Loo-Lee.com

An Irish iPhone and Android developer has managed to bypass the Pre's activation, enter into a root shell, and discover that unsigned firmwares can be installed. The UI and apps are written in javascipt, so changes to the source code do not require recompiling. I know this because his blog says so, not because I know anything about javascipt. C and C++ native Linux apps can run on the device as well, as evidence by a Pre port of Doom.

The hacker is getting a lot of attention, as he "may just have the first jailbroken Pre in existence." This kid is so far ahead of me I don't don't know if he was dead serious or making a clever joke when he wrote, "you can use the Konami cheat code to enable dev mode, too); you can do whatever the hell you like to the OS!"

That's: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A. Wikipedia doesn't specify an instance where both select and start are added to the end, so I'm not sure why that's how I remember it. Anyway, I can't wait to see the modifications and hidden features that are sure to unfold this Summer.

In a recent article at Tech Crunch about hardware keyboard shortcuts for GMail, MG Siegler rips pretty hard into the G1's QWERTY - having much higher hopes for an Android phone with a software-only option. I'm ready to try something different as well, but I have a feeling I'm going to miss the hard keys now and then. Then again, I'm coming from a brand new black G1. Does that make a difference? Yes.

Not only are the silver keyboards of the bronze and white G1s more difficult to see in the light, the material used for the keys is different. Black G1s have a friendlier finish than the silver keys. They feel softer, more tactile. I had a bad exchange experience with T-Mobile ( I went through several damaged devices) and found that refurbished G1s have horrible keyboards. Horrible. At least the bronze ones did.

I finally got a brand new black G1, and with it, the centered, unsquashed keyboard I had known from my first G1. On top of that, I no longer had the light issues. I know the subtle differences in a G1's keyboard that can make one great and another unusable. I also know that you roll the dice when you buy a G1 - the QWERTY build quality you'll get is not guaranteed.

So is a software QWERTY the answer to uniform quality of Android keyboards? That's one solution. But if everyone had the same typing experience I had on my most recent device, I think more folks would be reluctant to let it go.

Dogfight! Noah from PhoneDog! Palm Pre vs Apple iPhone 3G. Round Three: Multimedia - Music and Video Players, YouTube Apps, and Amazon MP3 vs iTunes stores.

Dogfight! Noah from PhoneDog! Palm Pre vs Apple iPhone 3G. Part Two: Battle of the operating systems.

Dogfight! Noah from PhoneDog! Palm Pre vs Apple iPhone 3G. Part One: Design, Hardware, Voice and Data performance.