By 
A few days ago Android 1.5(Cupcake) was released for Developer Phones. I was able to download and install to my G1 using the release I scored from here. Since then I’ve had my frustrations and I’ve had my fun.
The setup: One bronze G1, rooted, using JF v1.42. The aforementioned files from HTC. And some patience.
After installing the files, I headed for the initial boot up. It took about three minutes to get past the initial “G1” screen. After that I was treated to my first surprise: A new loading screen:
Gone are the days of the radioactive Android greeting us every time we load. This screen took about five minutes to get past. Yes, it took a lot out of me not to pull the battery and try again. But, patience is truly a virtue and eventually I was overjoyed when she finally finished loading. Now boots only take roughly 30 seconds.
The first thing I checked was my notifications bar. Everything seemed standard, except they threw in some texture to add a little warmth to my screen. Kudos.
Afterwards, I set my phone down and she went auto-locked on me. I went to wake her up and was greeted with another visual stimulus, a transparent lock screen, with my background ever so subtly showing in the background:
It clicked into my head that the one thing people are all up in arms over is a soft keyboard. So I went on a hunt to find it. I didn’t have to look far, as the Google Search Widget just so happened to show up right when I wanted it to.
It was pretty much what I had expected it to be. Almost identical to the ones found in Steel, or ChompSMS. This is when I hit my first snag. As far as I could tell, auto rotate had been disabled completely when I did the update and DroidSans would not work on this release. I lived with it for a few hours before I decided to go hunting. Menu > Settings > Sound & Display > Orientation. Finally, auto rotate is included. However, either by design or by negligence auto rotate doesn’t seem to want to work on the home screen, works just fantastic everywhere else.
3rd Party Applications:
I was expecting hiccups when I ran my first few Market applications just because I knew most developers hadn’t had enough time to make the necessary adjustment for Y2Cupcake.
Steel is pretty much useless right now. The address bar is whacked out of its gourd, and after a few seconds of displaying a page it dims out for no real reason. No worries as the default browser seems to have had a lot of improvements in terms of speed since I last used it.
ChompSMS is slow to display the thread list, and crashes completely when I try to open a thread up.
Open Home works as advertised, but when I hit the home key it force closes and has to reload, slowing the phone down.
Toggle Settings again, works as advertised, but hitting the home key causes the application to force close.
Author’s Note: I am fully aware that developers have not had enough time to update their applications for full 1.5 compatibility, I am just writing down my observations from what I have experienced so far. The people who have and will contribute to the Android community are the ones who are going to ensure Android succeeds in the mobile world.
Reception:
Now this may be total coincidence, or an actual improvement to the radio. Every now and then I am stuck at a desk for a few hours (i.e. school). Now before the update I had no reception what-so-ever, so I was forced to pay attention to the professor. Now after the update, I have 50% reception to the Edge network, and ~75% reception on the schools wireless network. This was a happy day, I didn’t learn squat! Again, this may be a total coincidence and I’m not going to count my chickens before they’ve hatched.
Bluetooth:
I was able to test A2DP(stereo bluetooth), and AVRCP using a SoundBlade we have laying around at work. She seems to be working as advertised, I was able to connect and control the music playing from the speaker. Now if we can get file transfer up and running, Android will be the full Bluetooth package.
Video Recorder/Camera:
Very smooth recording videos, just what the phone needed. Camera seems to have had some real speed improvements; it seems to only take a few moments to snap the picture, versus a few seconds.
All in all, this update has really lived up to its expectations, and I’m truly stoked to see what the community is going to do to build on this already great OS.
[Update]
The image from HTC isn’t rooted. Thanks to Devolio, I played around with it and found the old school method of rooting will work. ADB into the phone and run:
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/bin
cat sh > su
chmod 4755 su
Reboot.
I love all the UI improvements like the notification bar, and the transperancy, and the buttons and stuff.
But I will miss that little Android in the boot screen. :(
Have you tried uploading a video to Youtube yet??
Can’t wait tell I get the upgrade on my g1
Are there any new widgets exept the calendar music playr and thesky weather widget?
So I just did this myself, and now my G1 thinks its an ADP, plus I lost my root access, so now I must go through that process again. Considering what implications this might have as far as Market access, I may re-flash to standard G1 files and root it again once G1 cupcake gets release. Until then, I need to root this ADP in disguise!
the one thing i haven’t heard about the soft keyboard is how the speed and accuracy are. what are your thoughts? would you miss the hard keyboard?
