While a significant chunk of G1 owners still await the RC29 update that started rolling out a few days ago, Google has already queued up another one. While people generally welcome updates with open arms, this ones got a few folks upset.
Last week, an eagle-eyed tinkerer realized that you could gain root access to the G1 by using telnetd, essentially “jailbreaking” it. Now, this isn’t jailbreaking in the “install just about whatever you want” sense most iPhone owners would think of — the G1 already does that. Instead, it gives you full admin abilities down to the very core of the handset’s filesystem. While this allows for modifications both beneficial and malicious, Google has decided that the risks outweigh the benefits. With RC30, root access via telnetd is blocked.