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

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.

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]

Sure, current Android handset owners, it’s understandable that you’re looking at HTC’s new Hero handset with a bit of jealousy. The new Sense UI alone is reason enough to be envious of course, as HTC has seemingly done for Android what it has done previously for Windows Mobile — added a UI layer that boosts sex appeal by about a million times. Don’t fret though… It looks like at least some of you will be getting some Sense UI love in the near future. HTC CEO Peter Chou is reportedly quoted as stating, “HTC sense will be available on some other existing devices.” That little snippet can be interpreted a variety of ways of course, but suffice it to say that the Dream/G1 or the Magic/myTouch 3G (or even both) are destined for updates that include the new Sense UI. As for what carrier versions will be privy to said update, your guess is as good as ours for the time being. Keep those fingers crossed, T-Mobile subscribers.

While most of us see this as wonderful news, I can’t help but think how the T-Mobile G1 has much less memory than the Hero, or even the Magic. This is why the hacked version of the Hero ROM doesn’t work so great on the G1. So we’ll slap a big fat RUMOR tag on this one and see what happens.

[via BGR]