Installing Android on an HTC device

[IceBone]

Thanks to the excellent guys over at xda-developers, Android is getting closer and closer to having a fully functional build for just about any HTC device on the market.

I got to install it yesterday on my HTC Diamnd and it is remarkably stable. It's still a pre-beta, as there are quite a few major features missing, like the mic and speaker functionality, so noone can hear anything when you initiate a call, but you CAN initiate a call. It also has no data connection/wireless/gps/battery info/vibe/camera... But all of these are just device specific hardware issues, which will eventually get sorted, the actual core of the software works great and a lot faster than touchFLO 3D, faster smoother animations, etc. What you can do is send/receive sms, though!

Considering that just a few months ago even getting it to run required rocket surgery, it's quite an improvement, but it's still a phone without the functionality of a phone at this stage.

[Hidden_Hunter]

They haven't made much progress in quite a while afaik, the last major breakthrough they had was fixxing colour issues on the different versions of the touch pro

[matt2000]

I'll be quite intrested in getting this on my Touch HD, but does it run like TouchFlo does (an option in WinMo) or is it a replacement operating system?

[IceBone]

I agree, progress is slower than I'd have liked, but this is just guys that do this as a side project, they're not actual developpers.

If Android only ran as a replacement for winmo, it wouldn't have any problems regarding hardware, as that's all handled by winmo, touchflo3d is just a flashy skin. The way it works now is you just copy a dir to the insternal storage, run an .exe, that shuts down winmo and boots up linux with Android.

[killpanda]

That's interesting, I tested Android on Blind_IO's G1 a few weeks ago and quite liked it (I liked it a lot more than Palm's WebOS on the Pre I tested the other day, I found it borderline rubbish).
I also tested Android on my eeePC, which, I know, was useless as the UI is clearly not designed to work with it.

The one thing I spotted on the eeePC's version was the lack of the Google AppStore (or whatever it's called), is it the same with the build you are talking about? Or does it need to be a real "Google Phone" to have this appstore?

If they happen to completely run Android on any HTC phone, I might be on the market for an old one to replace my half broken blackberry

[thevictor390]

I would love to see this ported to as many phones as possible. It would be amazing to have an open source alternative for smartphones, a la Linux. However, that's a pretty daunting task.

[killpanda]

I just hope it won't end up like every Linux-on-phones kind of projects where at the end nothing was working nor evolving.

[IceBone]

I think Google is too big to let it fail.

[killpanda]

Yeah, for the official Android on official HTC and other brands devices.

What I'm more worried about is the independent bunch of people porting it onto other devices

[thevictor390]

I guess it's too much to hope that It can be ported to my Blackjack II... lacking a touch screen.

Windows Mobile is very open to third party development (I managed to find an overclocking app, for example), and this is good, but the interface beyond the home screen is pretty poor. And it's quite slow considering that my ~220 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM technically meet the minimum requirements for Windows XP.

[IceBone]

You can control it without the touchscreen as well. It was designed to work on ANY phone. It's just a matter of porting it to older devices.