If you’ve been wondering how to take a screen shot of your G1 Google phone, then the Screenshot screen capture application is your answer. Unfortunately, it requires root access to your Android phone, which Google has made nearly impossible to achieve.

The limitation of needing root access to your Android phone in order to do a screen capture is something inherent in the system. Right after the G1 came out, someone discovered that you could use one of the Android Marketplace applications – Pterminal – to access the Android OS and gain root access. Interestingly, Pterminal is now no longer available from the Android market.

However, a program called “Shell” is available, and it gives you the same OS access – it allows you to shell out to your phone and get a system prompt (and if this makes no sense to you, you shouldn’t even attempt it).

That said, we have been unable to complete the steps – published widely online – required to actually gain root access, in order to make Screenshot work. Those steps, when using Pterminal, were:

1. Turn on WiFi
2. Get PTerminal from the Android Market
3. Fire up PTerminal
4. Type “cd system� and hit Enter
5. Type “cd bin� and hit Enter
6. “Type “telnetd� and hit Enter
7. Type “netstat� and hit Enter
8. This will display your device’s IP address
9. Now you can telnet into your device’s root using the IP address you just wrote down

In theory, this should work with Shell too, but in our test kitchen our G1 consistently gave us a “connection refused” when we attempted to telnet to the device.

If anybody has better success than did we, please let us know!

In the meantime, for those who had already gained root access on their G1 before Google crippled it again, Screenshot apparently works a treat, and is being given 4 and 5 stars by those in the Android Market community who can use it.

Scan the QR barcode on the right with your Android phone to capture the information about this application!

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