TouchDroid Project Bringing Android to HP Touchpad
by Andrew Cunningham on August 22, 2011 3:00 PM ESTThe open source community is wasting no time taking ownership of HP's orphaned Touchpad tablet: a new group called the TouchDroid team is looking to bring Android to the Touchpad, breathing new life into a product that died last week before people started buying it in droves due to heavy discounts.
The project's first goal is to bring Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) to the touchpad, either using the straight source code from Google or using the popular Cyanogenmod distribution that tweaks Gingerbread to make it more usable on larger screens. Once the new Ice Cream Sandwich version unifies Gingerbread and Honeycomb (Android 3.x) into one OS, the developers will focus their attention on the newer version, which should be better suited to the Touchpad's 9.7" screen.
It should be noted that the TouchDroid project is brand new - so new that, as of this writing, the project's is still using a filler image for its logo, and that many of its developers "don't yet realize they are going to be developers" - and that there is no current ETA on when (or if) the project will produce a usable version of Android for the Touchpad. Still, the open source community is nothing if not persistent - if TouchDroid can't get Android up and running on the Touchpad, someone else probably will.
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ckryan - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link
And I don't hate it. I really like WebOS, but being able to use Android would radically fix WebOs's most glaring weakness -- the lack of apps. Mine came via Best Buy Saturday morning - I had to pay full price but Was able to get the price adjusted yesterday. Definitely worse ways to spend $100.bbomb - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link
I think webOS and Andorid Honeycomb have close to the same number of apps. I am talking about apps written for tablets and not smartphone apps that work good enough.n00bxqb - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
Regardless, it's always good to have choice available. I'm a pretty avid webOS fan, but if webOS ends up going belly up, it's nice to know people are TRYING to get Android working on the TouchPad. It would be a nice contingency plan.P.S. The article headline implies that Android will be coming to TouchPad, of which there are no guarantees primarily due to the complexity of cracking the bootloader, from what I understand. The article does go on to state that there is no timeframe for release (or even if they will release it), but the title should be fixed, IMO, to reflect the uncertain nature of this project.
steven75 - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
How would that fix anything? Android tablets don't have any apps either. In fact, they may actually have *less* than the touchpad.Smartphone app != tablet app. That scaling is anything but graceful.
marc1000 - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link
what if HP now decides to save the touchpad, after spreading it faster than any competitors??? =Dthat would be fun, and certainly a bold marketing move...
tekzor - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
but then they will have to continue selling it at a huge losssteven75 - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
Android would be fun to play with and everything on my Touchpad, but what problems would this solve exactly?-There aren't more apps for Android tablets.
-Honeycomb is clunkier than WebOS.
So I guess it's just for kicks?
Bownce - Friday, August 26, 2011 - link
Being able to do it and have it work would be good enough reason for me to do it. My 32Gb version was just delivered. No way I'd have coughed up nearly $700 for an iPad 1.5 or one of the competitors. None of the tablets (at the price I'd be interested in) were worth a second glance. The HP has the hardware to make the $99 - $150 price point worthwhile.As a mobile media consuming device it'll be easier to watch than my iPhone 3gs and lighter than my Dell laptop. At home it's the 27" iMac or streaming to the 65" Samsung in the living room. Yes, I *am* a gadget slut. By refraining from throwing my money at the current generation of everything on the market, it's keeps me from being a gadget whore.