Android installed on HP TouchPad

Last night I successfully installed Android (Cyanogen Mod 7) onto my HP TouchPad.

I followed the very thorough tutorial on PCPro so I won’t be going over the steps in this post. I did use Windows 7 for the install since the tutorial specified it. Not sure if there is Mac tutorial out there but the steps involved should be doable on a Mac, just like the Preware hack I did previously.

The nice thing about this hack is that you still retain WebOS and have the choice upon booting to pick which operating system the tablet will use.

I’ve only played with it for a little while but despite the alpha build status, it seems to function pretty stabily and fast. In fact, just as good as any Android phone I’ve owned. Emphasis is on phone here since the Android build being used isn’t the tablet (Honeycomb) version, so the TouchPad feels like a big phone. But you can access the Android Marketplace (make sure you do all the steps in the linked tutorial to enable this). Upon logging into my Google account, it even synced all my apps down that I had loaded on my Nexus S.

I’m looking forward to see how this hack evolves and makes use of a decent hardware platform like the TouchPad which many people were able to scoop up for cheap during the recent fire sale when HP exited the tablet business.

There is also a bunch of people interested in using Android to control their RepRap 3D printers and there are a few projects working on that right now. My TouchPad would be perfect for that so I’ll be keeping a close eye on this aspect.

Update: Looks like an alpha of Ice Cream Sandwich (aka Android 4.0) has been released.