All in all, great news for an Android user, but do keep in mind that these are just rumors, but rumors from a very trusted source on everything Android 3.0.

Image Source

A month ago we got reports from Google that only 59.7% of Android phones is 2.1 and 4.5% of Android phones is 2.2, as shown above.  We gotten word from Google that the tide is turning fast and 28.7% of Android phones is 2.2 (up 24.2), as shown below. Following that 41.7% is 2.1 (down 18), 17.5% is 1.6 (down 2.8), and shockingly only 12% of Android phones still use 1.5 (down 3.3).

Hopefully we will see more Android phones update to 2.2 and less phones on 1.5 and 1.6.

Source

So another HTC Android device has become official, the HTC Click.
Now the specs aren’t anything amazing, but the price tag is. According to a Vietnamese forum, the phone should be selling unlocked for 5 to 6 million dong, which equates to about $280-$336 with no contract whatsoever. If this phone makes its way over here to the States, we could see if popping up for free on a 2 year contract on any of the US carriers.

This could mean Android for a whole new demographic… great news for that demographic and for developers looking to broaden their reach with the Android Market.

So we reported on Sony’s first Android handset, coded named the Rachael, earlier this month. We assumed, due to the lack of any further information, that this sexy new handset was not going to be available for quite a while.

Well, turns out that a certain retailer in the UK actually put the device up on their site for pre-order! That leads us to believe that it is actually coming out a lot sooner than we expected. They also gave it a name, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X3.

The site also confirms the majority of the specs we released in our previous post. But the one detail that the site does not confirm is if the X3 will have the snazzy new interface that we’ve been drooling over. Hmmm.

We can’t wait to get our hands on this one

The Hero has a rival…

Check out the new Sony Ericsson Rachael (will probably launch under an Xperia-ish name), Sony’s first Android device (and possibly their saving grace).

The phone has some monster specs that have been leaked as well as a nice shell to hold them all in:

Processor: Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon platform, that provides a 1GHz CPU and dedicated graphics acceleration
Wifi, 3G, and GPS a given.
8MP Camera
3.5mm Audio Out
and a 4 inch WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) Capacitive Touchscreen!

Drooling yet? Get a napkin, there’s more. Check out the pics of the body styling and then check out the video for the new custom UI (like how HTC has the Sense UI, well Sony has their own…)!

Wonder what carrier here in the States might get it? We’ll keep you posted

Anyone here excited?!

THIS PROCEDURE IS OBSOLETE! PLEASE DO OUR NEW HOW TO UNROOT PROCEDURE:

HOW TO UNROOT THE HTC G1 / DREAM

So you need to send in your phone for warranty purposes? Or maybe you’ve been loading too many ROMs and would like to start fresh? Maybe you just hate being different and just want to be like everyone else, damn it!

Here is how to UNRoot the G1 and get back to the stock G1 firmware.

I. Load the DreaIMG.nbh File

1. Download the Original DreaIMG.nbh file:
Original DREAIMG.nbh

2. If the file downloaded above downloads as a .Zip file, please unzip it first then put the DreamIMG.nbh file that is inside on the SD card, NOT in any folder.

3. Turn the phone off if it is on.

4. Turn on the phone by holding the Camera button and the End key until the bootloader screen turns on.

5. Hit the End key to start the update. DO NOT INTERUPT THIS PROCESS.

6. Once it is done, hit the trackball to restart the phone. You now are on the stock firmware RC29. You must do the next section to get back to cupcake.

II. Get Back to Cupcake (Android 1.5)

1. Download the Cupcake update from here, then put it on your SD card (do NOT extract it, just move the .zip file to the sd card, NOT in any folders) and rename it to update. Then turn off your phone and turn it back on by holding down Home and Power and keep holding until you get to recovery mode. In recovery mode (the ! screen) hit Alt L to see text, then hit Alt S to Apply the update.

III. Get Back to Donut (Android 1.6)

1. After you have gotten back to Cupcake (Android 1.5), download the Donut update from here, then put it on your SD card (do NOT extract it, just move the .zip file to the sd card, NOT in any folders) and rename it to update. Then turn off your phone and turn it back on by holding down Home and Power and keep holding until you get to recovery mode. In recovery mode (the ! screen) hit Alt L to see text, then hit Alt S to Apply the update.

Reported Issues

Issue: It doesn’t see the Dreaimg.nbh file and goes to the rainbow screen and says Serial 10.

Solution: Your SD card is formatted to FAT instead of FAT32. Follow one of our readers’ instructions to fix (thanks Clemshady!):

“To Jess and any one else who is unable to get past the rainbow screen with serial 10, your SD card is most likely in a FAT format and needs to be formatted to FAT32. I had the same issue.

- Load your SD card in the card reader and connect to PC.
- Make sure you back up everything on your card. a format will erase all data on the card.
- Now open My Computer and right click on the drive with the SD card (Warning! Make sure its the correct drive).
- Click on Format and select FAT32 on the file system drop down and click then click Start.
- Once completed, Copy your files back to the SD card and make sure the Original DREAIMG.nbh” is at the topmost folder of your SD card.
- Return to Step 8 of David’s instruction to complete the un-root process and you are all set!”

