HTC Dream

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HTC Dream
Manufacturer HTC Corporation
Series A Series
Availability by country 22 October 2008 (United States)
30 October 2008 (United Kingdom)
5 February 2009 (Australia)
21 February 2009 (Singapore)
2 June 2009 (Canada)
Successor HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2)
Form factor Slider smartphone
Dimensions 117.7 mm (4.63 in) (h)
55.7 mm (2.19 in) (w)
17.1 mm (0.67 in) (d)
Weight 158 g (5.6 oz)
Operating system Android 1.6[1][2]
Originally Android 1.0
CPU 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A ARM11 processor
Memory 256 MB ROM, 192 MB RAM
Removable storage Supports up to 16 GB microSD
Battery 3.7 V 1150 mAh
Internal rechargeable removable lithium-ion battery
Data inputs capacitive touchscreen display, QWERTY keyboard, trackball, volume controls, 3-axis accelerometer
Display 320 x 480 px, 3.2 in (81 mm), HVGA, 65,536 color LCD at 180 pixels per inch (ppi)
Rear camera 3.2 megapixel with auto focus
Connectivity Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, ExtUSB, A-GPS
Quad band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE
Dual band UMTS 1700 2100 MHz HSDPA/HSUPA (US/Europe) (7.2/2 Mbit/s)

The HTC Dream (also marketed as the T-Mobile G1 in the US and parts of Europe and as the Era G1 in Poland) is an Internet-enabled smartphone designed by HTC. It was the first phone to be marketed running the mobile Android operating system, which was purchased and developed by Google to compete with Symbian and Apple's iPhone.[3][4]

Contents

Release history [edit]

The HTC Dream was released in the U.S. on 22 October 2008; in the UK on 30 October 2008;[5] and became available in other European countries including Austria, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic in early 2009.[6] It was released in Germany in February 2009 with a QWERTZ keyboard[7] and in France in March 2009 with an AZERTY keyboard.[8] On 10 March 2009, it became available in Poland as Era G1 under a local mobile brand affiliated with T-Mobile.[9]

As of 2008, in the U.S., it was priced starting at $129.99 for new and existing T-Mobile customers if purchased with a two-year T-Mobile voice and data plan, and $399 without a contract.[10] Congruent with claims made by T-Mobile representatives, the handset does need the data plan to fully function as a smartphone, but can be used as a regular phone (with some smartphone capabilities available when connected to a WiFi network) without a data plan. The Dream comes in black, bronze (formerly called "brown"; except in the UK), or white.[11]

On 23 April 2009, T-Mobile USA announced it had sold one million G1s since the device's launch.[12]

On 5 February 2009, the phone was released through Optus in Australia, as the HTC Dream.[13] On 21 February 2009, Singapore became the first country in Asia to introduce the phone. It was sold by SingTel between $38 – $238 under various contracts.[14][15] Telefónica also launched a version of the phone in Spain on 20 April 2009[16][17] with slightly modified control buttons.[18]

On 2 June 2009 it was released through Rogers Wireless in Canada as the HTC Dream. This variant, DREA210, supports the UMTS 850/1900 bands and HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbit/s for use on Rogers' 3G network.[19]

On 27 July 2010 the T-Mobile G1 was officially discontinued.

Hardware [edit]

