XDAndroid on HTC Touch Pro2

[Mi An]

Syd now has a second OS. I'm not sure if that means she has a split personality or just a new set of skills. *Imagines Neo looking mildly awed and saying "I know kung fu"* I had about a week after most of my exams before my last one, and this morning I finally sat down and made this happen. Honestly, setting up the folder with a build (Froyo), up-to-date kernel, rootfs and RIL only took a few minutes (see Introduction to Android - SD Card - xda-developers for easy setup instructions). I couldn't make rel_path work, but it boots fine with the build in the root directory so I gave up. But otherwise the first boot took longer than the actual work I put into setup.

XDAndroid still is not fully functional. There are bluetooth issues, 3.5mm jack issues (for the CDMA Rhodium users), speakerphone issues, wifi issues (it works, you just can't shut it off from within xdandroid to save power -- turning off just makes it so you can't use it, it still sucks power), you have to use an alternate driver for usb host mode, and some sleep issues I don't fully understand, including GPS preventing it from entering deep sleep, and as a result, the LED is tasked for informing you of what sleep level it is in, not for notifications. But they've made a ton of progress since I first swore I would test it out. I dropped a donation in the xdandroid tin with a note that there's more coming if 3.5mm gets added on. For whatever that's worth.

I'm looking forward to playing with Froyo all the same and seeing what the android marketplace has to offer and where Google Voice integration is at. There are Gingerbread builds, but Froyo is the most stable, so that's what I used. Because this runs off the SD card, there is no need to do a hard spl unlock or make any modification to the phone. xdandroid is working on a version that can initialize hardware without WinMo's help, but frankly, for as long as quirks remain, I prefer this method.

For all the caveats, it doesn't feel like a hack once it boots up. I quickly and smoothly (more smoothly than in winmo ) got in, set up wifi, signed in to the market, downloaded 3g watchdog (thanks hook ) with apndroid, kindle, aldiko, an Amazon bar code scanner, looked at mobilenoter played a little angry birds rio (which did crash, maybe just because my hardware is ancient), set up weather info and looked at other stuff I've been drooling over and was on my way. It all felt fairly smooth.

I'll play with it some today, but I may not get much more time with it until the weekend after this one. I have family coming into town this weekend and one more exam, but if you have any "must trys", do tell. For now, this is like having a whole new phone.

EDIT:
Made an install guide that is more streamlined than the one I linked to above for mobileread, thought I'd post it here as well for any googlers.

Steps to install XDAndroid on a Touch Pro2:

FRX07 arrived on 7/15/11. No updating steps necessary. Download here, follow the 5 easy steps and enjoy.

[Radon222]

I became hooked on dual-booting between WinMo and Android on my Tilt2. Now I love it even more on my HD2 running a Cyanogen derived Gingerbread ROM.

You'll love being able to play with Android, but still have the stability of WinMo when there's work to be done.

Enjoy!!

[Varjak]

Interesting concept; but it sounds like a huge number of compromises are required. If there are BT issues, audio jack issues, WiFi issues, etc.; doesn't it defeat the purpose?

[Mi An]

Depends on what the purpose is, I suppose. It's not ready to be my main OS yet, but I'm thrilled I installed it to play with <-- my purpose. The winmo application library gets a little more stale every day. Now, thanks to xdandroid, I have a device that can read checked out overdrive titles, has an xkcd browser, kindle, a more stable general epub reader, a better Bible reader, something that can tell you what song you're listening to, full onenote access etc, and I haven't even scratched the surface yet. On top of that, I get to try android before I buy, not in some store with annoyed personnel glaring at me, but at my own pace.

Also I don't use bluetooth at all, the wifi issues are only issues if you want to turn the radio off to save power (which would be more of an issue if I were going to run Android all the time, but isn't much of one when I'm just booting in to play around), and I don't use the 3.5mm jack all the time. If they do get the last of the kinks worked out, I could see this extending Syd's lifespan considerably.

And thanks Radon, I most definitely will.

Step 1: Download XDAndroid Froyo, build 6. This contains everything you need to run Android, but because development moves so fast, we'll update a few portions in later steps.

Step 2: Extract the zip file. I recommend 7zip, because it also supports some compressions formats we'll have to deal with later, but any unzipping program will handle this file. Extract it anywhere, just remember where you extracted it.

Step 3: Move everything in the FRX06 directory to the root of your phone's SD card. The 'root' simply means not inside any directory or subdirectory. If you plug your phone into your computer in drive mode, and it comes up as, say, the E: drive, you'll extract the build directly to E:, not E:\anything. There are 6 files (haret.exe, initrd.gz, modules....gz, system.ext2, rootfs.img, zImage) and 4 subdirectories (AndroidApps, conf, media, STARTUPS) to move to the root.

