People have been getting very impatient for the the “Cupcake” build of Android, but finally it appears to be arriving.
According to Engadget T-Mobile may have started distributing Android 1.5 as an over-the-air update to G1 owners, which would bring customizable widgets, messaging enhancements, virtual keyboards, and UI tweaks (among many other goodies).
We blogged about the T-Mobile Sidekick LX back in January but have heard very little since then. However T-Mobile have finally made the Sidekick LX official and will go on sale in the US on May 13th for $199 on a 2 year agreement.
Unfortunately there is no word on a UK release.
The specification of the new Sidekick LX includes:
HipTop3 have uncovered what looks to be a spec sheet for an upcoming Sidekick, the LX 2009. There seems to be a significant number of features to keep people happy including:
Social Networking Suite of Apps
GPS Location Based Search
Content Creation
Hardware
It is also rumoured to have Outlook/Exchange support which would make it a great little business phone!
T-Mobile has topped the tables of an independent mobile broadband performance test by P3 Solutions for the second consecutive quarter.
The testing compares mobile broadband providers measuring customer experiences during peak hours in 16 cities throughout the UK. The tests include visiting the most popular websites such as the BBC, Ebay, Bebo and Google, as well as a 90-second YouTube clip, a 90-second 512Kbps streaming video as well as SMTP and IMAP based e-mail services.
T-Mobile came top in the web-browsing experience, on average 35% faster than the closest competitor, fastest for sending and receiving e-mail with attachments, and had the best upload speeds, 59% faster than the next competitor. T-Mobile were beaten to number one on download speed however, coming second with an average of 1 Mbps, with the fastest coming just shy of 1.5 Mbps.
Phones Review have posted 2 links to You Tube video reviews comparing the iPhone and G1.
The reviewer is quite thorough and basically shows you many features of each phone and compares the two together to see what one is better.
Personally I am not a huge Apple fan so I am a bit biased against the iPhone, however you can't deny it is a good phone. I feel that the G1 has more flaws than the 3G iPhone however this is the first incarnation of the phone, and if we look at the first iPhone that had even more flaws, especially the lack of 3G!!!
I think Android/G1 is more of a grower and not a shower at the moment. I do have complete confidence that Android will become the best Smartphone OS out there it just requires a hardware manufacturer to release something to make the most of the OS. It also means that Android could potentially have hundreds of different hardware options at any one time. This is where the iPhone is let down, there is only 1 company releasing hardware for it so the phone will always have people that don't like something about it.
Well them Google developers don't mess around do they?
Google has commented on the issues saying:
“We’ve been notified of this issue (Jailbreaking of Android) and have developed a fix. We’re currently working with our partners to push the fix out and updating the open source code base to reflect these changes.”
It is likely the update will be rolled out in the next few days.
Via: Androidcommunity, via xda-developers
It has only been a few days since the launch of the T-Mobile / Google G1 and hackers have already bypassed the restrictions implemented on the Android platform.
This hardly comes as a surprise as Android is open source, and hackers didn't take too long to crack the closed iPhone system.
The hack allows the user to access the phone as a root/superuser.
The process seems relatively easy, you need to get PTerminal, a command line tool, from the Android marketplace. From there, you navigate to your system/bin folder (where the binaries are kept) and type telnetd to launch the telnet program which lets you login to the phone remotely.
Make sure your Wi-Fi is switched on then type netstat to get your IP address. From there, you just grab a computer on the same network and telnet in. You now have root access to the entire file system.
It is worth noting that this will essentially allow anyone to access the phone as a super user as the phone has no authentication. So it is advisable to shut everything down once done.
At the moment the hack has mainly been used to install applications onto the SD card which is prohibited normally. However it should be possible to use this technique to unlock the phone, allowing you to use it on any network.
It is expected Google/T-Mobile will try and fix this issue ASAP as T-Mobile cover the cost of the phone based on the user being tied into a long term contract.
Personally I think things like this could end up being one of the strong points of Android. When a system can be opened up and customised by individuals it tends to get a huge community following. Just look how many people contribute free work to things like Linux, Wordpress and Joomla. Granted Android is quite different than them 3 examples but you get my point.
Via: Wired
Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore has informed the New York Times that he was able to install a keystroke logging application by redirecting the G1's web browser to a malicious web site that automatically installed the software.
Google has acknowledged the security flaw and points out that the sandbox-nature of Android limits the damage to a single application. Unlike other smart-phones and PCs, this security flaw only affects the web browser and will not compromise any other portions of the phone. Google has already patched the open-source version of Android and is currently working with T-Mobile and HTC to get the security patch out to current T-Mobile customers.
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