The T-Mobile G1 was the first phone to ship with Google’s Android operating system. And as such, you’d think it would be the least upgradeable. But it turns out you’d think wrong — while Google and T-Mobile haven’t officially made the latest versions of the Android OS available for the G1, there is an unofficial upgrade path. Or rather, there will be shortly.

Hacker Cyanogen is well known for cooking up custom ROMs for Android phones, adding extra features and sometimes making newer versions of the OS for devices originally designed to run older software. Last night he announced that his latest ROM (version 5.0.7) will work on the HTC G1, among other phones. That means you’ll be able to run Google Android 2.1 on the G1.

The ROM includes many of the features that make newer phones such as the Google Nexus One and Motorola Droid stand out, including hardware acceleration for video and graphics. It looks like some features, such as Live (animated) wallpapers and the Nexus One 3D program launcher will be left out for now.

You can check out a demo video of the Cyanogen ROM after the break. It should be available for download later today.

via Engadget

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...

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