Nearly every tool, utility and application that we’ve tested has a fairly standard list of complaints and among them are the fact that (1) When you open the keyboard, your “place” in the application is lost and, (2) When you change the direction you are holding the screen, its orientation does not change.
Now, thanks to some clever developers, the latter of those irritations can be crossed off the list. By downloading and running a file on your G1 you can implement Auto Screen Rotation! It currently works with RC29 and RC30 but I’m sure they’ll release an update once RC31 is released:
The Auto Rotation won’t work EVERYWHERE, for example, on the web browser… but its a start! So chalk up another victory for open source development. While many (*ahem* ifanboys *ahem*) would proclaim that the G1 should have had this built in anyways and its a fault – not an attribute – I offer 3 single words as a rebuttal: copy and paste.
The ability for developers to fill these gaps, identified by the community, is attractive and effective. As a next step we’d like to see the Google Android team looking to build this progress into the core updates in upcoming over the air updates and whatnot.
Will we? Perhaps… but patience is needed. Much more will be lost by acting in haste than will be gained by making a few rather cosmetic changes.
You can find the directions for downloading and running this update on Droid Sans.