November 6th, 2008
T-Mobile G1 Android is jailbroken, provides app install to external card
My T-Mobile SIM continues to live in my G1 Google Android device (see my review) and I continue to be impressed with the Google integration and Gmail functionality. There are more and more third party applications appearing and I am liking the web browser more and more as I get used to the navigation methods. I just read on Ars Technica that the G1 has been jailbroken by those hard working developers over on the XDA Developers site. It is still early in the process and not everything has been made simple yet so if you are not adventurous then you should probably hold off performing the process.
The first thought that came to my mind was, “Why would I need to jailbreak an already open device?” Well, down in the Ars Technica article they asked the same thing and pointed out something that is very important to me with this quote:
One big jailbreak advantage is that it allows you to bypass the G1’s internal storage. Until now, you were limited by the G1’s built-in memory for installing and running programs. With the jailbreak, you can install applications onto a local SD card and run them from the card. Running low on memory? Just swap cards in and out.
This functionality is very important to me since my G1 shows me having just 10MB left on my device. On all of my other mobile phones I install 90% of my 3rd party applications on the external storage card and find it odd that the G1 did not have this capability to begin with, especially with the included 1GB card and the promotion of 3rd party applications as a strong selling point of the Android OS.
There are a couple other reasons to jailbreak your G1, but I am going to hold off for a bit longer because I need my T-Mobile G1 to keep performing and don’t want to risk bricking it at this time.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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