Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

Twitter Foils Singtel’s Futile Controls

It was time for a new toy, and I decided that a new phone would do the trick. I had earlier fiddled with the new HTC Dream which is powered by Google’s Android operating system but Singtel wouldn’t sell me one without a new contract signup. So I sent out this tweet.

It didn’t take too long for Gina Daryanani, a PR professional to point out the way.

And as a result, we now know that HTC Dream handsets can be purchased for S$728.00 at Mobile Square.

Thanks, Gine!

Update
Nico Gunadi emailed to say:
If i were you, don’t get HTC Dream from Mobile Square.

Get the Android Dev 1 Google Phone direct from google.
The price including shipping to Singapore is ard $750 (same price)
Although this phone is HTC Dream but its way much better because:
1. The front buttons are nicer as they come with button.
2. You immediately have root access of the phone. With root access,
you can immediately upgrade your phone OS. Although you can do the
same with Singtel Phone but I have a friend who had difficulty to
enable the root access in the phone.

From http://developer.android.com/, u can go to this link http://market.android.com/publish
You use your gmail account to register for android developer then proceed to purchase the phone from the link

Cowboy, congrats on becoming an Android user. Been using one since Oct last year, and the first thing you’d want to dois make sure you upgrade to the latest firmware, version 1.5.

Currently, the T-mobile ones are not available, though the ones for the Developer Phones (ADP – Android Developer Phone) are available through various sources, e.g. http://code.google.com/p/sapphire-port-dream/

You’ll need to downgrade your phone, but that’s an easy task

1. Download MyBackup, and backup your SMS, MMS, Call Log. You don’t need to backup Contacts since your contacts are synced to Google anyway, and Home Screen and System Settings are pointless since there is a small change to the firmware

2. Backup your SD card if you have stuff on it. Just copy everything on the card to a temporary folder on your PC.

3. Go to Settings -> SD Card and phone storage, Unmount SD card, then Format SD card.

4. Copy all your stuff back onto the SD card.

5a. See http://www.codeandroid.org/forum/?wpforumaction=viewtopic&t=9.0 for downgrading / rooting instruction if you have a SingTel G1.

5b. If you have a non-SingTel G1, see http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f12/rooting-your-g1-made-easy-11825/ . This is what I used, and is the easiest tutorial out of the ones available out there

It sounds complicated at first, but after doing this once or twice, you realize the steps are all the same after you have a rooted phone — to update to new firmware, just rename the updated firmware to update.zip, copy to sd card, switch off the phone, hold down Home and End keys to restart phone until you get to a boot screen/icon, press Alt-L on the keyboard, then Alt-S, then after the update is done, press Home+Back keys to reboot. It’s a LOT simpler than it sounds, believe me.

6. After you set up your Google credentials, go to Google Market, download Latitude Enabler, Market Enabler and it will turn on Google Latitude and enable display and purchase of paid apps for your phone (Google Checkout account needed). I also use AdFree Android to modify the Hosts file to prevent loading of banner ads, etc so that speeds up web page loading and rendering.

7. If you like incoming SMS notifications to be displayed as a pop-up dialog box, download SMSPopup from Market.

If you need any help, just drop me an email. Thanks for a great blog, hope I can give something back in return

Oh crap, I missed a step:

5.5a Go to http://code.google.com/p/sapphire-port-dream/ and download ADP1.5Hr3 and the radio firmware. Rename the ADP1.5Hr3 file to update.zip and then copy to SD card, then do the flashing process (Home+End bootup, Alt-L, Alt-S, then reboot with Home+End). You’ll need to wait awhile for the new firmware to boot up (around 4 to 5 minutes), then reenter your Google credentials, and after it logs in properly, rename the radio firmware to update.zip and copy that into the sd card, then do one last reflash. That’s it, enjoy :)

Cowboy, delete my earlier two comments. I suck at this. Should have put more thought before I hammered out the tutorial. I rewrote the damn thing and put it here:

http://ghoonk.posterous.com/rooting-your-htc-dream-aka-g1

Sorry, I screwed up.

Nice work there ghoonk! Am waiting for my HTC Magic so i could kick cowboy’s ass with it. hurhurhur!

Nice one ghoonk. Im actually comtemplating of trying that phone…but the singtel contract was a turn off.

Wait for the HTC Magic or the Samsung…

hey! it’s me again. we’re launching the htc magic on thursday, so you might want to wait for that. the htc magic is the second Android-based phone from HTC, and it comes with an upgraded software. i can email you details when i have ‘em if you like! :)