Update your Android G1 to Cupcake without the wait
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Problem: I got the T-Mobile G1 (Android) because of the open-source engine behind it. I wanted a phone that would continue to be updated and include features wanted by lots of users, as opposed to those features only allowed by the manufacturer (e.g. Apple’s iPhone). I have been disappointed with T-Mobiles schedule of updates (lots of posts out there say that Cupcake was scheduled for January 2009) and tired of waiting for the Over the Air (OTA) update, so I decided to take the plunge and root my phone so that I could update it with whatever I wanted, whenever.
Quick Solution: Rooting your phone is actually much, much easier than I thought it would be. The two excellent guides that I used are Android and Me’s G1 rooting article and xda-developer’s G1 rooting article. Once you have rooted your phone, you can manually update to Cupcake (Android 1.5) without waiting for the OTA update.