T-Mobile G1 Now Available for Under $100
Amazon.com is now offering the T-Mobile G1 at a special price – just over half what this Android-based smartphone normally sells for.
The regular price for the G1 is $180 when purchased with a two-year contract, but this online retailer is selling it now for $98. However, getting this price requires signing up for a new service contract, so this deal is not available to current T-Mobile customers.
To learn more, visit Amazon’s website.
More About the T-Mobile G1
The T-Mobile G1 is a consumer-oriented smartphone with support for this carrier’s new 3G network.
It includes an 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen, a QWERTY keyboard, GPS, and Wi-Fi. It also sports a microSD card slot and a 3.2 megapixel camera.
What makes the G1 special though isn’t the hardware, but that it’s the first device running an operating system that was developed primarily by Google.
It has a highly-functional web browser, and includes tie-ins to a number of this company’s online services, like Gmail and Google Maps. There is also a rapidly growing collection of third-party software available.
The G1 is also available now on T-Mobile USA’s website, as well as stores, but at the regular price. It can also be purchased in many Wal-Mart stores for $150.
Source: Amazon
Multi-Touch G1
HTC’s second Android-based handset, codenamed Sapphire possibly arriving in May
Apparently, HTC will be launching its second mobile phone, running on Google’s Android OS (the first of which being the T-Mobile G1), which is codenamed Sapphire, sometime in May. Previously, it was thought a second Android-based device from HTC would be launching around March or April, but this seems to no longer be the case. The Sapphire should be available on both the Vodafone and T-Mobile networks – the G1 is a T-Mobile exclusive. On top of that, expect more Android-powered devices to be unveiled by HTC sometime in the second quarter of the year.
Did you remember I said this before so I heard this news an authorized man of HTC.
Real multi-touch (and limitations) demo’d on the G1
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 of 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.
Let me break it down for you, fly CG style. The G1 uses a less exact sort of touchscreen than the iPhone, which is unable to distinguish fundamentally between two touches if they share an x or y coordinate. There are ways of hacking around this, but it’s different from a touchscreen that’s designed from the ground up to detect multiple touches and not let them interfere with each other (the hardware is different).
Still, the G1 is capable of tracking two touches at least, although three would almost certainly be impossible to manage, from what I understand of the system, or would be limited to simple gestures like a swipe. Fortunately, double touches work fine for most of what they are needed for: zooming and (with a little hackery) rotation.
The hack to enable the capability on your G1 is not easy to install for users, but is not technically a very low-level one. In fact, the kernel is already working in multitouch, it’s just in another interface layer that the extra information is discarded. So the hack sends the info around that layer’s protections and to a demo application. So it’s still not a consumer app, but it’s getting a lot closer, I’d say in six months we’ll have a solution capable of being installed by a grandma.
T-Mobile G1 Update Will Add On-Screen Keyboard
Most people would agree that the feature most obviously missing from the Android OS, and therefore the T-Mobile G1, is an on-screen keyboard. A system software update is expected to add this feature soon, though.
The G1 has a touchscreen, but no on-screen keyboard. The only option for entering text is with the hardware keyboard, which requires turning the device to landscape mode and sliding up the screen.
This missing feature will reportedly be added to Android in a software update — code-named cupcake. A video showing this in action leaked out a few days ago:
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As shown in the video, this will work like the on-screen keyboards on many other smartphones, popping up from the bottom of the screen when the user needs it.
In addition, cupcake is supposed to contain a number of bug fixes and other small enhancements.
Exactly when this will be released is not known, other than “soon”. That decision on timing is up to Google and T-Mobile.
