CyanogenMod Ports Android To HP TouchPad 86
yesakmac joins the teeming hordes of successful Slashdot submitters, with this excerpt from PC World that says the frenzied effort to port Android to HP's discontinued TouchPad has actually succeeded: "CyanogenMod also released a 'lower your expectations edition' release guide to let you know exactly what is working (or not) under the hood. Modders will be happy to know that basically all the TouchPad's guts are recognized. It supports dual-booting and fake SD cards in case you need to restore the TouchPad. What does not work, though, is the camera, which can only be used for video chat. Power efficiency is still an issue, too. As for the final build, CyanogenMod says they won't be giving a hard date, and that it will be ready when it is ready."
I'm so unimpressed (Score:2, Funny)
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Actually, they have.
I've seen a youtube video of Android running on a 3G or 3GS way back when those were the current gen iPhones. I seem to remember an issue with the number of buttons available with some of the physical buttons expected on an Android handset being mapped onto the volume buttons on the iPhone.
Re:I'm so unimpressed (Score:4, Informative)
and now i have to say something useless here because
Best of all they don't take donations (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it should be noted that this build would qualify as being in the earliest of alpha stages.
Obligatory economics issue (Score:1)
(assuming $ stands for value) ... 2 ... 1 ...
Gift economy : $100 Tragedy of the commons : $0
3
Gift economy : $0 Tragedy of the commons : $100
Try again next time
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Except that it really does work in practice. Not when you're playing a zero-sum game and let random griefers in, sure, but (1) software development isn't a zero-sum game, and (2) in a gift economy for zero-sum items [say, physical goods], your reputation is the most valuable thing you have; a random stranger who isn't introduced by someone with a good one (thus putting some part of their own reputation on the line by way of the introduction) needs to earn respect before they can play. That's not to say that
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Ok ... gift economy with reputation ... let's put a number on that reputation ...
Let's call that number "the dollar" because ... well that's what it is. By your standard we have a gift economy today.
The problem people have with the economy is that
1) decisions of people with "high reputation" (lotsa dollars) matter more than those with low reputation
2) some people have "low reputation" to the point where they suffer hunger
You provide zero solutions.
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If your goal is to caricature working solutions into thin parodies of themselves, of course you can find holes in those strawmen. Understanding of complex systems -- and human behavior is certainly such a topic -- is not going to happen within a few paragraphs of text. When I speak of a gift economy, I speak of something that I've seen working in practice over more than a decade, and with items (and effort) of substantial economic value passed around. Claims that one cannot work in practice (given appropria
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You keep throwing around that "zero-sum" word, as if it indicates a difference between "gift" and "capitalist" economies. But of course, as the stimulus made abundantly clear, current dollars are not zero-sum either.
So how does this matter ?
Btw: those restrictions are pretty fucking harsh restrictions. Either of those restrictions, even if they're pretty mild, would make actual use of that system for any sizeable entity completely impossible.
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For governments they're not. For you and me they are. Gift economies work well for physical goods only on a small scale, and it's this scale where dollars are very much zero-sum.
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I just find it pretty dishonest for you to talk about gift "economies" when what you mean in fact is "a small or medium-size charity inside an exclusive group in a capitalist economy". Because that's what you mean.
I guess the absolute biggest example of a gift "economy", as you use the term, would be the catholic church, then ?
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I'm using a term with a meaning established through a history of use (though non-embedded gift economies do exist... but only in small, tribal communities). Any alternate meaning you might assume through unfamiliarity is your own problem.
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Those aren't gift economies, they're dictratorships. Obviously you don't pay for stuff in a dictatorship, but I seriously doubt that should be called gift economy. If anything, it's communism.
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Dictatorships? The Pacific Islanders' practice of sharing food? The Papa New Guinea islanders' kula exchange? Native American potlatch? Seriously?
I've been wasting my time responding to a troll. This conversation is over.
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All of these societies have one singular leader per tribe, who rules by violence. So yes, (tiny) dictatorships.
Re:Best of all they don't take donations (Score:4, Informative)
The most certainly do take donations but they encourage donations to the EFF as well if you want to instead of donating to cyanogen.
But they still accept donations if you want to give them to cyanogen team:
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ [cyanogenmod.com]
And scroll down to the bottom of the page, lower right hand side.
Isn't the guy's name only Cyanogen? (Score:2)
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It is the other way around. Cyanogen is the user's name, CyanogenMod is the Modification of Android he built.
