So you wanted a tablet but you didn’t want to pay over $600 for some half-assed Honeycomb tablet, even though you love Android to no end, so you instead purchased a $99 (or so) HP TouchPad. Now you’re thinking that the idea wasn’t that great because WebOS isn’t that much better, and you want to head back to Android. Fear not, my Android loving friend, as the CyanogenMod teams is working on bringing their delicious custom build of Android to the HP TouchPad in the very near future.
In addition to the HP TouchPad booting WebOS and Android, the CyanogenMod team are hoping to have the multi-purpose device boot into other operating systems as well. I’m guessing Ubuntu would be on that shortlist.
There’s a video (embedded after the break, of course) showing the HP TouchPad slowly booting up CyanogenMod 7 to prove that it is actually happening, even though the colours of the display are wrong and there’s no touch input working at all. But hey, they’ve got to start somewhere. Oh yeah, in case you were wondering: yes, I have purchased a TouchPad (off Matty!) and it should be here next week.
WebOS is great… cant see any real reason to put Android on the Touchpad other than apps.. which i don’t really need. The problem with the Touchpad is not the software.. but the hardware.. I don’t see Android making the tablet better from a performance point of view at all.
I also find the first two sentences of the article to be very condescending. Cheap shots don’t help anyone.
While dual-booting sounds good, I don’t see anything compelling enough in WebOS to make me reboot into it once I have Android running on my Touchpad. Now dual-booting into an Ubuntu desktop, on the other hand…
I also don’t want to get rid of webOS. Despite the bleak Aussie app situation I find the OS itself is quite nice to use (though it’d be nicer on more powerful hardware – perhaps I should overclock it).
At the same time I’m also not totally in love with the idea of a 9 inch Gingerbread device (since I have a 4 inch Gingerbread device already), but I guess it’s a start.
Dual booting would be nice.
I’m finding WebOS quite good so i’m glad to see the CM team is aiming for a dual boot solution. WebOS multitasks very well and is a bit more ‘polished’ than android, so in some ways it incorporates the best aspects of both iOS and Android. The major shortfall with WebOS is the lack of apps in the App Catalog, an android port will address that and give Touchpad owners the best of both worlds.
Only one more week and you’ll be able to experience WebOS for yourself Buzz