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CyanogenMod Ports Android To HP TouchPad
yesakmac joins the teeming hordes of successful Slashdot submitters, with this excerpt from PC World that says the frenzied effort to port Android to HP's discontinued TouchPad has actually succeeded: "CyanogenMod also released a 'lower your expectations edition' release guide to let you know exactly what is working (or not) under the hood. Modders will be happy to know that basically all the TouchPad's guts are recognized. It supports dual-booting and fake SD cards in case you need to restore the TouchPad. What does not work, though, is the camera, which can only be used for video chat. Power efficiency is still an issue, too. As for the final build, CyanogenMod says they won't be giving a hard date, and that it will be ready when it is ready."
Best of all they don't take donations, like some questionable-at-best teams that quickly assembled to port Android in the wake of the fire-sale frenzy. They urge donating to the EFF instead. CyanogenMod are a classy team.
Also, it should be noted that this build would qualify as being in the earliest of alpha stages.
Dammit. That's the wrong way!!! I have an HP Touchpad, and the hardware is mediocre, but WebOS is a work of art. Otoh, I also have multiple android 2.2 & honeycomb devices, and by and large they're fast and flexible, but the OS and app markets are buggy and malware-infested. Why port the middling-common-denominator OS to HP's crummy hardware? "Upgrading" the HP tablets by loading Android is like upgrading a Ford Fiesta with an Isuzu diesel. Sure it'll keep you on the road, but it ain't pretty and it ain't gonna be fun.
What's *really* worth someone's time and effort is a port of WebOS to better hardware. Ginmme an illicit port of WebOS to some of the nicer Samsung 5-10in tablets, the Lenovo K tablet, etc etc (anything with more ports and a faster proc) and I'd be all over it.
I think not...(*poof*)
Just to be clear, I'm a serious fan of Cyanogen's work from the Zaurus era (went thru several generations of SL & C using his and others' work), and appreciate the effort that has gone into this. But as others have pointed out, the HP is going to some effort to ensure the hardware is a dead end, while WebOS remains a high-end viable platform and the dev base is very much alive. Seems if you're going to work on a niche market ubergeek-OS-mod, you ought to have higher goals.
I think not...(*poof*)
It does very little to the battery. It scales up in speed as needed and then back down to like 192MHz when idle. Mine is at 1.7GHz and battery has been just fine. After tweaks and OC it's not bad at all...especially for $149. Good enough that I sold my iPad 1.
Link to an easy walkthrough I did on tweaking the Touchpad:
http://jasonnash.com/2011/09/05/tweaking-that-new-hp-touchpad-you-just-got/
Actually, they have.
I've seen a youtube video of Android running on a 3G or 3GS way back when those were the current gen iPhones. I seem to remember an issue with the number of buttons available with some of the physical buttons expected on an Android handset being mapped onto the volume buttons on the iPhone.
http://www.idroidproject.org/
./ wants me to ..
and now i have to say something useless here because
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
I've been following this project since they first announced it and got a Touchpad through the firesale. I got it installed today and here's what I can say about it:
Cyanogen calling it pre alpha is kind of underselling it. It's quite usable. The only nasty problem for my purposes is that the wifi is kind of flakey. I've heard power management isn't so great yet but I've had it plugged in the entire day. I've loaded Tunein, Netflix, Pandora, all the different emulators and they all seem to work.
So nice work Cyanogen, looking forward to future updates.
Yup. I picked up a Touchpad during the fire sale too. I /just/ received it yesterday. First impression was "oh hey, it's got a nice gouge in it, it's probably a refurb." Second was "yup, this is beta quality software." And the third was "yup, it's really slow to respond." It's got a 1.2 gigahertz dual core Snapdragon. It should be more than fast enough for tablet use.
Yes, webOS 3.0.2 is beta quality software at best. It's pretty, but it's got lots of rough edges. For instance, DHCP is disabled by default. On first boot I connected to my WiFi access point, and then was prompted to enter in IP address and gateway manually. Uh? Really HP? Really? Once I got past that I started playing with the apps. Wouldn't you know it, built-in apps and apps you download are listed in separate areas. The "App Catalog" is listed with the downloads, not the built-in apps. Pivot looked really neat. I flipped through it quickly, downloaded a few apps. Installed a few updates. Now that initial (July) issue of Pivot has disappeared and was replaced by a "Coming Soon" notice. Nice. I started playing with the instant messaging app. Well, tried to. For each IM I send the tablet vibrates ones and makes two distinct noises. Upon receipt of an IM it does the same thing. If the IM app is in the background, same thing... when you bring the app into the foreground, it goes through the same rigamarole all over again. And, of course, on occasion the foreground app just stops responding, but the system otherwise seems to respond to touch input.
Oh... and the web browser. Why do they have to make it so difficult to scroll vertically? For pages that don't expand beyond the screen's horizontal borders it would be real nice to... you know... disable horizontal scrolling. There's a native YouTube app, but the browser will still open youtube videos using flash. C'mon guys, even Android got that one right (it prompts the user which app to use).
If Apotheker hadn't been so keen on starving Hurd's baby, HP could have turned out a really nice tablet. For $150, the TouchPad IS a really nice tablet (with buttons that feel cheaper than my $150 no-contract Android phone, however). For $500 it's a piece of crap. What I'd like to see HP do is this: resume production of the Touchpad and sell it at cost for the time being; put some effort into optimizing webOS and fixing some of the niggling problems.
The revolution will be mocked
You overclocked a tablet? Really? Why do you hate your battery?
Have you tried some tweaks to fix the source of some of the problems first?
yeah, they're a start, but still not enough...
Overclocking mobile devices often results in better battery life. It can do the work faster at the higher clock and then return to a lower clock sooner, saving you battery.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
I believe the correct term is GNU/CyanogenMod
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Why port the middling-common-denominator OS to HP's crummy hardware? "Upgrading" the HP tablets by loading Android is like upgrading a Ford Fiesta with an Isuzu diesel. Sure it'll keep you on the road, but it ain't pretty and it ain't gonna be fun.
The problem with WebOS is it's future existence. When the future of an OS is questioned so is the future of its apps. Android and iOS have been getting better with every release. Their application pool is continuously growing. The usefulness of a device running these OSes is continuously growing.
The same can not be said for a WebOS.
A car analogy would be upgrading your home made cooking fat powered car by putting in a diesel engine from a commercial vehicle which doesn't quite fit. It may not look pretty but at least you know that a) you can get parts for it, and b) it's usable and refillable anywhere, c) more people are invested in keeping diesel engines running than just you.