looks like T-Mobile may have decided to celebrate by opening the floodgates a few days early. A number of users have reported that their order status has been changed to “Shipped”, with a tentative delivery date of Friday, October 17th. That’s just two days short of a whole week early, granting new G1 owners the whole weekend to strut their new toy around town.

I’ve played with the G1 a lot over the past few days. Unfortunately, that’s about all I can say on the matter until embargoes drop tomorrow.

[BGR]

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