Anyone lucky enough to get a cheap HP TouchPad doesn’t need to rely on WebOS being updated – an Android verison is already being developed.
Prices for the TouchPad have been slashed, leading to the tablet selling out across most stores in just hours yesterday – despite a lack of apps and the OS being kicked to the kerb by HP.
While HP has promised future updates to WebOS, others aren’t happy to depend on the dying OS. Instead, a group of developers are creating a version of Android for the tablet called TouchDroid.
The project is still in early stages, but the developers said that they are working with Gingerbread – Android 2.3.
They’re unable to work with the latest tablet-focused version of Android, Honeycomb, because Google hasn’t yet released the code to the open-source community.
The team will look to create a version of Honeycomb, but are hoping the next version, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), comes out first.
“Once we reach what we deem a ‘stable’ beta, we will continue to provide bug fixes for [the] Gingerbread build, but also begin working on a full Honeycomb port,” the developers said. “If ICS is released before or during our development of the Honeycomb port, we will stop and begin work on ICS.”
On the group’s wiki page, the developers warn against asking when the project will be finished, however. “There is no way to know how smoothly this will progress,” the developers say. “It may get hung up on an unexpected issue and suddenly progress will stop for a while. One thing is for sure – it will not be instant.”
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