The hard keyboard still works though right?
Is the tonka toy looking robot on the screen when you get a call from someone whom you have not assigned a photo to? That bugs me, makes my expensive phone look like a kids toy. Especially if you want to leave your phone out for people to check out.
@josh: No new widgets outside of the ones you mentioned
@Justin: Just re root with the old method.
@dabdiputs: While it feels accurate, one thing it is missing is the option to have vibrating feedback. Still, my sausage fingers have had little adjustment to the new keyboard. I think I’ll stick to it for a while in preparation of the I7500.
@Rich: Alas, no change.
@Tyler – I setup cupcake on the emulator to play with it myself since i didn’t want to root my G1. In one of the settings menus (i forget which, i deleted it after i was done), it did have the option for vibrating feedback in the section for the on-screen keyboard. I don’t know if it works since vibration doesn’t work in the emulator obviously, but i know the setting is there.
I’ve been messing with the new 1.5 build. I found it odd that the home screen doesn’t autorotate. Also, the browser is much improved speed-wise…however, they took out the “home” button when you press menu. There is no shortcut that I found. Good stuff…the build I have even has multitouch built into the brower. I’m not complaining. I’m glad progress is happening =)
you can turn on vibraation for when you hit each key
Great post!
Looking forward to more of your experiences for cupcake@adp1
—
Maku
I’ve got the exact same setup as you did (even the “bronze” g1). I used the fastboot method to upgrade to the HTC ADP1.5.
But I’m trying to use what you posted to re-gain root access, but when I enter the “mount” command line, I am greeted with the error:
“mount: Operation not permitted”
Any ideas? I’d really love my root access back! :)
@Daryl: The exact steps I took was:
1. Using ADB, I logged in to the phone using “adb shell”.
2. Type “su” to gain the # prompt.
3. Followed the steps posted above.
But you still haven’t answered the pertinent question: Does it need more cowbell?
Thanks Tyler… I forgot to su before entering the commands… *facepalm*
Working now (as far as I can tell, at least).
Zeltrine is right people!! We need to know the cowbell measure.
I should be getting my g1 today, so will probably not update for a week or so to get used to current build. Then I will upgrade to cupcake and appreciate the changes more haha. Good article though.
Auto-rotate is disabled on Home by design.
Ok, so it was spiffy to see Cupcake earlier, but I want my phone back to G1, and not ADP. Where do I get the system images, and such, that I can flash the phone back to G1 status?
Nevermind, no worries. Back to 1.1 with G1 as model number, everything is back to being hunky dory in the universe.
Hey Justin, can u tell me how you got back to 1.1? I’m not perfectly happy with 1.5, so it would be great if you told me. Thanks!
Just for information, maybe try to perform the following:
1. abd root
2. adb remount
The /system will be under read/write mode instead of read only.
Does the cupcake update allow you to choose the input languages or locale?
Thanks
@Tyler- I have to say I’m enjoying ADP 1.5, but I can’t regain root access the way you’ve described above. Mount doesn’t work because I don’t have su, and whenever I try to use su, I get the error “su: permission denied”.
@Jim- adb root also doesn’t work, I get the error “adbd cannot run as root in production builds”
Any ideas?
Nevermind! Installing this kernel gave me root access.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3699701&postcount=157
Hmm, I like this build, but the Browser and Gallery don’t have the orientation settings and auto-rotate doesn’t work in Gallery?
@uns211- That’s strange. I’ve not had any trouble auto-rotating with any of the apps, including Browser and Gallery (except for Home, which isn’t supposed to I believe).
I cannot gain root access, all options say permission denied
(adb shell / su, adb root)
and mount without su gives also (understandable) a
mount: Operation not permitted
any suggestions?
I upgraded from JF’s rc33 to JF’s 1.5 adp.
I can su and do most normal commands, but chmodding 4775 is not permitted, and even if I remount as read and write, it says it is still a read only system. Does anybody have any Idea what I am doing wrong?
emma,
T-Mobile update sucks. You need to use HTC version of Cupcake. http://www.htc.com/www/support/android/adp.html. Once you update to HTC you can use su from adb shell.
Hi
I do this:
“The image from HTC isn’t rooted. Thanks to Devolio, I played around with it and found the old school method of rooting will work. ADB into the phone and run:
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
”
And it says “operation not permitted.”
It’s 1.5 (pushed from T-Mobile just a few days ago) unlocked (I’m not in the US or EU) and Build CRB43
I’d appreciate if anyone can give some hints… Thanks!