It’s been nearly 4 years since HP launched its TouchPad tablet, only to discontinue it and sell of all remaining inventory at a huge discount a few months later. But while HP stopped supporting the HP Touchpad tablet ages ago, it continues to inspire a healthy community of independent users and developers.

The 9.7 inch tablet originally shipped with webOS software, but developers have been loading new versions of Android on it for years… so it’s not all that surprising to see that the tablet can support Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.

hp touchpad 511_03

Xda-developers forum member Flintman has ported the Evervolv custom ROM based on Android 5.1.1 to the TouchPad. You can find tips for installing it yourself in a forum post.

I took it for a spin by using the TouchPad Toolbox utility to wipe all the data from my tablet and resize my it’s system partition before installing Evervolv.

Flintman has actually released a few builds of Android 5.1 for the TouchPad in recent weeks, but the last few versions I tested had problems connecting to WiFi and a bug that caused the tablet to treat some single-taps as double-taps (which makes typing with an on-screen keyboard difficult).

A new build from April 27th seems to resolve most of those issues. I was able to connect to WiFi, login to my Google account, type queries using the default keyboard, stream videos from YouTube, and surf the web. The camera app allows me to take pictures although the previews look distorted (the actual pictures do not).

I wasn’t able to connect the tablet to my Bluetooth keyboard (it’s a known issue), but everything else I tried seemed to work.

Keep in mind, the Android 5.1.1 build of Evervolv for the HP TouchPad is still a work in progress, but it’s pretty cool to see that this 4-year-old tablet can run the latest version of Google’s operating system for mobile devices.

During the great HP TouchPad fire sale of 2011, this was probably the best tablet you could buy for $99. These days there are plenty of inexpensive Android and Windows tablets that are thinner, lighter, and faster. But I’m constantly amazed at how independent developers have managed to breath new life into this aging tablet time after time… giving folks who picked one up in 2011 new reasons to keep using their HP TouchPads.

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26 replies on “Of course you can run Android 5.1 on the HP TouchPad”

  2. Hey, Can you please share the link to the Gapps, For me appear mistakes and messages of Failed check zip file I mean those that XDA Forum suggest. Help Plz !! Thanks

  3. TouchPads are still faster and more capable than a lot of the $99 junk out there.

  6. I should have been more descriptive. I have tried to use different types of roms, recovery and gapps files including the method of tptoolbox to install android on my hp touchpad and it keeps on saying, no zips found, aborting.

  7. can you help me with my issue regarding not being able to install android on hp touchpad.

    1. … update….
      installed 5.0.2 (build date March 31, 2015) successfully. Absolutely unreliable.

  9. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I am using Toolbox (v42 2015-01-08) and when I try to flash these files :
    gapps-5.1.x-20150404-minimal-edition-signed
    FLINTMAN-TWRP-touch-data_media-SELINUX-2.8.4.0-01-17-15
    ev_tenderloin-5.1.1-testing-2015.04.27
    I get the errors unrecognized/unsupported zip on the twrp and the gapps

    I have already posted in the xda thread,but nothing yet..

    1. Try using Toolbox to resize your system partition to at least 800 MB and install a different version of TWRP.

      Then download those files to your tablet and use TWRP to install them (yes, you can use TWRP to install a new version of TWRP… just reboot after installing it).

      I wasn’t able to flash these files using TouchPad Toolbox either, but I did something like what I just described.

      1. Tried it, did not work with the gapps I am installing. I am going to try another version of gapps and if does not work, I will just ask around in xda. Thanks for helping and your fantastic HP TP videos man!

        1. I have the same problem with gapps. Please tell us if you were able to solve it and how.

  10. I am using the touchpad running lollipop for 2 weeks now and it is quite great… I use the touchpad everyday to watch youtube mainly.. still very good tablet.. only drawback is its weight.. it is too heavy

    1. There is actually a really cool band named Mumm-Ra who made a really great album in 2007 and then disbanded quickly after in 2008. They are back together now though, maybe webOS will too one day…not likely.

        1. Yea, I’ve been following it. I’m waiting for it to be able to run on a modern Nexus device. Hopefully, they can get to that point soon. With the ability to run Android apps, there’s no app problem either.

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