HTC Dream Developer Edition / T-Mobile G1

[joakim at verona.se]

Daniel Benoy <daniel at benoy.name> writes:

> I've heard that there's a special developer edition of the HTC Dream (Marketed in the US and Europe under the name 'T-Mobie G1'), which includes an unlocked boot loader and carrier agnostic GSM access.
>
> Does anyone know anything about this device and how it compares to the GTA02 and current plans for the GTA03?  I'm interested from a freedom perspective, as well as a hardware and software perspective.  Is this phone an option if you want to support open hardware?
>
> Does anyone know if its bootloader is capable of booting from SD with arbitrary kernel options and able to recover from screwing around with it like my freerunner/u-boot?
>
> Are there any plans to make the FSO framework compatible with the hardware in this device (and, by extension, make Debian and current/future openmoko distributions compatible)?
>
> Are there any other freedom issues surrounding this device that I should know about before I consider getting one?

I have a Freerunner and a G1 developer phone.  I havent had time to play
with the g1 too much yet but heres some quick impressions:

- The Freerunner has a vastly better screen than the G1
- The Android gui is quite polished and slick, but not overly
  customizable IMHO.
- The G1 has a nice keyboard and a little trackball which is
  surprisingly usable.
- The G1 seems to have better charging, so less aargh factor.
- 3g is very nice.
  
The selling point for me when buying the G1 is that I read that its
possible to boot debian on it, just like the Freerunner. This should
mean that the machine is mostly free, even though I havent been able to
research this fully yet.

My current which phone would be G1 hardware with Freerunner screen,
running Debian with a working FSO stack, I think. I would then use Emacs
as Pim dialer etc.

  

-- 
Joakim Verona