[HD2 Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting and Genera] Graham Leach:
Hello Everyone,

Apologies if this ground has already been well covered, but I thought I'd just share my experience bringing up ANDROID on my HTC HD2 phone as delivered by a carrier here in Hong Kong called One2Free.

Yesterday I was a bit bored so I tried to install ANDROID on the unit after seeing a demonstration of ANDROID booting on an HD2. I found the video on YouTube by accident. It was posted by a guy named Hakeem.

I tried to follow his directions, but nothing worked, so from knowing nothing about the ANDROID ecosystem in particular, I decided to do it by myself from just reading stuff (like on xda-developers). I was successful and it took me about four (4) hours of research and messing around before I could get the unit working.

BUT, the entire experience was *very* typical of my experience with installing Linux in general:

1) There's a lot of incomplete information or just plain wrong information.

2) There's a lot of legacy links and obsolete or incomplete code.

3) There's a lot of project abandonment.

4) There's a LOT of people saying "go for it!" and in doing so they obscure the thread, clogging up the channel with lots and lots of meaningless messages so that forums go to 100+ pages of nothingness.

I thought I'd try my best in under 2000 words to make it crystal clear how to get ANDROID up and running on a One2Free supplied HD2.

There's a LOT of cheap HD2 phones available on the 2nd hand market in Hong Kong now that Windows 7 has been released and the iPhone is such a hit. Just go to Ap Liu Gai and you can get one for about HKD2500. For our USA friends, on eBay HD2 costs (today 2011-01-09) USD650 NEW and about USD335 USED

Just so you know, I bought the HTC HD2 after months of research because of the following reasons:

- I have a long history of being satisfied with HTC devices

- The HD2 has a VERY, VERY large screen

- The HD2 has a VERY HIGH QUALITY display

- The HD2 has a VERY fast processor

- The HD2 has a GENEROUS amount of RAM

- The HD2 has received EXCELLENT reviews on CNET

- The HD2 features Windows Mobile OS functionality

I'm pretty happy with the phone, though it does have its shortcomings (don't they all?). The phone freezes. It can overheat. In short...it's WinDOZE. But it's still a very productive unit for me as I have been using HTC SmartPhones since 2002, since the 02 XDA and I really know the functionality within Windows Mobile Edition / Compact Edition.

Anyway, ANDROID looks like a cute little OS. It's certainly hot. It is also derived from an OS I love and have worked with for a long time (Linux), so why not try to get it running on my phone? Hey, I had some time on my hands. Also, my techie friends (all of whom are carrying iPhones) were looking down at me for not having an iPad or an iPhone (both products I used for about 10 minutes and then just gave to my wife to play with, she's an accountant and delighted with these non PROsumer devices). So, why not load up ANDROID 2.2 on the HD2 and see what people say? It's a little like getting Windows up and running on an INTEL based iMac...it makes the other guy blink and keeps them guessing about how smart you really are... :)

Having accomplished the task (pretty easily, as all things Linux go...) I thought that anyone else in Hong Kong might appreciate how I did it by just copying the steps I followed. No brains required.

You DO have to pick a distribution, though. I picked SuperRAM Froyo 1.5 because it is still under maintenance and runs in RAM, a concept I like very much. I also went this way because the first ANDROID distribution I ever saw (in that Hakeem YouTube video mentioned above) is no longer under maintenance.

I've documented my complete experience at:

docserve (dot) yougrow (dot) net (slash) HOWTO-HD2-Android (slash) HOWTO-HD2-Android.txt

Enjoy!

Thank you. Comments welcome. If you cannot locate the tools I used to make this happen (like, the links provided in the HOWTO give up a 404) then just drop a note here and I'll make them available, but please do look for them first.

Graham Leach

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