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Tue, 18 Aug 2009 Early Google phones running out of space for updates

May not be able to get future operating-system updates because it's nearly out of space

Nancy Gohring

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Users of the first Android phone, the G1, may be unable to get significant future operating-system updates because the phone's internal flash is nearly full.

A Google developer who works on Android said recently that he's unsure if the G1 will be able to handle further updates.

"As much as I'm hoping that it'll be possible to somehow continue updating the G1, I can't promise anything," Jean-Baptiste Queru, a software engineer at Google, wrote on Twitter. "We knew that internal flash space was going to be very tight on the G1 and we kept the system partition tight on purpose," he also wrote.

G1 users got the so-called Cupcake update to the operating system earlier this year. Google is reportedly working on further updates to the software, including a version known as Donut. It has not published information beyond the first-quarter update on the Android road map page.

T-Mobile denies that the G1 will be unable to accept future updates. "We plan to continue working with Google to introduce future software updates to the T-Mobile G1. Reports to the contrary are inaccurate," it said in a statement.

But some observers wonder if T-Mobile will continue offering certain updates, like security patches and bug fixes, but not more substantial updates.

The issue raises questions about application compatibility in the future. If developers build applications to the latest software version but the G1 doesn't have that software, the applications may not work for G1 users.

Queru declined to comment further for this story, and Google did not respond to a request for comment.

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Comments received


David said on Tue, 18 Aug 2009

To be fair, this wouldn't be a big deal is it was a winmo/symbian phone, no phone in the industry is guaranteed updates except for the iPhone.

Daryn St. Pierre said on Tue, 18 Aug 2009

I have a G1 and I really hope this isn't the case. I don't understand why HTC didn't opt for apps and other data to be stored on the removable memory card. I know there are workarounds to make this the case but it should be standard. Now G1 owners are going to get stuck with a device they can no longer operate because the internal memory sucks (theoretically).

Daryn St. Pierre said on Tue, 18 Aug 2009

Meant to say 'can no longer update'.

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