How to Enable Multi-Touch and Gestures in Google Nexus One

Thank to a patent hold by Apple on multi-touch and all associated gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotation, the multi-touch and finger gestures capabilities have been available almost exclusively only on iPhone, iPod touch and Apply products for electronic devices that been sold on US. One such device that falls under the threat of infringing Apple patent to exclude multitouch and gesture capabilities is Google Nexus One.

Google Nexus One native applications does not include multitouch support, including on web browser, even though the touch-screen hardware and Android 2.1 operating system on the Nexus One is fully capable of accepting input via multi-touch and gestures.

US consumers with Google Nexus One can now hack the device to enable full multi-touch and gestures functionality, including pinch-to-zoom on Nexus One’s native web browser. Developer Steve Kondik (known as cyanogen in the xda-developers.com community) has managed to create an addon that adds multi-touch support to built-in N1 web browser.

Follow the hack below to install the multitouch add-on for Google Nexus One to make the built-in web browser able to accept multi-touch input. A note of caution is that the bookmarks and browser settings will be lost and reset to default after the hack is performed.

1. Root the Google Nexus One.
2. Download the following required files:

   Browser.apk
   com.cyanogenmod.android.xml
   com.cyanogenmod.android.jar

3. Run the following commands to add the files:

   adb shell stop
adb remount
adb shell rm /system/app/Browser.odex
adb push Browser.apk /system/app
adb push com.cyanogenmod.android.jar /system/framework
adb push com.cyanogenmod.android.xml /system/etc/permissions
adb shell reboot

Once the smartphone device is restarted, the N1 web browser can support multi-touch.