How many G1 users have rooted their Android phones? When I interviewed Jesusfreke last month, he estimated around 5,000 hacked phones. Looking at the root applications available in the Android Market today, you will find the top ones have between 5-10k downloads. Droidsans Tweak Tools has over 10,000 downloads, but I question how many of them are actually root users. One thing is clear though; our numbers are growing.
With the expanding root user base, it was only a matter of time before developers stepped up to serve this community which is hungry for new features on their phones. Many people are willing to pay to add functionality not originally available on their phones. One such dev who answered the call is Mike Moussa, who has released tether Blu and tether WiFi. Both applications allow the user to tether their phone to another device, like a laptop, and share the internet connection.
Mike has even gone as far as to help users gain root access on their phones. He created his own application that simplifies the root process by downloading the needed files directly to your phone. His root app has a few minor issues, but it cuts down the number of steps required from the original process.
“It is a lot easier than following the manual guide, mainly because the script I created which types in all the commands needed. Most people would mess up there when doing the manual guide. I threw together the app really quickly; it is a little rough around the edges. I am looking for contributes to help clean it up.”
Currently, tether Blu is the only Bluetooth tether app, but there are several free WiFi tether apps available. I asked Mike why users should purchase his version and he responded with the following.
“Main reason why you should buy my tethering app, is because of my outstanding support. I respond to most support emails within the hour, except for when I am sleeping. I go out of my way to help customers not only with my apps, but also with rooting their phone, recovering their phone from a bad flash, configuring their operating system to work with my apps, and answering general questions about Android and the phone. Since people pay for my app, I will continue to support it and add new features. My app was the first on the market and I believe mine is the best when it comes to ease of use, configuration, amount of features, and speed. Not to take anything away from the other developers, because they have done some good work as well.”
Looking at his reviews on the market, it appears his customers are quite happy. If you are in the market for a tether app and looking for quality support, then check out his work. We are currently in the process of creating new documentation for his root application and hope to make the upgrade process even easier.
If you have been thinking of rooting your phone but were nervous about the process, please stay tuned to our site. We aim to provide the ultimate beginners guide for gaining root access. Subscribe to our feed if you would like receive help on rooting your G1 phone.
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
8 Comments
I have my G1 rooted. So far, the only thing I’ve done is gotten my apps and data to my SD. Haven’t found a need to do anything else. No need to tether as the only places I go with my computer are places that have a network connection available to me. I had DroidSans Lite before I rooted, haven’t installed DroidSans since rooting. I don’t even use the multi-touch. I’m basically lame.
The only reason I rooted was for taking screen shots. The multi touch was cool at first, but I don’t really use it.
There is also a tether app that doesn’t require root, but I have not tried it out.
http://www.junefabrics.com/android/
I rooted my phone and it rocks. Till now, i have a custom Bootsplash, Enterprice WPA2, OpenVPN and WIFI-Tethering running. Also i used Nandroid to get a full backup of my phone.
Now, i only want that the G1 dies, because off the little memory for applications. Thanks to that, there will nearly noone that builds Apps and Games that are greater than 15MB for the next two years and this sucks.
I got my phone back in October and did not get root access till early Feb. It was like getting a whole new phone, im glad that developers are making more apps geared towards Root Users and im sure they will Monetize heavily on it as well.
Developers, please make an application for rooted G1’s that moves the applications to the SD card. I am running out of space on the phone, as I am sure many are, what with the alternative home applications and all the other applications. I want to do this, but the process is a bit complicated, so I am so far intimidated from trying it. I would even pay a modest amount for an application that accomplishes this.
The folks at XDA (http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=448) have made huge progress on making this extremely easy to do. A script to partition the SD card has recently been added: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=500387 and LucidREM has a mod of the JF firmware (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=480582) which includes copy app to sd and copy data to sd scripts. You might find it’s much easier now than last time you checked into it.
Thanx for that tip nEx … I will definitely check that out this weekend.
hello
im new on this forum….