Android and Me

First Contact

The first time I had actually had hands on experience with an Android device, specifically the G1 (HTC Dream) was at this years BarCamp Black (read about my experience at BarCamp Blackpool in my last blog post). For me the two top Smart Phone operating systems currently available are Android and the iPhone OS, with Blackberry and Symbian falling behind.

Already owning a first generation iPod Touch I am familiar with an iteration of the iPhone OS (3.1.2), I found that for me personally I disliked the idea of the iPhone being a phone as it comes accross as quite restrictive for a device. Also using @martinrue's G1 at BarCamp Blackpool, I was fairly taken in by the G1 and Android. The idea of also being able to develop applications for my phone from literally any platform outweighed the requirement an overpriced Apple laptop to develop iPhone and iPod Touch applications. And I don't want to replace my nifty Acer Aspire One netbook for shear portability any time soon.

Finding that G1-Spot

The first place to look for a G1 would be eBay, took me a couple of days to find a decent used and unlocked G1 for a fairly cheap price. Took a few days to arrive due to postal strikes, but considering it arrived fairly quick. If you're looking for a G1, new or used you should check out eBay as you should be able to pick up one for around £100-£160, but beware of the Chinese knock-offs, they usually ship from China or Hong Kong and appear to be very cheap.

When I got the phone I hooked it up to my PC so I could transfer the files on to the SD card so I could flash the Cyanogen ROM on the device. Luckily I had no difficulty doing this, and was running Cyanogen within a few minutes.

Final Thoughts

Even though the device is a year or so old, I really like it as a phone, and small computer. It does exactly what you want it to do, with configurability and customisation. Expect more blog posts in the future about my time with the G1, and future applications I may have developed.