Forget about updating your G1 to Motoblur, go all the way with a little Android 2.0 action. Hells yeah. The official Android update was ported to the G1 by some ambitious coders. Now, calm down until you see the video after the jump as the early build doesn’t exactly run all that well on the one year old phone. But you have to start somewhere.

Hey, hey. This hack will probably make more than a few G1 owners giddy. Apparently someone got their hands on a leaked copy of a Motorola Cliq ROM, which just so happens to have all the stuff for Motorola’s custom Android build, MotoBlur, and has converted it for the G1. Don’t ask us where these files are or the install instructions for your G1. We don’t know. But what we do know is that this port probably doesn’t make the Motorola suits all that happy, but this is the joy of an open platform like Android. Get use to it.

T-Mobile’s original Android phone, the G1, is now selling for $130 (with a two-year contract) direct from T-Mobile’s web site. That’s a $20 price reduction, although savvy bargain shoppers know that you can find the G1 from plenty of reputable places for around $100.

Lookie, lookie. It seems that HTC’s next Android handset couldn’t avoid the geek paparazzi. We hear that this phone is the rumored HTC Hero and might get a release sometime in Q3 of this year, which sounds ’bout right if working handsets are already in the wild.

It’s true! The built-in compass can be used as a metal detector, allowing you to detect keys that are very close to the phone. Is this particularly useful? Probably not, but now you can rub your phone against people like a stud finder and perhaps make new friends when you search for their “keys.”

Some folks at HDblog.it shot some video of the app in action. Worth a look.

via AndroidGuys

Bad news, you guys. Looks like after Google pulled all tethering apps from the Android Market, it had a change of heart and re-published them all. Problem is, the new terms of the tethering apps stipulate that they’ll only work for “all Android Market users outside the T-Mobile US network.”

Head down to CostCo, my little monkeys, for there you will find a T-Mobile G1 for $79.99. Note you have to bring the coupon from your CostCo flyer but it’s $20 less than Amazon had it yesterday. You have to get a 2-year contract, but who cares, right? You’ll be keeping the G1 for years!

With the HTC Magic launching in April, we probably could have guessed that the Cupcake update would be ready to ship to the G1 at the same time. But now we don’t need to guess – a T-Mobile rep has gone and confirmed it.

The greatest phone in the history of telephony, the T-Mobile G1, can be yours for just $97.99 with a two-year contract.

Carrying around a little screen at all times means — what else? — that you can read comics all over the place while looking as if you’re checking your email. The iVerse app, for both iPhone and Android, lets you read comics that have been customized for viewing on a small screen. Instead of having you zoom around a full-sized page, they’ve cut the pages into smaller, screen-size chunks. Not the best for full-page art and the like, but much more convenient and natural to read.

Looks like Google is now preventing anyone with an unlocked G1 from downloading for-pay applications from the Android Market. Google says this is to prevent piracy (but only in the most abstract sense, in my [worthless] opinion), but some developers don’t like the idea. Welcome to the Situation Room, I’m Wolf Blitzer.

It looks like paid apps are finally showing up in the Android Market. Our resident G1 owners aren’t seeing anything just yet, so it seems that the rollout may be happening in steps.

If we are to believe this Vodafone ad (and who are we to doubt the Internet), the European carrier will be the exclusive provider of HTC’s next Android phone, the Magic. The phone does somewhat resemble early spy shots so we could be looking at the real deal, folks.

Lipstick on a pig? Still a pig. A bit of makeup and some chin surgery n the G1? It’s.. significantly more attractive.

Though they’re not saying when, Telefónica has announced that they’ll be carrying the G1 – albeit under the name it was originally known by before T-Mobile went and rechristened it: the Dream. In addition to the name change throwback, it’s also getting a bit of polish around its infamously ugly chin.

Were you disappointed by this mornings news that the other nuvifone wouldn’t be sportin’ the droid? So were we. Then we realized it wasn’t so much because we cared for the new nuvifone, but because we just wanted turn-by-turn navigation on an Android phone. Turns out, we don’t have much longer to wait.

Further, the Android team member went on to say that they were relieved that Google didn’t go against Apple’s wishes, given the legal storm that appears to be brewing between Apple and Palm, which is using multi-touch technology in its new Pre phone. Even if Apple ultimately decides not to pursue legal action against Palm (it’s not yet clear how likely that is, but Apple does have an impressive array of patents), the situation has likely soured the relationship between the two companies. Google, it seems, wants no part in ruining its relationship with Apple.

Scene: A Chinese restaurant somewhere in the valley in early 2008. Two men enter, wave off the waitress, and sit at a booth. One man is agitated.

G: What do you want now?
A: I hear you have multi-touch in the G1.
G: We do.
A: What did I tell you?
G: Is she safe?
A: She’s safe. She’ll be back at home inside of a week if you play ball.

If you’re a G1 owner and are anything like us, you’ve been checking your handset every 20 minutes for the last two days in hopes that it’s finally your turn to bask in the light of the latest update, RC33. It’s not the Cupcake update folks are so anxious to get their hands on – but its got voice search and Latitude, and that more than justifies the patch for us. Fortunately for those of us dying to play with the latest and greatest, some brilliant beings managed to sniff out the official update package. Armed with little more than an SD card, you can be enjoying RC33 in under 10 minutes.

Sometimes you just need a little doohickey to prop your phone up at a certain angle – nothing more, nothing less. Sure, you could use pencils and rubber bands but if you want more of an elegant, streamlined look and you have six dollars, then you have other options.