Windows mobile (the old 6.x and below) is quickly being left behind in terms of development. No kindle reader, no nook reader, no kobo, etc, and those packages that do exist aren't necessarily being updated. I wanted to try out Android without leaving my hardware behind, because I love my TP2's keyboard more than I love most of my family (I'm like 41-43% joking about that).
Enter
XDAndroid, a project by members of xda-developers to port android to Windows Mobile HTC handsets like the
Diamond and Touch Pro series'. It boots from an SD card and does not replace WinMo, and requires you do nothing invasive like spl unlock your phone. Don't like it or it bugs out on you, just reboot, delete the files and it's like the whole thing never happened.
Though I still recommend doing a complete backup before trying anything.
Steps to install XDAndroid on a Touch Pro2:
FRX07 has arrived, 7/15/11. No long instructions for updating, it's already up to date, just download the bundle and follow the 5 easy steps you find
here.
Caveat Emptor
FYI. Bluetooth won't work yet. Even wired headsets are iffy. Your notification light is no longer for notifications -- it will shine green when your phone is asleep - this is to diagnose issues with phones failing to sleep. This is an experimental build. You might have to disable GPS to enable your phone to fall asleep and save battery. Charging from Android is touch and go. You cannot really turn off wifi to save power. You can disable it, but it still draws juice. I wasn't able to use the default browser at all, but Opera Mini from the Market works nicely. And FYI, Amazon's market gives away a paid app daily, with Plants vs Zombies coming up later this month -- even if it doesn't run on the TP2, you can grab and install it when you do upgrade.
In other words, it's nice to have access to some software (if you have a kindle and want to sync pages from phone to reader for example) and I mostly just play with on the weekends, so it is not a main OS until they iron out a few more details. The good news is they work on it constantly as you can see on the kernels page. And it's nice that it boots from the SD card rather than replacing WinMo so you still have a nice stable OS to come home to.
Hope this helps someone.
(<--- for android atmosphere, not a sign of depression
)