The HTC G1 was the first Android phone to hit the market, way back in 2008. It’s also sometimes known as the HTC Dream of the T-Mobile G1. While HTC hasn’t offered a major software update for the G1 in a few years, independent developers have been hacking the G1 constantly over the past few years, bringing pretty much every major new version of Android to the ancient (in smartphone years) G1.
Xda-developers forum members jcarrz1 and stritfajt are keeping that tradition alive by porting Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to run on the G1.
Right now the WiFi and Bluetooth doesn’t work, automatic screen rotation doesn’t work, and the graphical user interface looks pretty sluggish. But Ice Cream Sandwich does run on the G1 which is pretty impressive.
The Android 4.0 lock screen provides quick access to the camera. The app drawer includes shortcuts for apps and widgets. The operating system features the new Roboto font as well.
The early build of ICS for the HTC G1 is available for download from the xda-developers forum, but it’s still very much a work in progress, so if you’re still using the device as your primary phone you might want to hold off on installing Android 4.0 until it’s a bit more stable.
I personally had the HTC Hero for quite a while thanks to an amazing port of CyanogenMod; HTC Sense just wasn’t cutting it with such a slow processor and limited RAM.