FreshPhoneNews.com

Getting your hopes up ain’t a wise thing to do when it comes to HTC Dream or Magic from Rogers Wireless. Both these gadgets won’t be receiving an official OS update past Android 1.5, according to HTC’s website (Rogers Wireless has confirmed this as well). Android 1.6 upgrades for Rogers HTC Dream or Magic haven’t been planned as it was made only for “Google”- branded devices such as the G1. It isn’t available for the above two HTC-branded handsets that run Android 1.5, being considered a stable and reliable platform delivering an outstanding user experience. Bragging about the device, calling it an open-sourced “Revolution” and then turning down the customers is just plain sad. Did we mention that rival carriers offering Google supported devices have managed to tweak it up with some software upgrades?

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Well the mystery has been somewhat solved. Why won’t the Google-branded HTC Android phones be getting the Sense UI? Brain capacity issues; the Google branded handsets like the G1 have potato chips for internal memory. The farthest OS update the G1 could accommodate was the Cupcake, now that that’s over, G1 is about as shinny as it’s ever going to be. Oddly enough, Android smartphones straight from HTC, the ones not bearing Google branding, have plenty of internal memory to squeeze in updates. Sadder news may be that the Google branded HTC Dream will never go beyond Android 1.5. of course this is a guess, but it seems sadly likely.

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DigiTimes, the Chinese tech journal got a hold of HTC CEO Peter Chou and in the very brief interview that ensued, they got some tasty tidbits for all of us. The biggest bit of info they were able to pry was that HTC has sold over 1 million Magic units by the start of August. The Magic initially came out this year in April has made the millionth mark in impressible little time. It’s not as big a number as that of the iPhone or the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but it’s impressive nevertheless. Beyond the sales figures, Chou also revealed that HTC was planning on shifting focus towards more mid-range smartphones during the remaining half of 2009. The target price range of these handsets will be around $300. All we can say is, we look forward to it.

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While many are still fuming over the fact that the Sense UI won’t be coming to all HTC handsets bearing Android, Google is not going to leave its user base with nothing. Nope, in fact, Google has just given developers the source code for Donut. Thankfully to be available to all present Android devices (which grill down to the G1 and Magic so far) Donut will bring multi-touch support, universal search, text-to-speech, automated backups and a redesigned camera app. New widgets will also be coming and include a home screen toggle for things Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, screen brightness and more. Sweet. It also looks like CDMA radio support will be underway, so this means there’s some good stuff to expect from Sprint CEO Dan Hesse’s claims about Sprint going the Android way. Another interesting morsel is XDA member cyanogen claim that Donut is not Android 2.0 but is more or less an incremental upgrade to the OS, like Cupcake was. Very interesting. Anyway, for now ogle at the screenshots please.

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Google is not ditching Android for the new Chrome OS. Nope, Google has made it clear that Android is targeting a totally different purpose and the Chrome OS is not its substitute. So what are Google’s future plans for Android? Apparently they’re very sweet. Android will be getting further updates that will make it more social network friendly. There will also be more application payment methods in addition to Google Checkout. In fact the June 10th media event by Google and T-mobile suggested that there may be an application payment method that will let you pay for the applications on your monthly bill; T-Mobile will allow payment to be directed to the user’s monthly bill, just like ringtones, wallpapers and themes. And the sweet part comes in with the updates being named Donut, Éclair and Flan. We should have guessed this was coming when the Cupcake came. The bottom line remains, we can live with pretty much anything Google wants to call these updates, as long as the updates keep coming.

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We all remember Haykuro,the 17 year old phenomenon who brought the world the Cupcake before it was officially announced. Well he’s back and true to his awesome achievements streak, has brought another treat for all of us. He dug up the ROM from the upcoming HTC Hero and, being the genius that he is, whipped it into shape and got it working on the HTC G1. Hello Donut. Enjoy the videothat shows what the future of Android will be.   

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