What are the differences between T-Mobile G1 (branded HTC Dream) and Google's ADP1 (device for developers)?

Question

I was searching the internet but could not find a site comparing the two. I'm interested in developing for the android platform. G1 seems to be just the same as ADP1, but is there any small changes that will be noticeable in development?

How about 3rd party software? What T-Mobile software exists in G1 which is not part of the ADP1 bundle and vice versa?

Can I swap the original ADP1 firmware with T-Mobile branded one? As I understand people can already hack the G1 to run ADP1's non-branded firmware.

Answer 1

Hardware differences

• ADP1's back cover has a fancy pattern
• T-Mobile's G1 comes in black and white
• ADP1's dial and hang-up keys are green and red
• T-Mobile's G1 has 'T-Mobile' in the front and 'Google' in the back

Since the hardware is basically the same, software for both can be used interchangeably. While the ADP1 is SIM unlocked out of the box, a little more effort goes into unlocking and rooting the T-Mobile G1 (including downgrading, flashing, etc.).

Answer 2

One big, but little known difference is that Apps in the market that are marked as "copy protected" do not show up when browsing the market on an ADP1. This is a separate setting from free vs paid apps, so you'll see some paid apps and may not see free apps that happen to have that setting set in their market setup, but in general you can assume that there are a lot of paid apps that you can't easily install via market with the default images.

EDIT: Also, it doesn't include a couple apps including the Amazon MP3 Store and MyFaves. The original image did not include the VoiceDialer, but I believe that was added to more recent official images available from HTC.

Answer 3

I was searching the internet but could not find a site comparing the two. I'm interested in developing for the android platform. G1 seems to be just the same as ADP1, but is there any small changes that will be noticeable in development?

If you're developing with the SDK to do user-level application development and not kernel development or working on the framework itself, you shouldn't notice any differences. You can interact with either through the adb command and both produce debugging messages (Under Settings → Applications → Development.)

How about 3rd party software? What T-Mobile software exists in G1 which is not part of the ADP1 bundle and vice versa?

All of the application developed and distributed as part of Android (applications in the source tree are under platform/packages/apps.) This includes the alarm clock, browser, calculator, calendar, camcorder, camera, contacts, dialer, email, gallery, messaging, music, and voice dialer applications. In addition to these, both images include the proprietary Gmail, Google Talk, Google Maps and Android Market applications.

You'll notice that applications in the Android Market may not appear if the publisher chooses to protect the application. This may be applied to both paid and free applications, but commonly only some paid applications tend to be protected this way. The reason for this is that the Android Development Phone 1 firmware allows root access, which would allow you to circumvent the markets copy protection.

The ADP1 firmware does not include the Amazon MP3 store or T-Mobile's MyFaves applications. It does not include instant messaging applications other than Google Talk, but on the T-Mobile G1 these work over text-messaging and not a data connection.

Can I swap the original ADP1 firmware with T-Mobile branded one? As I understand people can already hack the G1 to run ADP1's non-branded firmware.

The differences between the ADP1 and the G1 are:

• The bootloader (Engineering versus normal)
• The firmware image
• The case design on the back

You can flash with a T-Mobile firmware (these aren't officially released, but the upgrade process prints the URL of the image for debugging) any time. You can always go back to the ADP1 image, as the bootloader will remain unchanged by the firmware flash and doesn't require images be signed with T-Mobile's release keys.

Since the hardware is identical, you can always load the engineering (or a custom) bootloader on the T-Mobile G1 after exploiting a bug in an earlier release to obtain root access and effectively turn your G1 into an ADP1 (see the xda developers forums for the HTC Dream for details.)

Answer 4

The Unofficial Android FAQ mentions many of the differences between the retail G1 and Android Developer Phone.