DroidPad

So you were lucky enough to buy a HP TouchPad, now what? You browse the App catalog and find 2 applications you might use (one probably being facebook), you use the app and find it sluggish so you read some guides and install PreWare , with this new found power you patch and overclock your little choo choo tab, and then you realize

 

It’s still slow, unresponsive and has AIDS (ok maybe not)

 

The dyingOS:

While the TP might not have AIDS it still resembles the symptoms, developers will try to save it but in the end it will still die (on the TP). Now I am being a little extreme here but the language HP uses in their press release really translates to “We don’t want to lose anymore money with WebOS”, if the rumors are correct HP is looking to exit the consumer market as a whole,  and even if they sell off WebOS it’s highly unlikely the buyer will invest it’s time in the TouchPad.

So now what? Your TouchPad can either be two things, for a regular user it’s probably the best $150 tablet on the market, for a tech enthusiast (unsatisfied troll) it can be an empty vessel just waiting to be taken over.

 

Android

Like it or not Android is the only legitimate competitor to the iPad, it has feature for feature against the iPad plus a bit more on top and a bucket full of developers to “boot”, but it does have its growing pains, for one the OS isn’t as polished as  iOS and while webOS is beautiful and polished it just doesn’t work! And, i don’t know about you but i’m not spending $500/600 on an Android tablet when I can buy an iPad.

That’s exactly where the TouchPad comes in, it costs $99/$149 respectively and has hardware supported by android , also most consumers that buy vanilla android do so for it’s robust software support (i.e custom roms)

Questions you might have:

What are custom roms and why the heck would I want them!? 

Without going into details custom roms are like outfits your android can wear, some are fast and sexy while others can be a bit more functional. In a sense you can build your TouchPad to be anything you like within the android confines.

Why would developers waste their time porting to the TouchPad, won’t it take too long? 

From what we know, the TouchPad shares similar internals as recent android phones like the HTC Sensation and EVO 3D , theoretically  it shouldn’t be a hassle as long as a proper kernel is found/created. There is also a video circulating the web of a retail TouchPad with android preinstalled, so there is hope.

So now you want Android on your TP, but heres the hard part, waiting…

Current Development

We can be happy knowing there is progress, interest in the project as brought fourth bounties by different parties and CyanogenMod dev team has become involved in the project, they have posted a video of Android ported to the TouchPad

Sadly it was later tweeted  the touchpad had passed way (bricked)

So what can you do?

You can donate your resources or even an extra TouchPad laying around, one of the biggest hurdles for the team is lack of hardware.

You can also tweet @Qualcomm & @HP for the source code for the Android builds on the retail TouchPad loaded with android, I highly doubt they will do it but it doesn’t hurt trying.

Where can I get updates on the project? 

You can follow @RootzWiki and @Decad3nce on twitter, you can also read the development section of XDA-Developers and PreCentral

What should I not do?

You should not bother any developers for ETAs! It’s annoying and it’s the #1 rule of Cyanogen.

 

Now you wait..