XDAndroid ~ Use Android on HTC Touch Pro/Diamond/HD

[Marseille]

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 )

[ultraman56k]

Thanks for the info buddy. Most of the features that I need works, and amazingly speedy, with one exception---When I use the camera to take a picture, it tells me to "Please insert an SD card before using the camera." I can access the SD card partition in the eFile file manager, but android os won't mount it as a removable volume... Is there any way for me to trick it to recognize my SD card?

[Marseille]

I didn't have any problems with that myself. May I ask which kernel you chose in step 7 and what device you installed it on?

Originally Posted by archive of old FRX06 instructions

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. Be sure to alter the downloaded zimage filename so it is just "zimage".

Step 8: Two last downloads. 1: conf. Copy this over the froyo.user.conf file found in root/conf. 2: Touch Pro2 tscalibration (Use this one for diamond and raphael), 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.

[ultraman56k]

I have a Touch Pro 2 like you.... Ahhhh I completely skipped step 7 for some strange reason... Now camera is working flawlessly with the updated kernel!!!! This is amazing!!!! David, you made me fall in love with my TP2 again

[Marseille]

It's a great device. The guts are outclassed, of course, but there's only one modern smartphone with an equally classed keyboard and it has WP7 on it. The Droid 3 is getting closer, but it ain't there yet.

You're quite welcome, and thank you for using the guide. I hoped someone would benefit.

[carld]

I wanted to give this a try but ran into some broken links. I found the rootfs update here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=935710, but I'm not sure where to get the correct conf file. I have everything else.

[Marseille]

I believe both links are working now. The old conf link appears dead, I've uploaded the one from my phone to mediafire.

Thanks for pointing out the errors

[HansTWN]

I tried this last October. Is it running much better now?

[Marseille]

Way better than in October. I've been intending to install it since last summer, and there have been several improved kernels per month since then -- I count 48 new kernels since October. I don't recall the exact list of shortcomings back then, so I can't tell you exactly what's been fixed, but I remember when I first loaded it this summer I was impressed with their progress. I do know there have been big advances in radio management and battery life.

It is, however, still an experiment that is managed in these guys' free time, so it's far from perfect. If you have any specific things you wished were working back then, holler and I'll try them now to see if they're working.

[carld]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

I believe both links are working now. The old conf link appears dead, I've uploaded the one from my phone to mediafire.

Thanks for pointing out the errors

Thanks for the files. I have it up and running now.

My remaining problem is that I don't have wifi and therefor can't get to the Android Market. I tried to use the Android SDK and USB drivers to install apps that way, but it didn't recognize my device. So it's interesting, but not too useful right now.

[Marseille]

You can still sideload. There homegrown apps housed at xda-devs and probably ppcgeeks too. There are bound to be other sources as well.

Another alternative is to browse the market on your PC at market.android.com and select files to install there, then let them all download at mcdonalds or starbucks or wherever you get free public wifi.

As a possible alternative, you might try this hack to get the market on a pc emulator, then use this comment (or a few just above that) to try and extract an app from the vm for sideloading. I'm not totally sure that will work, but I hope it helps.

[carld]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

You can still sideload. There homegrown apps housed at xda-devs and probably ppcgeeks too. There are bound to be other sources as well.

Another alternative is to browse the market on your PC at market.android.com and select files to install there, then let them all download at mcdonalds or starbucks or wherever you get free public wifi.

The trouble with sideloading is that since Android doesn't have a native file manager there's no way to launch the Apks to install them.

I did manage to turn the WEP off long enough to get to the market and download Astro file manager, and then installed wifi-ace which supposedly allows wi-fi with wep to work, though I don't yet know how. I'm working on it.

Also, is there a way to cancel downloads? I set up a couple Angry Birds games and then found out they don't work very well. Now I can't find any way to cancel them. Selecting Cancel in the market doesn't seem to do anything.

[Marseille]

You've already fully downloaded and installed them? I think in settings -> manage applications you can uninstall them.

[carld]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

You've already fully downloaded and installed them? I think in settings -> manage applications you can uninstall them.

No, I've got a little down arrow in the title bar which indicates something is trying to download. I'd like to just cancel it for now, but I don't know exactly what it is.

Edit: Apparently that was a notice that I had finished downloading Amazon's App Store. I was poking around and found the pulldown notification list and clicked on the notice, the arrow went away.

Edit2: I think I need an Android Phones for Dummies tutorial.

Good news, I turned wep back on and went through wifi-ace and set everything to match my router, put in my wep key and everything works. So I have net access with android fulltime now.

[eSheri]

OMG! i cannot wait to get home to try this!