Sorry guys, but I feel that I need to post about this.

Last night I downloaded and installed the Android OS 1.5 update (codename: cupcake) on my G1. The reason I feel the need to post this is due to the enormous difference in the experience of using the phone.

I was already a big fan of my G1, but had my complaints. Chief among them was the poor performance. I (and everyone else, AFAICT) thought that this was due to the G1 being severely underpowered. It's pretty darn clear now that a large portion of it was actually Android its self. There are still slow downs in a few areas, but they're lessened, and in the things I use the phone for daily, the difference is night and day.

The update brought a few other features: a virtual keyboard (which I have not turned on because I hate virtual keyboards), video recording (I took a few videos at the beach today - not great quality but fine for Youtube uploading right from the phone), and auto-rotate in most areas (fairly quick but not quite as fast as the iPhone from what I've seen). I'm sure there are some other features but I haven't seen them or had enough time with the phone to find them.

The new feature I'm most excited about is A2DP support. I was sad to give this up along with my BB Curve, but now I have it again, and the bluetooth support is much improved. Here is my current setup in the car, which I'm quite excited about:

- I have a Venturi Mini plugged into the cigarette ligher socket
- I have a stereo cable plugged into that and the AUX in on my Highlander
- I have the bluetooth settings on my phone setup so that the highlander handles phone calls and the Venturi handles music

So now I can get into the car, press play on the Venturi and the music will pick up wherever it left off, and if I get a phone call Android pauses the music and hands the call off to the car's bluetooth so I can use the navigation system's touchscreen and the steering wheel controls to control it. This is pretty much my ideal setup (without having A2DP in the car its self), and I'm stoked about it.


It's clear that Android was still quite unpolished out of the gate. I still loved it, and continue to claim that it trumps anything out there at handling mobile GMail, but I knew that it had its problems. The G1 is a little underpowered, but not even close to as much as we all thought it was. I really think that this update is pretty huge, but it'll be interesting to see the iPhone 3.0 software update and how people feel about it. I'm sure we'll see a thread about that here when it happens, and I'll be curious to see what you iPhone owners think of it.

But right now, I feel like a have a new phone.

Don't feel sorry, I just got my own cupcake, and I'm liking the G1 even more myself. The A2DP support was the biggest bonus since I've got a bluetooth headset that can double as headphones.

One of the things I really do like about the G1 is how easy it is to develop for.

Now if I could just find a way to hack a bluetooth receiver into my Empeg for the audio path.