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HP Investigates Android TouchPads Delivered With Android
angry tapir writes "HP is investigating how several TouchPads reportedly shipped to end users running Android, instead of webOS. Shortly after HP announced it would stop selling TouchPads and began offering the remaining tablets for US$99, reports surfaced from a few users who say they received TouchPads that run Android instead of HP's webOS software. At the same time, developers have been working on porting Android to the TouchPad, since it's uncertain how much support and development HP will dedicate to webOS in the future."
Where can I get one? That would SERIOUSLY make the money worth it....
Shouldn't the title says "HP Investigates WebOS TouchPads Delivered With Android"?
They accidentally sold a product with value. That runs counterpoint to their business plan.
They didn't ship with Android. They likely shipped with WebOS and had Android installed later. Or perhaps someone was hacking with Android behind the scenes and test units got sent out for sale. I would be more inclined to think these were previously returned and repackaged for sale as new.
BURN!
That's a shame, I've been playing around with one of the $99 touchpads, and have to say, from the user experience, webOS seems pretty nice.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Funny how the debate is between Linux-1 and Linux-2. Would be good if most Linux apps ran on most Linux OS's.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
A bit OT, but cant the OS be extracted and loaded onto other Touchpads so that everyone who wants to can get a fully functional Android on their touchpads? Also, can only the drivers be extracted from this image? (so that Touchpad+new versions of Android also work)?
Sup dawg, I herd you like Android, so I put an Android in your Android so you can Android while you Android.
OK, now I feel dirty.
As noted, do they ship refurbs? Ages ago while working for a computer retailer, we once had a Mac that someone took home which had been "re-imaged" by our service department... And when the customer got it home, it booted into BeOS. Not that I would have turned my nose up to it back then, it was a 9600 with "tons" of RAM (512, remember those days? If you had 256 people would come from far and wide just to touch your screen).
A friend of mine in the Bay area heard from a contact of his that HP first tested all TouchPads with Android before the flash of WebOS prior to shipment. I know that this is only anecdotal hearsay and that I can't substantiate it, but if true it would explain how a few TouchPads running Android could get out in the wild.
Considering that the WebOS team at HP is facing almost certain doom, I think it's more likely a disgruntled (or altruistic) engineer somewhere inside decide to slip a few units out the door. If nothing else, to make sure their work didn't go completely to waste.
It might just be me, but I find this rather disturbing, an incorrect OS on a device is a pretty obvious mistake to spot, if HP can accidentally ship TouchPads running an OS they never intended to release then surely there's a real risk of them shipping PCs, servers or switches preloaded with rootkits/backdoors that are designed to be well hidden?
Maybe I've just been wearing my tinfoil hat for too long though!
So a bunch of people bought the thing, loaded android, then returned it. The store/reseller just repackaged it and resold it. I don't understand what the big fuss is about. I've bought SNES games before that still have previous save game data on it.... so this isn't the 1st time someone returned something after messing with it.
The Cyanogen team would be foolish to even look at the dumped ROM from these tablets. It sounds like they really want the drivers for things like the video and bluetooth, which are likely closed source binaries. That would make them no better than any other company violating the GPL.
It's kind of ironic that they are trying to strong arm HP and Qualcomm using legal tactics into releasing code that they never intended to release. (Yes in many ways using GPLd code is like poisoning your project). Even if it was a compiled driver that they intended to installed on tablets they sold, they are still under no obligation to release anything unless it was based on GPL'd code.
It's more likely (or at least possibly) a case of "let's see if we can get HP to cough up their Android code for the Touchpad". Step 1: Claim HP shipped Touchpads with Android. Step 2: Tell HP that this obligates them to share the code. Step 3: Hope HP complies.
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Search for touchpad on sites like wallmart.
It will show only Chinese android tablets.
Sum that with clueless people trying to find the 99 tablet bargain.
I think some people have it wrong or just missed the part where there is not an absolutely fully functional working version of android for the HP Touchpad. So a modder could've loaded CM7 on the tablet but it wouldn't be running as if it came from a factory(or maybe it could, I've had some crappy tabs before). Besides that point, if there's no video/proof that this happened, then it's yet another internet rumor as far as I'm concerned.
Who says they're even supporting them now?
The web browser is seriously broken and I don't expect them to fix it.
Last I looked there aren't any viable replacements either.
You can't save a login and visited links do not work.
When you hit the back-button instead of going back to your place from memory, it renavigates back to the server.
Hey, for 149.00 that was what it was worth.
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
I guess they'll have to fire the CEO.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Android Touchpads would have been discounted to only $199, where they would have sold out in hours, like the wonky Touchpads.
I thought this is HP's
'Everybody Ondroid' marketing campaign...
... congrat these employees?
It could be, but the thing is, when they reflash the thing with WebOS, they also reflash the touchscreen controller with some other very dumb firmware (from a very advanced one). As such when you run dumped android on a regular touchpad, the touchscreen does not work.
Now reflashing that touchscreen controller with the advanced firmware is problematic, as there is no real easy recover mode from failures and no way to flash webos-friendly TS firmware either.
The current speculation is that the folks at Qualcomm have been using the Touchpad as a reference design as it uses their CPU, and have been working on Android support internally.
The suspicion is that some Touchpads made it out into the wild with this testing version of Android installed.
I believe the source request is mostly to add driver support for the various hardware in the Touchpad. Cyanogenmod currently is running a newer version of Android (2.3.5) on the Touchpad than the version that shipped on those few units (2.2.2)
I don't believe HP is obliged to share the source for those drivers unless it can be shown that the drivers were based off of existing GPL code. The dump of the build that leaked out into the wild may shed light on whether those drivers are derived from GPL code or not. That's the sticky part in this.
HP may not even have the source to this build if it was internal at Qualcomm.
I have a $99 touchpad and for what it is worth I think webos is perfectly okay. I won't be putting android on it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Dear me, that's quite the goof. They should have used a Microsoft Access database to keep track of which OS to install on each device.
From the rootzwiki site here is what is working and what is not working. As you can see they are very close to releasing a beta.
WORKING
Android USB gadget with adb
LVM in Android
Touchscreen with multitouch
GPU acceleration
Proper pixel format(color).
Sound via speakers
WiFi
Accelerometer
Battery reporting
NOT WORKING
Video playback via overlay
Camera
Bluetooth
Gyroscope
Compass
Has anyone stopped to think that maybe HP dumped the HP Touchpad on thousands of users to promote their WebOS software. It makes complete sense to me that if you dump a product at a lost on thousands of people you can judge the future of said product.