Touchpad

Sony and Google introduced a new Google TV product at an event today in Palo Alto, Calif. Phandroid was on-hand for the event and noted the box also comes with a completely redesigned double-sided remote that integrates a multi-touch trackpad on one side and a full keyboard on the other. There is not much word on pricing or specs, but Sony is expecting to launch the Google TV 2.0 device sometime this summer with more information likely coming out of Google I/O. Go past the break for videos of the device and remote from the event:

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Remember when HP had that crazy TouchPad fire sale late last year and some users were lucky enough to get versions already running Android? It appears now that HP was actually testing its own custom builds of Gingerbread on the TouchPad, as indicated by a gesture today. RootzWiki reported that HP gave the CyanogenMod team some very useful information so they could continue work on building its CyanogenMod 9 port for the HP TouchPad. This will make the process much speedier for releasing a stable version of the port.

“HP supports the community and was kind enough to provide us with the Android kernel source and some other GPL components that they modified for the few Touchpads that were accidentally released running Android.”

The bundle of code that HP handed over sadly does not have Wi-Fi support for the tablet, but we are sure that it will not be long with some simple hacking. So, why would HP do such a thing? In related news, CyanogenMod 9 Alpha 0.5 was released yesterday for the HP TouchPad.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhWVmMYquYY]

The fine folks over at the Touch-Droid forums have posted a guide that outlines exactly how-to port Android to the HP TouchPad. A lot of consumers bought the HP TouchPad duing the fire sale last month, only to realize WebOS isn’t exactly the greatest mobile OS out there. Luckily, fine developers everywhere have been working on a port.

The steps outlined are pretty technical, so this isn’t exactly for the feeble — yet. We expect developers will probably get a much simpler version up soon. But for those of you who are up for the challenge, this should work for now. Check out the instructions over at the forum, and the video above. We’re not sure exactly how stable this build is.
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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c20yOVKm5UM”]

With the price drop of the HP TouchPad to $99 came many developers who began working on porting Android to the device. A stable release hasn’t made its way to the internet quite yet, but as shown above by someone on the CyanogenMod team, it’s getting there. The $1500 or more bounty is surely pushing developers to getting there first. But, did Qualcomm beat everybody to the punch? (via RootzWiki)

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Did you land your hands on the HP TouchPad this weekend, and not satisfied with WebOS? We understand the WebOS part of things, but the TouchPad could actually be considered a pretty nice piece of hardware..if it’s running the right stuff. While we mentioned an Android port was in the works this morning, the folks over at HacknMod are holding a little contest to see who can successfully do the port first. Total prize money tops $1500.

The basic Android port is going for $450, Wi-Fi is going for $350, both audio and camera are going up for $300, and lastly, MultiTouch is going for $100. Devs, that’s $1500!

If you think your dev skills are up to the challenge you can get started by posting your first bit of code into GitHub (full directions here). Note, all code developed for this project must be licensed under open-source. May the best coder win!
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If you we’re lucky enough to get your hands on one of those $99 HP TouchPad‘s this weekend, you’ll probably want to stay up to date with the “Touchdroid” project. Over at RootzWiki, the Touchdroid team is apparently hard at work on getting Android (2.3 Gingerbread to be exact) ported to the device that’s currently running the soon to be extinct WebOS.

The project is still in its infancy, to say the least. However, the timing couldn’t be more perfect with a ton of new Touchpad users undoubtedly itching to shed that ugly, outdated WebOS. The wiki also notes a Honeycomb port will follow only if Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t released in the meantime. Swing by the RootzWiki forum if you’re interested in contributing or just keeping up to date on the project. We’ll keep you updated as the guys get closer to a stable beta.

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