Issue: I get an error, failure, or nothing happens when I get to the rainbow screen and try to load Dreaimg.nbh file.

Solution:
The files we had in the links above became corrupt. We have replaced the links as of 08.25.2009 so they should now work.
If you are still having issues; the dreaimg.nbh file is either not on the topmost folder of the SD card OR the file is corrupt or incomplete.

Delete the file off of your SD card and then re download it from our site or on XDA-Developers.com and then put it on the topmost folder of the SD card. You may have to do this multiple times before it finally works. KEEP DOING THIS UNTIL IT WORKS!

Issue: I load the SPL (wipe and apply update.zip) but then when I try to hold camera and power to get to bootloader it brings me to the G1 screen.

Solution: This is because you took out the battery too soon.

1. Put the SPL back on the memory card and rename to update.zip (using an SD Card reader or adapter)
2. Boot into recovery by holding down Home and Power  to turn on the phone.
3. At the recovery screen Wipe Data, then Apply Update.zip
4. Once it is done loading hit Reboot and wait for the phone to reboot (it will show a box an arrow and a G1 on the screen for a bit then it will reboot). Wait at the G1 screen for 20 seconds, it should reboot one more time or it should goto the recovery screen again. If you see the recovery screen or are still at the G1 logo after 20 seconds, THEN remove the battery and put it back in and continue with the next step of trying to hold the camera and power button and so on.

The new HTC Hero was finally announced (so you G1 users trying to load the leaked Hero ROM onto your G1′s can finally see what it would run like with the beefed up specs the Hero brings to the table).

Unlike the Magic, the Hero actually seems to bring something new to the table (besides just losing the keyboard like the Magic did over the G1). It has a nice chunk more RAM (288mb instead of the 192mb the G1 has), a better camera (5.0MP instead of the 3.2MP), and what seems to be the most noticable new feature; the customized HTC Widgets and User Interface.

The user interface is classic HTC, it even looks like TouchFlo in a way from their Windows Mobile devices, and we are not complaining. It’s a nice touch to the kind of plain regular UI that Android has. There are widgets which bring important information to the 7 screen wide home screen, text messaging with a neat flicking motion to switch between them, nicer clocks, a favorites bar to swipe through your favorite contacts, a nice full month view calendar, a weather widget, etc.

All in all, not a bad upgrade from a G1 if you ask me (and if you can live without using a physical keyboard of course).

Check out the video below for the official HTC “trailer”.

So the G1 (or Android, not sure who to blame really), has an inherent flaw. It’s not that the cute little robot has to get poked like the Pilsbury dough boy for you to first use the phone, it’s the fact that when you save applications from the Market (part of the large appeal of the Android OS), it saves them to the phone’s internal memory instead of the SD card. What’s the problem? Well since there is only about 70MBs of internal storage as opposed to the 1GB or more in your SD card, we’re talking a huuuuge space problem for all of those awesome apps to download. If you could save your apps to the much larger 1GB (= approx. 1000MB) or more of storage in the SD card, you could essentially download 14x more applications!

Good thing the guys over at XDA-Developers have helped us do just that. Here is the video on how to do so.

WARNING – This is sort of advanced stuff and could possible harm your device, so if you are ok with the 70MBs and are not very proficient with rooting, loading roms, etc., you may want to not attempt this.

Steps:

Before you begin, there are 2 methods for partitioning a memory card.
1. Via Paragon Partition Manager 9
or
2. Via the Apps2SD program found in this post
I used to have the Paragon way on here but have found that a lot of people are having a hard time finding this program on the internet, so I redid the video and the instructions here to use the Apps2SD method instead.

1. Connect your G1 to the computer and mount the SD card and save all of the files on your SD card to a folder on your computer for backup (as this process will erase your entire SD card).

2. Unmount the SD card on the G1.

3. Click Settings, SD card & phone storage, then click Format SD card.

4. Remount the newly formatted SD card to your computer via the drop down notification menu on the G1.

5. Download these 3 files:
Apps2SD Application
Init.rc
A2SD.sh

6. Put the three files on the root (top most) folder of your SD card.

7. Create the directory on the SD card; /system/sd/app

8. Put the memory card back into the G1 or disconnect your G1 from the computer.

9. Open Terminal on the phone (if you don’t have it download it from the market by searching for Terminal).

10. In Terminal type the following and at the end of each line hit enter:
su
cp /sdcard/init.rc /data/
cp /sdcard/a2sd.sh /data/

11. Close Terminal

12. Download and install Linda File Manager from the Market if you do not already have it (great program by the way).

13. Goto the home screen of your phone push the menu key and goto Settings, then Applications and check the box for Unknown Sources (this allows us to install the Apps2SD program even though it wasn’t downloaded from the Market).

14. Open Linda File Manager, then click on SD Card then find the Apps2SD.apk file we put on there earlier and click it. Choose Package Installer to run it and it will install the program.

