Posted May 25, 2010 15:54 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104)
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I think G1 is a phone, and thanks to some cool hacker it's now possible to run Android version 2.1 on some revisions of the G1 phone. Android uses Linux kernel, that's why we are seeing it on LWN.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 16:33 UTC (Tue) by hitmark (guest, #34609)
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yep, its the t-mobile G1, the first android phone to be commercially available (and iirc, now discontinued). ADP1 was the google name for their unlocked developer variant that was sold for a while.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 17:02 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
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I've got a G1. Bought it used from a local phone/laptop repair place.
Paid somebody in Germany or something like that 20 bucks to get the unlock code, downgraded the firmware, rooted it, and upgraded to Cyanogenmod firmware.
Fantastic stuff. Most of the features listed in Froyo 2.2 as good things (wireless tether, install apps to sd card, etc) have been used in Cyanogen for a while now. Also Cyanogenmod is the first firmware for Android to use the BFS kernel patches to improve responsiveness, which (from what I understand) Google has since adopted.
The phone is very limited in capabilities (low ram, mundain processor, and tiny onboard flash) and I am looking forward to getting a more powerful phone, but for right now this firmware has helped me extend and lengthen the useful lifespan of this phone massively while improving performance and gaining 2.x features.
If your curious about Android (which I was) it's not a bad idea to go and see if you can find a used, but in good condition, T-Mobile G1 somewhere. It's a decent tiny computer and if you end up not liking it you can still boot it using Debian proper if you'd like.
Cyanogenmod supports other phones, of course. Nexus One is probably the best one to get, I suppose. But the Dream is notable due to the low capabilities of the phone hardware and there were doubts that anybody using one would be able to benefit from the 2.x Android series.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 17:32 UTC (Tue) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470)
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>>> the BFS kernel patches to improve responsiveness, which (from what I understand) Google has since adopted.
Are you sure about that? Is there a link somewhere?
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 17:56 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
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Posted May 25, 2010 18:23 UTC (Tue) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470)
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Strange. I thought the android devs wanted to close the gap between their code and the mainline...and now they use a scheduler not in mainline ?
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 18:33 UTC (Tue) by thoffman (subscriber, #3063)
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The Android devs will above all, do whatever is best for the majority of their users.
If using an out of mainline scheduler improves responsiveness and performance without degrading stability, I don't think they would hesitate.
Of course, they would probably _also_ try to get that scheduler adopted into the mainline kernel as a config option.
This is exactly the situation with wakelocks, to refer to another example. I don't know anything about the BFS scheduler, if it's used or not, but I do know a little about Google's priorities, they haven't exactly made them a secret.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 18:34 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
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It could just be in that android-bfs branch as a experiment for somebody to play around with.
I tried looking around to see if anybody mentioned Froyo using it, but I did not see anybody talking about it. I can't really grep through the Froyo sources right now as I am at work, but it'll be interesting to see what exactly Google is still doing seperately from mainline.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 26, 2010 7:57 UTC (Wed) by swetland (subscriber, #63414)
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It was an experimental branch. Some folks reported better experiences on some hardware, but blind testing on Droid and NexusOne did not show a user visible performance difference and we opted to stick with the stock scheduler for the our 2.6.32/Froyo efforts.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted Jun 17, 2011 15:46 UTC (Fri) by blitzkrieg3 (subscriber, #57873)
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In yet another Wikipedia citation loop, the citation asked for higher in the thread now points to the comment above me.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 18:25 UTC (Tue) by AdHoc (subscriber, #1115)
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Posted May 25, 2010 18:47 UTC (Tue) by xxiao (subscriber, #9631)
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Glad to hear that BFS is used. The default CFS is not fit for embedded devices based on my 3-month experiments.CFS is a failure for me on low end embedded product(UP, 400Mhz), and there are too many tuning parameters which have no useful document, and never seemed to work for me either. With BFS you only have one tuning params (rr_interval), and it worked much better comparing to CFS.Hopefully someday we have more than one scheduler to choose in menuconfig for various workload/hardware scenarios.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 18:19 UTC (Tue) by malex (subscriber, #15692)
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It appears that the current CM5 is still not stable enough to move beyond the "experimental" stage at least by Cyanogen's own standards (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=681717). However, even the most recent "stable" CM release - 4.15.1 already has enough of the Android 2.x series functionality to extend G1's usefulness as a phone far beyond the time-line T-Mobile and Google set for it. Buying a used G1 gives interested people pretty much the only way to afford an entry into the smartphone area and CyanogenMod makes it just as functional as the phones beyond financial reach of many people. It is a thrill to be able to enjoy 2.x Google Navigation, apps2sd with hundreds of apps instead of paltry dozen or so the original flash could hold, and full root access with tethering and other goodies that apps like TitaniumBackup, Cachemate and others can provide. Many kudos to Cyanogen for it. I just hope there will be a 2.2 CyanogenMod to incorporate the announced 2.2 Dalvik performance improvements, which might make G1 even more responsive and useful. That would truly be a miracle. It might happen I suppose as long as Cyanogen has resources to devote to supporting this hardware. It seems to me that he is spreading himself thin over the "Dream" generation and the Droid and N1 generations, so alas G1 might still slip into a neglected state soon and that would be truly unfortunate.
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 19:07 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
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That thread is old. Why post it here on today's release?
CyanogenMod 5 for the G1/ADP1
Posted May 25, 2010 18:38 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265)
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> Most of the features listed in Froyo 2.2 as good things (wireless tether, install apps to sd card, etc) have been used in Cyanogen for a while now. Also Cyanogenmod is the first firmware for Android to use the BFS kernel patches to improve responsiveness, which (from what I understand) Google has since adopted.
I've been using Cyanogen's build for over a year, tether over wifi and USB are extremely useful features. Compressed cache pages also make the G1 a much more useful piece of hardware.
I just hope that the JIT compiler and Chrome browser will make it substantially faster. The G1 can be remarkably slow sometimes, such as browsing Slashdot, or when using the music player.