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Yes, so strictly speaking the title implies that Cyanogen's modified version of Android is so advanced that it's capable of doing Android development by itself.
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Well, compared to what comes from Handset Makers, and Google itself, Cyanogen's Mod is pretty rockin version. The fact that Samsung hired the guy says something about that company looking forward. I just wish their phones were built to last all the way through a two year contract. I'd pay an extra $100 for that feature alone.
I just wish Handset makers would realize that we don't want locked bootloaders on what is supposed to be "OPEN" platform. The whole point of Android was that it was Open.
I just wish the
Term for CM team (Score:2)
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Cyanogen was not responsible for the porting CyanogenMod 7 to the HP Touchpad. The primary developer is Erik Hardesty (dalingrin).
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Credit is more accurately due to "the CyanogenMod team", who run the project started (led?) by Steve Kondik a.k.a. Cyanogen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod [wikipedia.org]
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I believe the correct term is GNU/CyanogenMod
no, no, no... dammit! WebOS on better hardware! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dammit. That's the wrong way!!! I have an HP Touchpad, and the hardware is mediocre, but WebOS is a work of art. Otoh, I also have multiple android 2.2 & honeycomb devices, and by and large they're fast and flexible, but the OS and app markets are buggy and malware-infested. Why port the middling-common-denominator OS to HP's crummy hardware? "Upgrading" the HP tablets by loading Android is like upgrading a Ford Fiesta with an Isuzu diesel. Sure it'll keep you on the road, but it ain't pretty and it ain't gonna be fun.
What's *really* worth someone's time and effort is a port of WebOS to better hardware. Ginmme an illicit port of WebOS to some of the nicer Samsung 5-10in tablets, the Lenovo K tablet, etc etc (anything with more ports and a faster proc) and I'd be all over it.
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But let's look at some of the bad parts.
A browser that is unusable if you have more than a few websites open. A complete lack of apps (even after installing preware).
Even after overclocking to 1.8Ghz, it takes a good 5 seconds after turning a PDF page for it to "unblur" and come into focus. Oh, and the browser does that same blurry, unfocused crap too. Often for more than 15 seconds.
battery goodbye (Score:2)
Have you tried some tweaks [precentral.net] to fix the source of some of the problems first?
yeah, they're a start, but still not enough...
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It does very little to the battery. It scales up in speed as needed and then back down to like 192MHz when idle. Mine is at 1.7GHz and battery has been just fine. After tweaks and OC it's not bad at all...especially for $149. Good enough that I sold my iPad 1.
Link to an easy walkthrough I did on tweaking the Touchpad:
http://jasonnash.com/2011/09/05/tweaking-that-new-hp-touchpad-you-just-got/ [jasonnash.com]
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You overclocked a tablet? Really? Why do you hate your battery?
Have you tried some tweaks [precentral.net] to fix the source of some of the problems first?
yeah, they're a start, but still not enough...
Overclocking mobile devices often results in better battery life. It can do the work faster at the higher clock and then return to a lower clock sooner, saving you battery.
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A complete lack of apps (even after installing preware).
Really, it's this. I'll probably use my Touchpad alot more now that I have CM/Android market on it but I already miss flicking stuff off of the screen.
In a perfect world WebOS developement carries on as FOSS.
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Just to be clear, I'm a serious fan of Cyanogen's work from the Zaurus era (went thru several generations of SL & C using his and others' work), and appreciate the effort that has gone into this. But as others have pointed out, the HP is going to some effort to ensure the hardware is a dead end, while WebOS remains a high-end viable platform and the dev base is very much alive. Seems if you're going to work on a niche market ubergeek-OS-mod, you ought to have higher goals.
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Really? A platform that's how many years old now and doesn't have a usable web browser (most browsers figured out that opening tabs in the background was good years ago and I've not seen a browser that didn't remember how far down in the previous page you were when you click back since the mid 90s) or (non-Kindle) e-reader application is what you think is a high-end platform with a alive dev base?
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Dammit. That's the wrong way!!! I have an HP Touchpad, and the hardware is mediocre, but WebOS is a work of art. Otoh, I also have multiple android 2.2 & honeycomb devices, and by and large they're fast and flexible, but the OS and app markets are buggy and malware-infested. Why port the middling-common-denominator OS to HP's crummy hardware? "Upgrading" the HP tablets by loading Android is like upgrading a Ford Fiesta with an Isuzu diesel. Sure it'll keep you on the road, but it ain't pretty and it ain't gonna be fun.
