Google has just rolled out the first patch for unlocked G1 smartphones, something which the developers were waiting for. The patch aims at fixing number of issues and bugs. The main advantage of having the patch is that it allows the users to access paid Google applications and also supports video search. The patch can be downloaded over the air or via HTC web site. Total size of download is 37MB.

Android Dev Phone 1, popularly known as ADP1 is available for $400 in the market for the developers and offers them root access to the file system with full read/write permissions. Initially, the T-Mobile G1 Google-phone prevented the developers from copying, hacking and distributing the paid Android applications but the new patch will allow them to access non-DRM premium Android applications. However, this may or may not increase the risk of piracy in the market. Dan Morrill, Developer Advocate for Android said, “Many developers are concerned about the unauthorised redistribution of their applications, so they make use of the copy-protection feature (forward locking) which prevents applications from being copied off devices.”

The paid applications for the Android phone will be available in UK soon. T-Mobile will allow the developers to charge for the apps in the UK Android market. At a developer event held at London, the T-Mobile announced, “From tomorrow (i.e. Thursday, March 12th ), UK customers will have paid apps on the phone, and there’ll be a wide selection of paid apps on the market and will include EA Mobile Games and Guitar Hero World Tour.”

Tags for this article: smartphone, android, g1 apps

A few years ago International Business Machines, popularly known as IBM was unable to develop fault free Deskstar 75GXP hard disk drives. The company formed a negative image in the market and users were used to calling the Deskstar drives Deathstars. History has now repeated itself. The only difference is this time the Seagate is on the target.

Recently, the company’s firmware patch malfunctioned badly for the users of barracuda 7200.11 hard disk drives with DiamondMax22 and Barracuda ES.2 models, such as the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 250 GB, for example. The firmware bug caused sudden crash of 500GB and 1TB Barracuda hard drives. The company has withdrawn the firmware update for further development, fixing and extensive lab testing. As of now the users are advised to roll back to the previous firmware as Seagate moves in to fix the problem. The company however claims that the firmware malfunction do not results in data loss. All the stored stuff still resides on the drive.

According to Seagate,” There is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive. But if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services. Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.”