Step 4: Choose your device/model. Different models have different quirks and key layouts which are handled with the startup.txt files. There are 5 models and several more submodels. The Blackstone directory is for HTC HD1s, DIAM is for Touch Diamond 1s, RAPH is for Touch Pro1s, RHOD is for Touch Pro2s, and Topaz is for Diamond 2s. If your directory has subdirectories, you'll need to turn off your phone, remove the battery and look underneath it find your model number (mine is RHOD500). Once you have the right startup.txt, move it to the root directory.

Step 5: Update your rootfs. Download the file here. Extract it (here is where 7zip comes in handy). Rename rootfsblahblah.img to rootfs.img. Copy your new rootfs.img to the root directory of your phone's SD card, it will ask if you really want to overwrite the existing file, and you do. Acknowledgment: Highlandsun, see linked thread for more details.

Step 6: (this might only apply to models without dpads like the Touch Pro2) Assign a Home key in startup.txt. Go to the root of your sd card, open startup.txt. There is a line at the bottom called set cmdline "" with various space-separated arguments in the quotation marks. You need to append an argument to convert one of your phone's face buttons to home, and another to search (more optional). For Rhodium, I changed physkeyboard=RHOD500 to physkeyboard=RHOD500-b1HOME to map my call key to home, and I added a new argument, gpiokeyopts=b4SEARCH to make my end key search.

Step 7: Update your kernel. The kernel consists of two files, zImage (no file extension, just zImage) and one named module-blahblah.gz where blah blah consists of version numbers. There is a constantly updated repository of new kernels here. I downloaded the may 6th release because it had a fair amount of good feedback. Delete your old modules file from the root directory of your card, and then extract and copy the new zImage and modules file in their place.

Step 8: Two last downloads. 1: conf (right click, save as). Copy this over the froyo.user.conf file found in root/conf. 2: tscalibration, unzip and place the file in your root directory.

Step 9: Now open your phone's file browser, go to the root of your storage card, run haret.exe and watch android boot up. The first boot takes a long time.

Step 10: Links for extra information. XDAndroid Wiki. XDAndroid Froyo build 6 thread. Introduction to Android - SD Card (extra props to ryannathans for his guide). F22's Latest Rootfs (Apr 19th, 2011) Highlandsun's RIL Support Patches Merged + More. Official Installation Guide.

[jigwashere]

The winmo application library gets a little more stale every day.

That's putting it politely.

[Mi An]

That's putting it politely.

Syd is still proud of her old skill set, so I try to be diplomatic.

Edit: A few wrinkles so far. Typically launching the android browser causes a crash. Don't plan to pursue it, will probably just download opera or skyfire or something like that. I also can't get through the Google Voice setup. It tells me it is unable to get through the voicemail setup, no matter how often I retry, and if I try to skip the step, the application locks down -- can't go forward or back. I think I'll uninstall Voice and then get it again from the market, see if that helps. I was looking forward to seeing what it can do.

Edit 2: Got GV working by installing fresh from the market. Opera Mini seems nice. Typed up this edit the first time from Sydroid, and liked it all the way until I hit save and my edits failed to make it through. But it seems to detect where I'm pressing much better than my winmo opera does, less zooming necessary, it's just quicker and easier. Might try reading tonight, but Aldiko doesn't want to turn pages with my arrow keys, which is kinda my way. Might try FBreader or something like it.

[Radon222]

Interesting concept; but it sounds like a huge number of compromises are required. If there are BT issues, audio jack issues, WiFi issues, etc.; doesn't it defeat the purpose?

Messing around with android ports on these older phones definitely falls in the the "Why? Because I can" category.

On the TP2's; android is definitely not yet a daily use OS, but just as Mi An is doing its a no-cost method of getting to experience and play with an alternate OS.

[questionfear]

Mi An, try Dolphin Browser. It's a lot of browser, but it's excellent and more powerful than the standard android one.

[Mi An]

Dolphin is on my todo list. I was try to think of the names of some of the browsers I read about, and that one slipped my mind. Thanks QF

I didn't read in Sydroid last night. I tried FBreader and Aldiko, and neither would let me turn pages with the arrow keys. On the up side, both are more stable than my current winmo reader (opening books cause freda to crash), faster and more fully featured (the dev has moved on to WP7 development). I think both readers allow you to turn pages with the volume buttons. I'm not opposed to tinkering, if I could find a aebuttons plus sort of analog for android that would allow context-sensitive button remapping, maybe that would do the trick for me.

[questionfear]

Does Kindle work with the arrow keys? I am 90% sure that the D-Pad on my Droid flips pages in Kindle...