15. Open Apps2SD and the first time you open it you should get a screen with a green slider bar. Move the slider over from the right to a desired size for your applications (on the stock G1 1GB memory card I recommend maybe 300MBs, on a card bigger than 4GBs go ahead and do 1400MBs). DO NOT MAKE THE EXT2 PARTITION ANY LARGER THAN 1500MBs as it will cause errors in most ROMS.

16. Reboot the phone, done! From now on all apps you download should goto the SD card. To check if it worked, goto Settings > SD Card & Phone Storage then scroll down to Available Space, should say a lot more than 70MBs

17. Optional, run Apps2SD again and have it transfer all of your current apps (if they weren’t deleted during this process) to your SD card.

Reported Issues

Issue: I have the Hero ROM and I only have 70-80MBs of free internal space, why don’t I have 1300mbs or whatever I had before I went to the Hero ROM?

Solution: The Hero ROM does not correctly support the Apps2SD procedure like the other, more stable ROMs do.

Issue: I’m stuck on the G1 screen!

Solution:
1. To fix this, simply take out the memory card from the G1 and put it into the SD adapter it came with then put that into the computer/laptop.
2. Find the update.zip file that is on your SD card and delete it (if you have one).
3. Then put a ROM you want to use (if a Hero ROM doesn’t work then use a Non-Hero ROM) on the SD card in the topmost folder (not in any subfolders) and rename it to update.zip.
4. Put the memory card back into the phone and turn the phone on by holding Home and End till the recovery screen comes up (for most people this is a triangle with an ! in it).
5. Hit Alt W to wipe the phone (it might reboot, if it does and it is still stuck on the G1 logo, then take out the battery and put it back in and continue to step 6).
6. Turn on the phone again by holding down the Home and End button till you get to the ! screen again and hit Alt S to load the update.
7. Once it is done, reboot the phone and it should pass the G1 screen this time.

T-Mobile’s second Google Android device has been seen in the wild (with T-Mobile branding and all). So we think this little guy is just around the corner.

Question is… does anyone care?

The phone has identical features to the G1 as far as we can tell, only difference is that the keyboard has been removed and the phone is now a bit more sleek. This will be great for people who don’t mind not having a keyboard and hated the looks of the G1 (can’t blame them too much on the latter, not the prettiest device). But current G1 owners? You guys thinking about losing your keyboard in exchange for a nicer look and feel?

Please check out the “How To: Gain Root Access on the T-Mobile G1″ before reading this post. You must have root access before loading a custom ROM. Click here to be taken to the video. After you have follow the steps in that post you can move on to this one.

Do each of these how to’s in order to get the most out of your G1!

I. HOW TO LOAD A ROM -

1. Find which ROM suits your needs.
Choose one of the following developers to see their latest free ROM:
JesusFreke – Click Here for Latest ROM

(Find more ROMs at XDA-Developers.com)

2. Download their ROM (always a .Zip file) from their site above.

3. Copy the .Zip file from your computer to the root folder (top most folder) of you SD card in your G1.

4. Rename the .zip file to “Update” (minus the quotes).

5. Disconnect G1 from the computer and turn it off.

6. Turn on G1 by holding down the End key and the Home key AT THE SAME TIME.

7. Once the screen comes up, open the keyboard and hit the Alt key and the S key AT THE SAME TIME.

8. Once update is complete, hit the Home key and the Back key AT THE SAME TIME.

9. Phone reboots and then YOU SHOULD FOLLOW THE HOW TO LOAD A CUSTOM RADIO TUTORIAL BELOW to gain phone functions, bluetooth, and wifi!

II. HOW TO LOAD A CUSTOM RADIO (for better reception, bluetooth, wifi, and data).

1.  Download the latest radio update from HERE.

2. Save it to your computer.

3. Copy the .Zip file from your computer to the root folder (top most folder) of you SD card in your G1.

4. Rename the .zip file to “Update” (minus the quotes).

5. Disconnect G1 from the computer and turn it off.

6. Turn on G1 by holding down the End key and the Home key AT THE SAME TIME.

7. Once the screen comes up, open the keyboard and hit the Alt key and the S key AT THE SAME TIME.

8. Once update is complete, hit the Home key and the Back key AT THE SAME TIME.

9. Phone reboots and you are all done!

10 (Optional). If you want to load a new theme, follow the steps below.

III. HOW TO LOAD A THEME (You must load a ROM first, themes are made for each ROM in specific).

1. Click Here to visit XDA-Developers’ Theme section.

2. Choose a Theme based on the ROM you have (either JF for Jesus Freke or Dude for TheDudeOfLife). Download the .Zip file from the thread to your computer.

3. Copy the .Zip file from your computer to the root folder (top most folder) of you SD card in your G1.

4. Rename the .zip file to “Update” (minus the quotes).

5. Disconnect G1 from the computer and turn it off.

6. Turn on G1 by holding down the End key and the Home key AT THE SAME TIME.

7. Once the screen comes up, open the keyboard and hit the Alt key and the S key AT THE SAME TIME.

8. Once update is complete, hit the Home key and the Back key AT THE SAME TIME.

9. Phone reboots and you are all set!

Reported Issues

None reported…