Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich’s source code was handed over to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) a few days ago and we are seeing first attempts from the developers community to port Ice Cream Sandwich to some of the most powerful and popular smartphones. We’ve already covered how you can install Ice Sandwich on Galaxy S II, and in this is post, we’ll be talking about Ice Cream Sandwich for the old yet still mighty HTC HD2 “Leo”.
The HD2 was HTC’s last Windows Mobile-based phone when it released in late 2009. It has, or really had, an active hacking community that made the phone do various amazing things like run Android, Windows Phone 7 and even Ubuntu-Linux. Today, we saw an all-new hack released for the HD2: it’s called USB Host and it allows your HD2 to, well, play as host device instead of client in order to connect to different USB peripherals.
It's nothing new that the much-loved HTC HD2 can be hacked in order to install either Android or Windows Phone 7, but how about dual-booting?
Microsoft and HTC made it official that the HTC HD2 won’t be getting the Windows Phone 7 upgrade although the hardware supports it. But that didn’t stop the hacking community from dumping a Windows Phone 7 ROM on the HD2, yes you read that right! You can now boot Windows Phone 7 on your HD2 alongside Windows Mobile 6.5, Ubuntu, MeeGo, Android 2.2 Froyo or Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
Officially speaking, HTC’s HD2 will not be getting a Windows Phone 7 upgrade. All because it doesn’t comply with WP7’s hardware specifications. And what hardware specs, you might ask? Not having three buttons! Yes, HD2 won’t get WP7 all because it has two extra buttons despite the fact that it meets all other specifications.
Full specification sheet, along with real life pictures of HTC HD7 / HD3 has been leaked into the wild. For those of you who don’t know, HTC HD7 / HD3 is a Windows Phone 7 device and is the highly anticipated successor to last year’s HTC HD2 (a Windows Mobile 6.5.x Phone).
Well its here finally! I got my iPhone 4 shipped here the other day and needless to say, the experience so far has been nothing short of spectacular. It’s a factory unlocked version which I got from UK. What this means is that I can use it with any carrier I like, unlike the US version which is tied to AT&T contract.
Remember when we informed you last time about Android port which was in works for HTC HD2? Well guess what? Just like the Android port for iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G, it is now a reality on HD2 too, with Android 2.1 dual booting side by side with Ubuntu Linux “'Karmic Koala”, and Windows Mobile 6.5 with HTC Sense. Check out the video after the break.
Android 2.2 aka Froyo is without a doubt the best version of Android OS that we have seen yet! The main thing which everyone was interested to find out was about the speed of the browser which Google claims to be the fastest amongst any of the mobile web browsers available on any platform today.
We have previously seen different Windows phones like HTC Touch Pro2, Touch HD and Touch Diamond2 running Android OS through an emulation software named Haret. For different reasons, developers so far have not been able to do the same for HTC HD2 which by far is the most superior Windows phone available today.