  • Display: 3.2 in (8.1 cm) TFT-LCD flat glass touch-sensitive HVGA screen with 320×480 pixel resolution and capacitive touchscreen.[20] Although the touchscreen hardware is capable of multitouch gestures, official releases of the Android OS (versions 1.0 to 1.6) have this functionality disabled for the phone at the kernel level. Users can patch the supplied version of Android, download a hacked version or update to Android 2.0 or later to make use of the multitouch screen.[21]
  • CPU: The MSM7201A is an ARM-based,[22] CPU/GPU from Qualcomm and contains many built-in features, including 3G and a GPU capable of up to 4 million triangles/sec. It has hardware acceleration for Java,[23] but this does not accelerate execution of Android applications, as they are targeted to the Dalvik VM, not the Java VM.
  • Keyboard: The HTC Dream has a sliding full 5 row QWERTY keyboard. It also comes with a set of 6 navigation buttons:
    • phone (green, white/black in Germany, UK & France) – make outbound calls, receive incoming calls, or open the dialer.
    • home (white/black) – displays home screen with shortcut icons for some applications and a drawer containing all applications on the phone.
    • trackball – navigate among items on the screen or scroll in text fields. May also be pressed to select items.
    • back (white/black) – return to the previous screen.
    • phone (red, white/black in Germany, UK & France) – end currently active call or put phone into sleep mode.
    • menu (white/black) – display the contextual menu for the current screen. Also unlocks the phone in early versions of Android.
    • a touchscreen keyboard is available as of Android 1.5. Note: this feature does not work on phones sold to be used on the Rogers Wireless network.[24]
  • Side controls: A pair of volume buttons is located on the left side of the phone, and a camera button on the right side.
  • Audio: In place of a headphone jack, the Dream (like many HTC smartphones) has a mini-USB-compatible ExtUSB jack[25][26] that carries audio signals alongside the regular USB signals, and can be converted with a dongle (now shipped with the phone) to support any standard 3.5 mm headphone. The standard headset includes a clip-on microphone and call answer/hangup button. The Dream supports audio files in MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, and Ogg Vorbis formats.[27]
  • Camera: The HTC Dream has a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus functionality.[28] There is no light ("flash") for the camera in low light conditions.
  • Video: The Dream can play H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and 3GP files.[27] Video recording and uploading to YouTube is available as of Android 1.5. Recording resolution 352x288 H.263 3GP Mono sound @ 8 kHz.
  • Storage: The HTC Dream has a microSD card slot and comes with a 1 GB memory card (2 GB in the UK, Germany and Canada). It has been confirmed to work with capacities up to 16 GB, and may work with even larger cards.[29] When the USB cable is connected to a computer, this computer can access the card without removing it from the HTC Dream. The phone can access media files arranged in folders, but the folders have to be created from a third-party file management application or from a computer or a third-party file-manager program on the phone.
  • Battery: The HTC Dream has a user-replaceable, 3.7 V, 1150 mAh (4.25 Whr) rechargeable lithium ion battery, which is advertised to offer up to 130 hours of standby power.
  • Orientation and location: The HTC Dream provides an accelerometer for detecting movement and determining which direction is 'Up'. It also has a digital compass, giving it complete orientation data. The Dream includes a GPS receiver for fine-grained positioning, and can use cellular or Wi-Fi networks for coarse-grained positioning.
  • Case: Three different colors are available: black, bronze, white.
  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) using a Texas Instruments WL1251B chipset; Bluetooth 2.0+EDR via Texas Instruments BRF6300; ExtUSB with an SMSC USB3316 chipset; standalone GPS and A-GPS; Quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz and GPRS/EDGE, plus Dual band UMTS Bands I and IV (1700 & 2100 MHz) and HSDPA/HSUPA (in US/Europe) at 7.2/2 Mbit/s using the Qualcomm RTR6285 chipset

Software [edit]

The HTC Dream runs the Android Operating System. Most of the code is open source with some exceptions.[30]

There are several applications which come pre-installed with the device:

In the United States, the carrier-subsidized firmware for the G1 also comes with an application for accessing the Amazon MP3 music store, which allows users to browse and legally purchase DRM-free songs; however, in developer firmwares this application is not included.[31] More applications can be obtained through the Android Market application or directly through developers. Documents in Google Docs can be viewed, but not edited. However, spreadsheets in Google Docs (including the texts in them) can be edited.[32][33]

Updating [edit]

The Dream firmware can be updated by flashing from an image stored on the microSD card as an update.zip or with a custom recovery as any name.[34] These images are cryptographically signed by either the phone manufacturer or network carrier.[35] Along with other features, support for third-party widgets was introduced through updates.[36] As of Friday, 18 December 2009, HTC and Rogers Wireless have both stated that they will not support Non-Google branded HTC Magic and HTC Dream phones past Android Version 1.5. HTC changed the content of its website to reflect this (Magic), (Dream), and Rogers Wireless notified the Android community by a post in AndroidForums. In March 2012 HTC announced that an unlocked version of Dream's bootloader will be released.

Developer edition [edit]

On 5 December 2008, Google announced the Android Dev Phone 1, a hardware unlocked version of the HTC Dream. With this version, the user is not only able to use any GSM/UMTS carrier, but also has complete superuser access to the device which is not found in the retail version. The advantages to this version is that it gives full access to the internal files of the phone, in particular changing and re-flashing the bootloader and operating system.[37] This version also has pre-installed utilities to aid in the development of Android apps. This version is sold for US$399 and is only available to registered members of the Android community which is open to all developers for a US$25 fee.[38] Depending on the country, the additional shipping charges (which include tariff and tax) may amount to a substantial fraction of the base price; for example, shipping charges to United Kingdom are $128.25, to Germany are US$134.31 and to Poland is US$162.

