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G1 (aka: HTC Dream) Gets Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Port.

Thursday, August 9, 2012 20:11

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(Before It's News)

The HTC G1 (aka: “Dream”) will forever be known thanks to it’s title of “world’s first Android smartphone”. The smartphone world (and Android) has come quite a long way since those early days in November 2008. With the many changes in hardware and software, one thing has always remained strong throughout Android’s vibrant user base – the act of continually improving upon older hardware long after carriers and manufacturers have given up on them. And what better way to illustrate this fact than revealing that clever hackers over at XDA have once again pushed the end of life status on the G1 further out once again by getting Jelly Bean up and running on the iconic, senior handset. (XDA thread)

Now before you go flinging that desk drawer open in search of the dust-collecting G1, there are a few important things to point out. First and foremost, the devs working on the G1 Jelly Bean project note that cellular data (amongst other things) isn’t working yet. In short: it’s a paper weight with a light-up display. For performance enthusiasts, you’ll probably want to stay away at this point, too. As you’ll see in the video below, Jelly Bean’s speed (or lack thereof) on the G1′s hardware is anything but speedy.

Minor issues aside, instances like this remind us just how much shit carriers and manufacturers feed us when they abandon hardware that is many times a mere one year old, citing underpowered hardware as the reason for the abandonment. The G1 running Jelly Bean, in any form, is proof that they simply don’t care.

While the eventual goal of daily driver status is up in the air (proof of concept and actual usable ROM are two completely different things) we’re intrigued to see just how far older hardware like the G1 can be pushed. If you decide to get in on this little experiment, be sure to send us some screenshots (or video) of the action. We’d love to check it out.

Video