Recently, I stumbled across an old Engadget post about how hackers were loading Android onto their WinMo phones. Since I had a HTC Touch Pro 2 (WinMo 6.1), one of the supported phones, I decided that I too wanted a 'HackDroid'.
After reading a few blog postings about how it could be done, eventually I stumbled across single website that had a cab file for installation, a short video of the installation experience, and all the tools in a single place.
What I liked about the project is that you do not need to flash the device with new firmware, making this a fairly row risk procedure. Android doesn't replace the native WinMo OS, but instead is stored on the phone's SD card, and after Android is booted, replaces WinMo in the RAM. If anything goes wrong, none of the phone's permanent ROM is changed, so rebooting takes the phone back into WinMo.
After watching a video of the installation experience, I borrowed a microSD card from a friend and gave it a try.
The version installed by the cab is v2.2 (Froyo), originally released May 20, 2010. The cab also placed a shortcut icon in my home screen which kicks off the boot process.
Android booting up:
After about a minute of warmup time, I was presented with the login screen. Success!
Desktop:
I immediately called work to tell them I was feeling sick and wouldn't be in for work the next day:
Unfortunately, the camera hardware drivers aren't working yet, so I saw this when I tried to take a picture.
The app store worked, and I was able to download games and utilities. The game of the year seems to be Angry Birds, so I made that my test case. Although it's slow, and there were some rendering issues, the game downloaded, installed, and ran.
Here's an example of a rendering issue. Sometimes graphic elements would get scrambled.
Pandora worked great:
The rough edges do show at times. For instance, I did have to run the installer three times before I successfully booting into Android; a friend had a similar experience.
Also, the system is a little unstable, so expect to pull the battery once in a while. Once, I adjusted the sound during a call and the phone went to speakerphone at max volume, and then proceeded to lock up. I could still hear the caller on the other side of the line, confused. This was pretty embarrassing, since I was in the office at the time.
In the end, it seems like a great start to this project, and I'm really excited with what they've done so far.