Nexus One Multitouch Available Now; Floodgates Open For Hackers

For every Android phone, the hacking process comes in waves: it’s tinkered with, then rooted, then flashed with totally new ROMs. At under a month old, the Nexus One’s landed its first native multitouch hack, and soon, much, much more.

Virtuoso Android hacker Cyanogen, who maintains the definitive custom Android ROM for the G1 (among others) just posted an installable version of the native Android browser with multitouch enabled. This is big news! But not nearly as big as what’s coming next, probably within a matter of days. Says Cyanogen, echoing the sentiments of other Nexus One developers:

I won’t be releasing a full ROM until Google drops the 2.1 source code into AOSP.

The AOSP is the Android Open Source Project, which Google has been slow to update, and which will give modders the information and code they need to issue a full Nexus One overhaul, including multitouch in all the stock apps. So, uh, guess what!

Google’s been making Android 2.1 code available all morning, so the first custom ROMs worth downloading could be here by this weekend. As is, the Nexus One is a spectacular phone. But man, just imagine what’ll happen when modders can open the hood on its software. [XDA, TheseAreTheDroids]