Rooting [edit]

See also: Rooting (Android OS)

Upon the launch of the T-Mobile G1, one concern among developers was that the retail build of Android installed on it lacked certain features (such as the "su" command) that were available on the Developer Phone version that allowed you to obtain superuser access to the phone. This had a number of implications, the most important being that it prevented you from changing large parts of the firmware (since they were mounted read-only on boot, and only the superuser could remount them read-write). However, a severe vulnerability was soon discovered in early versions of the firmware — everything typed into the phone's keyboard was being interpreted as commands in a root shell.[39] By using telnetd to exploit this, users could flash a modified image with root access. This process, dubbed "rooting" by the community,[40] allows users to gain superuser access and perform actions previously impossible without root access, such as installing custom builds of Android, running Debian,[41] installing custom themes, and enabling ad-hoc Wi-Fi tethering. Although Google and T-Mobile were quick to patch this vulnerability with update RC30, a ROM from HTC was later leaked allowing users to downgrade to an older firmware with the bug.[42] The Android Dev Phone 1 comes with superuser access officially integrated into its firmware, allowing native code and custom kernels to be run without any special hacks.[43]

Rooting also allows the use of modified images to run on the G1 through the original vulnerability. For example, a leaked HTC Magic (Android 1.5) OS was modified to run on the device before the official Android 1.5 build for the HTC Dream was released. This enabled functionality such as video recording, stereo Bluetooth and an on-screen keyboard.

One popular unofficial firmware release for the Dream/G1 is CyanogenMod, the latest official version of which is at version 6.1.0.[44] (CyanogenMod is at version 9 as of 6-21-2012, but is only available via an unofficial port.) It is almost a full port of Android 2.2.1 to the Dream/G1.

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ HTC.com
  2. ^ Techshout.com
  3. ^ "T-Mobile Unveils the T-Mobile G1 — the Second Phone Powered by Android". HTC. Retrieved 19 May 2009. 
  4. ^ Holson, Laura; Helft, Miguel (14 August 2008). "Smartphone Is Expected via Google". New York Times. Retrieved 15 August 2008. 
  5. ^ "T-Mobile G1 Hits the UK" (Press release). T-Mobile UK. 30 October 2008. 
  6. ^ "Android G1 - T-Mobile Google Phone". 
  7. ^ "T-Mobile G1 - Das Internet-Handy". T Mobile Germany. Retrieved 28 February 2009. [dead link]
  8. ^ Orange France Getting HTC Dream! | Android Phone Fans
  9. ^ "Era G1" (in Polish). Era GSM online offer. Retrieved 15 February 2009. [dead link]
  10. ^ Topolsky, Joshua (23 September 2008). "T-Mobile's CTO on G1 unlocking and tethering -- plus a few details you might have missed". Retrieved 25 September 2008. 
  11. ^ "Feature details on the T-Mobile G1 with Google phone". [dead link]
  12. ^ The Information Week: T-Mobile USA And HTC Have Sold 1 Million G1 Android Phones
  13. ^ Optus.com.au
  14. ^ Singtel.com
  15. ^ Techtickerblog.com
  16. ^ Bandaancha.eu
  17. ^ Techtickerblog.com
  18. ^ Engadgetmobile.com
  19. ^ HTC Dream (Rogers) Specification
  20. ^ "T-Mobile G1 review, part 2: software and wrap-up". Engadget. 16 October 2008. 
  21. ^ "G1 capable of multitouch input? Looks like it.". MobileCrunch. 17 November 2008. 
  22. ^ Note that the cores are not for SMP, only one of them is used to run applications
  23. ^ "MSM7201 Chipset Solution". Retrieved 4 October 2008. 
  24. ^ "Rogers HTC Dream in Depth Review". 17 June 2009. 
  25. ^ "T-Mobile G1: Specification". HTC. 23 September 2008. 
  26. ^ "T-Mobile G1 impressions: what we love, what we don't". Engadget. 24 September 2008. Retrieved 25 September 2008. 
  27. ^ a b c "Android for Dummies". TechPluto. 18 September 2008. 
  28. ^ Feature details on the T-Mobile G1 with Google phone[dead link]
  29. ^ "T-Mobile G1 review, part 1: hardware - Engadget". Engadget. 16 October 2008. 
  30. ^ List of proprietary components Replicant Wiki
  31. ^ "Customers Get Quick and Easy Access to Over 6 Million DRM-Free Songs from Amazon MP3 On New T-Mobile G1 Powered by Android Software". Amazon.com. 23 September 2008. 
  32. ^ Accessing Google Docs on your mobile phone[dead link]
  33. ^ Editing Google Docs on my G1 phone
  34. ^ "Learn how to update using your microSD card". 
  35. ^ "confirmed by Android team: G1 only accepts firmware signed by manufacturer". 
  36. ^ "Robotripping: hands on with the Android SDK beta". Ars Technica. 19 August 2008. 
  37. ^ "Google introduces developer G1 phones". arstechnica. 7 December 2008. 
  38. ^ "Google unleashes unlocked G1 on developers". CNET. 6 December 2008. 
  39. ^ Zdnet.com
  40. ^ XDA-developers.com
  41. ^ Saurik.comTemplate:Self published inline
  42. ^ Andblogs.net
  43. ^ Brightstarcorp.com
  44. ^ CyanogenMod-6.1 Stable Has Landed! | CyanogenMod
  45. ^ HTC Android Series Mobiles released in 2009, HTC Top Story - Techno-Entertainment blog.

Further reading [edit]

External links [edit]

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