What's *really* worth someone's time and effort is a port of WebOS to better hardware. Ginmme an illicit port of WebOS to some of the nicer Samsung 5-10in tablets, the Lenovo K tablet, etc etc (anything with more ports and a faster proc) and I'd be all over it.
The Touchpad's hardware isn't really a problem relative to other tablets. The Galaxy Tabs and iPads have similar guts; they're only significantly better in the GPU end of things. I think that you really want a redesign of WebOS to make it more efficient without ditching the UI.
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Yup. I picked up a Touchpad during the fire sale too. I /just/ received it yesterday. First impression was "oh hey, it's got a nice gouge in it, it's probably a refurb." Second was "yup, this is beta quality software." And the third was "yup, it's really slow to respond." It's got a 1.2 gigahertz dual core Snapdragon. It should be more than fast enough for tablet use.
Yes, webOS 3.0.2 is beta quality software at best. It's pretty, but it's got lots of rough edges. For instance, DHCP is disabled by d
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Cool. I just went through the process of importing a self-signed certificate. Annoying because you don't get any clue from the mail app what the problem was (nice touch, HP). More annoying because you can't save "inline" text files to disk from the browser. Comical because once you add the certificate, the first one in the list is inaccessible (it's hidden by the header). And just downright painful because it took about 45 seconds to actually import it after tapping "Done". It's kinda like they didn't
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Info available several places, including here -- http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/how-to-improve-the-performance-of-your-new-hp-touchpad/3866
Re:(-1, crap analogy) (Score:3)
Why port the middling-common-denominator OS to HP's crummy hardware? "Upgrading" the HP tablets by loading Android is like upgrading a Ford Fiesta with an Isuzu diesel. Sure it'll keep you on the road, but it ain't pretty and it ain't gonna be fun.
The problem with WebOS is it's future existence. When the future of an OS is questioned so is the future of its apps. Android and iOS have been getting better with every release. Their application pool is continuously growing. The usefulness of a device running these OSes is continuously growing.
The same can not be said for a WebOS.
A car analogy would be upgrading your home made cooking fat powered car by putting in a diesel engine from a commercial vehicle which doesn't quite fit. It may not look pretty bu
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finite number of touchpads
It only takes one for it to be worth it. The one owned by the guy that does the porting. All the rest is gravy.
Alpha build is performing admirably (Score:1)
It's an alpha build, but it works extremely well on my 32GB Touchpad. You also get the best of both worlds by being able to boot into either WebOS or Android.
Expect to give this a try (Score:1)
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My sentiments exactly. The app selection in the HP marketplace is very slim pickings. Regardless of how good the user experience is the lack of applications just nullifies every argument in favor of the Touchpad. You never really understand how important an ecosystem is until you're dependent on it. Had Android not been ported to the Touchpad I would sold it a long time ago. I'll probably never get rid of the WebOS partition because it's still an interesting OS to use. It was actually a bit of a shock
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First impressions (Score:2)
I've been following this project since they first announced it and got a Touchpad through the firesale. I got it installed today and here's what I can say about it:
Cyanogen calling it pre alpha is kind of underselling it. It's quite usable. The only nasty problem for my purposes is that the wifi is kind of flakey. I've heard power management isn't so great yet but I've had it plugged in the entire day. I've loaded Tunein, Netflix, Pandora, all the different emulators and they all seem to work.
So nice w
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Turn off WIFI sleep in advanced Wifi settings....
Finding one (Score:2)
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That's what the fire sale was for. It's not like it wasn't all over the news, and every tech site before it happened.
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Not really. It may have been later in the day that *you* read it.
I saw the news stories. I even heard it on the evening TV news. I started checking places to buy that night, and didn't find anything available yet. I kept checking overnight. It was something like 6am Eastern that BestBuy made their inventory available at the new price, so I purchased mine. It was at about 9:30am that I could no longer purchase from them. Other outlets still showed stock in their stores l
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Or, you know... (Score:2)
...you could continue to run webOS on the damn thing. Since, you know... it's better and all. I still cannot find the appeal of Android. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but something tells me I shouldn't have to.
It runs pretty well. (Score:1)
Firstly, when installing the mod into the tablet, I noticed that it deleted all of my comics on the webOS portion. I had a small stash of comics to read using the comicHD app, and they were deleted. Not a problem, I have backups, so that's a tiny issue that is easily resolved.
The other thing I noticed is that if the tablet is allowed to sit idle for