Ice Cream Sandwich ported to HTC G1, the first Android phone!

In the interest of science, a bunch of folks from XDA Developers have managed to port Android 4.0, a.k.a Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) on the HTC G1, the world’s very first Android phone. The current ROM is in Alpha stage, so not everything’s up and running, just yet. What does work are the apps and the new features that come with ICS, but Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and screen orientation do not work. This was done purely as a technical exercise to see if it’s possible, as you’ll see from the video, the phone isn’t exactly usable.

Back from the grave

Things could improve however with subsequent builds. This is quite an achievement, for the G1, especially that never saw Android beyond v1.6. ICS is obviously more resource hungry compared to the older version of Android, so whether it will ever run smoothly is yet to be seen. If you happen to have an old G1 gathering dust somewhere then you might want to give it a shot. Grab the download link from the forums right, here. For the rest of us, check out the video below.