Hacker brings multitouch to Google's Nexus One
Let the mods begin
A celebrated Android hacker has released software that greatly enhances Google's Nexus One smartphone, endowing it for the first time with the same coveted multitouch features that grace Apple's iPhone.
Operating under the moniker Cyanogen, the hacker released the updates on Wednesday. The hack came as Google formally made the Nexus One operating system, Android version 2.1, open source, paving the way for much more advanced modifications of the phone.
Introduced and trademarked by Apple, multitouch gives users the ability to use two or more fingers directly on a device screen to enlarge images and carry out similar actions. While it's been on the iPhone since day one, certain aspects of the technology were noticeably absent from official releases of Android devices. Google axed the feature at the request of Apple, an unnamed person has told Venture Beat.
The advent of multitouch on the Nexus One comes three weeks after Cyanogen brought SSH, USB support and other advanced features to the smartphone. The mods are meant to be flashed on top of the Nexus One's existing firmware, making it "very much low-level Linux kernel hacking as opposed to a full on ROM," said Chris Paget, chief hacker for reverse engineering firm H4RDW4RE.
But when Cyanogen released those earlier mods, he promised to release a full custom ROM as soon as Google dropped version 2.1 into the Android Open Source Project. With that out of the way, the real Nexus One hacking can begin. ®
COMMENTS
HTC put it in the Hero
At least on the gallery and browser.
Very nice it is too.
I suppose Apple are patent-trolling it again.
Wish the US would grow up and ban software patents. It's damaging products the rest of the world would like.
What I don't understand is
Why they don't put it in for units shipped to the civilised world, where we don't allow for moronic software patents.
Say it isn't so?
"Introduced and trademarked by Apple, multitouch gives users ..."
Are you saying that Apple have trademarked the word 'multitouch' for use on touch-sensitive input devices? If so, that is amazing and amounts to 'restraint of common language' (I think I just coined that expression). I hope I've misunderstood this.
Google should hire this guy
...whether or not multi-touch is patented by Apple, this guy is doing work that would make any Google developer proud, and having the additional burden of figuring it out for him/herself.
'nuff said.
@ Stephen 10
Motorola did with the Droid - the 'Milestone' as it's known in Europe does feature the multitouch missing from the US Droid. As there isn't yet an official UK version of the Nexus One, we don't know yet, maybe they will.
