Steve Jobs famously said that there would be no native iPhone apps in case they “took down AT&T’s network”. Well, 300m downloads later I haven’t heard of any major outages, although from some commentators’ comments on the speed of access it might be hard to tell.

But this week we now have something that could genuinely be a threat to network integrity - the unlocked G1. It is not just unlocked in the conventional sense of not being locked to one network operator - it lets you boot your own version of the operating system on it.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions about phone testing, qualification and approvals. I’m sure the carriers are just thrilled about the impending storm of Linux fans booting their own personal favourites and adding a whole new dimension to phone phreaking.

I’ve ordered mine, but I have no intention of fiddling around with booting. I just want to build some apps for it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Android. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.