Android Jelly Bean ported to the first ever 'droid phone

by Mark Tyson on 10 August 2012, 15:46

Tags: T-Mobile (NYSE:DT), HTC (TPE:2498), PC

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The T-Mobile G1, which was the world's first Android phone, can now run Jelly Bean. The age and low specifications of this phone were no deterrent to xda-developers hacking group SoCal Devs. The group published a video of the T-Mobile G1 (AKA HTC Dream) working with the new Jelly Bean Android 4.1 OS with a bit of commentary talking about the project details.

The T-Mobile G1 was launched back in 2008 and of course was a desirable device back in the day. However looking at the spec now, it is way under the minimum specs set by Google at the Jelly Bean launch. The 528MHz processor, 256MB internal storage and 192MB RAM equipped G1 can be seen above, to operate in a rather unhurried manner, some may call it slow. When Google talked about project butter, making Jelly Bean smoother and more responsive, I’m pretty sure they never thought it would be running on this phone. This old G1 doesn’t speed smoothly along like a hot knife through butter, it’s more like a cold spoon.

If you do have an old T-Mobile G1 hanging around the bottom of a drawer there is one more important thing you should know before deciding to try and install this Jelly Bean alpha release upon it. Cellular data isn’t working as yet, which is quite important to most people.

HTC Dream scores Jelly Bean while HTC One X owners are still waiting for the official 4.1 update

HTC’s current flagship phone users are still waiting for their Jelly Bean update. The company released an update today but it was just an incremental ICS update, this is for a device that shipped with ICS. People with be getting Android version 4.0.4 OTA rolling out starting today. Jelly Bean is promised but owners are going to have to wait a while longer. This also applies to many, many other Android phone owners.



HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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There is no incremental update for my one x!

Also that looks pants, totally pointless exercise IMO
Biscuit
… totally pointless exercise IMO …

I dunno, shows what can be done with some careful optimisation, and I reckon my step-son would be pretty excited to think that Jelly Bean might be possible on his old Magic, regardless of how poorly it ran. Also it's a reminder that you don't need the latest and greatest hardware for a functional device - it's no less pointful than sticking a quad-core processor in a mobile phone (IMNSHO, anyway ;) ).
There isn't that much functionality improvement between froyo/gingerbread and ics/jelly bean. It's nicer and there is some cool desirable stuff but nothing essential really.

I don't dispute the lack of point in a quad core, but my phone is still silky smooth and I love it :-P
Biscuit
There isn't that much functionality improvement between froyo/gingerbread and ics/jelly bean. It's nicer and there is some cool desirable stuff but nothing essential really.
Sorry, going to slightly disagree - I borrowed a GB phone at the weekend and sheesh was I glad to get back to the S3. As you say, there's precious little that an ICS+ phone can do that a GB one can't - but the whole “experience” on the older phone feels “half baked” (OMG, I sound like an iFan).
Biscuit
I don't dispute the lack of point in a quad core, but my phone is still silky smooth and I love it :-P
I really like my S3, I keep finding stuff that I admire and very few things that annoy me, (“plop, plop” dial tones is #1). Dual-core is probably the “sweet spot” as far as I'm concerned - I wouldn't willingly go back to a single-core Android phone.

Getting back to the article - it's a good thing that the xda-devs have managed this - not sure how usable/practical it is. To me though, it does kind of give the lie to the manufacturers that claim their 2011 device isn't getting ICS because “it can't support it” (very budget phones excluded).