If you’ve been around the Android world for a while, you may remember the HTC Dream aka the T-Mobile G1. Heck, some of you might still have one laying in a drawer somewhere gathering dust. Well, HTC hasn’t forgotten about the very first Android device, and the HTC Dream bootloader is now unlockable via the official unlock tool over at HTCDev.

Another oldie but goodie…unlock bootloader support for the HTC Dream is now here! Check it out: htcdev.com/bootloader

— HTCdev (@htcdev) March 7, 2012

Perhaps the most popular custom Android ROM in the world, the mighty CyanogenMod just reached a major milestone last night. Over one million unique installs. Although it may be relatively small percentage-wise to the entire Android ecosphere, a million users is a pretty impressive for a single ROM to achieve.

For those that want to leave behind the ways of manufacturer’s customized skins and move to a more stock Android experience with complete control of their device, CyanogenMod has been offering that oasis since the early days of the Android 1.5 and the T-Mobile G1. With the upcoming release of the Android 4.0 based CyanogenMod 9, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that number keep growing by leaps and bounds.

[CM Stats via CyanogenMod Google+]

T-Mobile’s G1 (aka the HTC Dream) was the very first Android phone, now over 4 years old. That doesn’t stop ambitious developers from keeping it updated, well sorta. The G1 has recently received a semi-working port of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich thanks to some folks over at XDA developers. The 4.0 ROM may run a bit sluggish on the G1′s 528 MHz processor and 192MB of RAM, but it’s an amazing feat it runs at all. Naturally with early alpha ports to unsupported phones, a lot of things aren’t working, namely WiFi, Bluetooth, rotation and some other bits. There’s certainly some room for improvement, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see a usable build in the near future.

Check out the video below for a preview of Ice Cream Sandwich on the G1. And if you’re interested in installing it on your G1, you can find downloads and instructions on the XDA Developers thread.

Hard to believe it’s been 3 years since the first Android phone, the HTC T-Mobile G1 was announced and the world got their first taste of Android. Since then Android has exploded in popularity and matured a lot as a mobile OS. Anyone out there still rocking a G1? What’s your favorite Android memory from the past 3 years?

Well that didn’t take long at all. It wasn’t just a few days ago that we heard the T-Mobile G2 was on the watch list for reaching the end of its life. And now we have official word that as of 6/6/11 the QWERTY packing G2 has been discontinued. If you still want one, there’s plenty of third party retailers still selling them, or you may have luck in a T-Mobile store. But we checked T-Mobile’s website and it’s officially gone.

The G2 will join its grandfather, the T-Mobile G1 in the QWERTY phone retirement home. It seems there isn’t much demand for QWERTY phones these days, but let’s hope the demise of the G2 speeds up the release of the HTC MyTouch 4G Slide.

Oh and HTC/T-Mobile, don’t forget about that Gingerbread update you promised for the G2, there’s a lot of users that would love a little extra life for their aging phone.

[via TmoNews]

One of the very first apps I ever saw demoed on Android was Google Earth. Just the image of the Earth spinning around on the G1 screen was phenomenal. Fast forward to today and now screens have grown to 10.1 inches and tablets are all the rage.

Google has recently updated the Google Earth app for Android to be optimized for the tablet screen. Perks like fully textured 3D buildings, an action bar for easy navigation, and even the ability to “fly around” a location are sure to make the tablet experience a joy.

The latest Google Earth is in the Android Market now for devices running Android 2.1 and higher, and the tablet version is for devices running Android 3.0 or higher.

[Market Link]

[via Google Mobile blog]

First off, I found it amazing that a third party developer would support old hardware for so long. The HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1) and the HTC Magic (aka Sapphire aka T-Mobile MyTouch 3G) have been around over two years. Even T-Mobile stopped already selling the G1 and the original MyTouch 3G, and long stopped offering software updates. Still, you can’t support an aging device forever and CyanogenMod has officially stopped development of ROMs for the two classic phones.

You can still download CM 6.1 for both devices, but as some users have pointed out it runs slow on the older hardware. I had to use a G1 with CM6 for a couple days and the experience was painful compared to the T-Mobile G2 that I use day to day.

Still, much thanks to the CyanogenMod team for the great ROMs over the years and looking forward to the latest CM7 updates.

[CyanogenMod via Android Police]

Running different flavors of Linux on Android is nothing now, even the T-Mobile G1 saw a port of Ubuntu back in the day. The latest entrant in this category is running Ubuntu 9.10 on the Motorola XOOM. It runs through a virtual machine of sorts and keeps the Ubuntu environment entirely separate from Android. It was accomplished using a version of Ubuntu for the ARM processor that most Android devices have.

The process is lengthy, but in the end the result is pretty awesome. If you have the skills and patience, head over to the original blog post here. Everyone else can just admire the video below of Ubuntu in action on the XOOM.

Remember all those rumors saying Honeycomb would require this hardware or that, dual core or certain screen size? And that it was for tablets only? Yeah, we remember too. So far there’s only a handful of devices running Honeycomb out of the box, but that never stops developers from porting it to other devices. Starting with the Nook Color, then we saw it on the HTC EVO, Incredible and HD2.

Now it’s hitting some low-end devices, including the very first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. It’s also been ported to the HTC Magic, known as the MyTouch 3G here in the US, and the HTC Wildfire.

Yes, it’s much more of a proof of concept rather than a fully functional ROM, and as expected a lot of bits don’t work. But it’s impressive nonetheless. Check out the video below showing the Honeycomb port on the G1/Magic.

[G1/Magic xda-developers] [Wildfire xda-developers]

Many of you are readers of Gizmodo I’m sure. They’re one of the 800lb gorillas in the tech blog world and hard to ignore. But you may have missed a short little post yesterday about the CLIQ XT upgrade (or lack thereof) that I want to make further light of. Probably some of the best buying advice when it comes to Android phones. Forget screen size and dual core and megapixel counts for a second, just listen to this:

Never buy a phone on the promise that it might get upgraded someday. Buy it for the features and the software that it comes with today. Period.

That is literally going to be the cornerstone of my shopping advice whenever someone asks me what phone they should get. Every day I hear from people wondering when this upgrade is coming to this phone. And if Google keeps updating Android, which they will, the cycle will never stop and inevitably some phones will get left out in the cold. Granted, there are sometimes other upgrade avenues available via the developer community. Yes, even the original Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, has a version of Gingerbread ported to it.

A fair amount of the phones announced at CES last month are said to come with Android 2.2, of course quickly followed up with a promise to upgrade to Gingerbread. I’m willing to bet one or more of those devices may not see it for another year. What version of Android will we be on then?

If you bought a new car, then next year’s model came out with some new fangled feature, would you take it back to the dealer begging them to add the feature to your car? Probably not.

If you’re going to buy a phone and sign away two years of your life to a carrier to get it at a good price, make sure you can either be happy with that phone, as-is, for two years. Or be able to afford to upgrade early. Or find an alternative way to update the software as mentioned earlier.

Thoughts? Comments? Death threats?