When hackers managed to port Android 7.0 Nougat to run on the HP TouchPad tablet, the first question that came to many people’s minds was “what about the HTC HD2?”
Yep. You can run Android 7.0 on that aging smartphone too. Well, kind of.
Developer macs18max managed to get the HTC HD2 to boot a custom ROM based on Android 7.0, but he says the phone doesn’t seem to have enough RAM for the operating system to run comfortably… so he doesn’t expect the port to reach “daily driver” status.
Still, for a phone that was released with Windows Mobile 6.5Â software in 2009, the HTC HD2 has had a pretty remarkable afterlife.
Microsoft and HTC never released a software update that would allow the phone to run Windows Phone 7 or newer software. But the independent developer community stepped in and helped keep the phone alive thanks to ports of Android and other operating systems (including Windows Phone 8, Windows RT, Firefox OS, and more).
The HTC HD2 has pretty meager specs by today’s standards. But in 2009, it was a beast, thanks to a 4.3 inch, 800 x 480 pixel display, 1 GHz Qualcomm Scorpion processor, 576MB of RAM, and 512MB of storage.
Last year we saw a port of Android 6.0 for the HD2, and now that Android 7.0 is available, it looks like developers still haven’t given up on the device… even if flashing CyanogenMod 14/Android 7.0 is more of a party trick than a useful software update at this point.
via /r/Android
Truly an amazing phone I had one in 2010 and took it to the Philippines with me it was way ahead of Apple Iphone of that same period and it made a lot of people OYE! If Microsoft could just stayed on the road Htc put them on – they would have had the market by now!
Haha. I still remember the super cool weather widget. One of the best phone ever made by HTC.