March 1st, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: AndroidOS | No Comments »
Some months ago we reported that Google was selling unlocked G1's to the development community so they could start creating mobile games. Now, IDG News found out that those devices are blocked from commercial Android Market titles.
The unavailability of paid applications and mobile games for the unlocked G1's isn't a mistake from Google. The company disabled this feature intentionally on launch of the commercial features of the Android Market in order to avoid copyright problems.
"If you're using an unlocked, developer phone, you'll be unable to view any copy-protected application," wrote Google employee Ash on the help site in reply to a user's question on Friday. "This is a change that was made recently."
The article also describes that there are some loopholes with the development version of the G1 that give developers full access to purchased applications. One is that the dev version gives full access to the private folder where the games are stored. Consumers are blocked from that folder. This means that developers can copy the mobile games and return the originals to receive their money back.
"The Developer version of the G1 is designed to give developers complete flexibility," Google said in a statement. "These phones give developers of handset software full permissions to all aspects of the device… We aren't distributing copy protected applications to these phones in order to minimize unauthorized copy of the applications."
Read the original IDG News story over at MacWorld.
