Happy Birthday! T-Mobile G1 Officially Turns 3 Today

I may have jumped the gun in a previous post but it was 3 years ago today, that the Godfather of Android, the T-Mobile G1 was officially released unto the world. That makes the G1 only 3 years old in people years but in the ever evolving mobile world, it’s ancient.

The HTC G1/Dream debuted the Android mobile operating system back before Google started naming it after desserts and featured a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 3.2-inch display, 192MB of RAM, 256MB of internal memory and a 1,150 mAh battery. The best feature of the device? Well, it featured a full 5 row QWERTY keyboard that seemed to give the middle finger to Apple and their all touchscreen iPhone.

I didn’t jump on the Android bandwagon until the device was released for a full calendar year. I remember thinking I wanted to wait for the Android Market to grow before making the jump from my T-Mobile Sidekick LX ’09. About 3 months after I bought the G1, I saw a video from a developer by the name of Haykuro on a leaked “Hero ROM” he ported to the G1. It was this that pushed me over the edge to root the my baby began the grueling all night affair of going through countless tutorials and how-to’s. By morning, I was rooted and it was then I became the G1’s true owner. After that I became hooked on ROM flashing and for the curious, you can see the very first YouTube video I ever made for my G1 below (so embarrassing).

Fast forward to today where we’re seeing the Samsung Galaxy Nexus announced for Verizon and anyone can see — we’ve come a mighty long way. Even after all this time I’m still excited to see where Android is headed and the future is definitely bright. I wonder how much time has to pass before the G1 is considered “retro” and HTC re-releases the device with the exact same shell only this time with a dual-core processor, larger higher-res screen, more internal memory/RAM and higher MP camera? I’d buy it.

So tell me, Phandroids. What’s your G1 story?

Exit mobile version