When the HP TouchPad was released in the summer of 2011 it did little to impress consumers, leading to the tablet being discontinued after a mere 49 days on the market. Remaining TouchPad stock received substantial price reductions, dropping to as low as $99 dollars during a huge fire sale. Shortly after inventory ran dry, crafty hackers had announced their intention to run the Android operating system in replace of WebOS on the TouchPad, and progress thus far has been slow, with alpha versions being released that are fairly stable but have serious bugs. In an act of good will, HP has now released an Android kernel source code to the hacking community. Read on for more.

The source code appears to have been developed separately from webOS, and was last changed in March 2011, three months before the TouchPad’s release, RootzWiki reports. The code will not help with any major fixes, however, and will instead help with minor bugs. “Kernel source from HP would have been more helpful earlier in development. Don’t expect huge gains from this source,” said Erik Hardesty, a member of the CyanogenMod team, on Twitter. “It will help with things like serial console and Bluetooth. Most other areas it *might* with will be minor.”

Read [RootzWiki] Read [Twitter]

Asus recently confirmed on Twitter that an official tool for unlocking the bootloader on the Transformer Prime will be made available in February. The company didn’t give an exact date for when the tool would be released, but the good news is Transformer Prime owners have just a few weeks to wait until they can unlock the bootloader on the quad-core tablet. Asus originally promised that the tool would be made available after upset customers lashed out in January. An unlocked bootloader allows Android users to install custom ROMs and kernels, but it does come with several consequences. As we noted earlier this year, unlocking the bootloader will void Asus’s warranty and some services, such as Google’s video rental application, will not work properly. 

[Via Pocketnow]

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Last week, we exclusively reported that AT&T was planning to launch a variant of Samsung’s Galaxy S II with a full QWERTY keyboard. Well, we have good news and bad news: BGR learned on Friday from a trusted source that this handset is actually not the Samsung Galaxy S II that should soon make its way to AT&T. That’s the bad news — but it’s really not that bad. The good news is that this is an entirely separate smartphone that will be launching soon, which means Android fans on the nation’s No. 2 carrier now have two sleek Samsung smartphones to look forward to. The phone we leaked showed the model number SGH-i927, which was widely reported to be Samsung’s internal code number for the Galaxy S II ahead of launch. It looks like Samsung did some recycling with this smartphone, because test models currently carry the same model number. Also of note, the image above shows that the phone is running kernel version 2.6.36.3, which is actually a Honeycomb kernel rather than a Gingerbread kernel. We’re not sure what kind of game Sammy is playing here, but we’re now certain AT&T won’t be adding a QWERTY to the S II when it launches soon… alongside the sexy unnamed slider pictured above. Android is all about choice, and AT&T subscribers are about to have two pretty great new choices in the near future.

So you’ve gone ahead and purchased a Motorola XOOM for a cool $800. You’ve been politely pawing at it for the last few days, playing by its rules, running at — or under — its manufacturer-designated speed limit. Now what? You overclock that bad boy’s processor… that’s what. XDA forum member coolbho300 has managed to tweak the XOOM’s kernel to get both Cortex-A9 cores running at a benchmark-shredding 1.5GHz. ”I have successfully brought the Tegra 2 in the XOOM to 1.5GHz,” writes coolbho300 in a forum post. “A few kernel modifications make the dual core chip in the XOOM even more powerful than the recently announced Tegra 2 3D. 1.5GHz through two Cortex A9 cores is truly a force to be reckoned with.” We’re not going to argue with that assessment. As you can see from the above image, the device’s performance in benchmark tests is quite impressive (especially when compared to a lowly smartphone). You can hit up XDA to check out the tutorial on how to bring your XOOM up to warp speed… but do be careful.

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Today, Research In Motion announced that the cryptographic kernel of its BlackBerry 6 mobile operating system has earned the FIPS 140-2 security certification. FIPS, or Federal Information Processing Standard, is a classification used by the U.S. — and others — to validate the security of a computer system’s cryptographic services. The certification officially green-lights the OS for use by government employees handing “sensitive but unclassified” information. Just another security feather for RIM’s proverbial cap.

[Via CIO]

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It looks as though your friends over at xda-developers have successfully over-clocked the processor in the Samsung Captivate — AT&T’s version of the Galaxy S — to run at a full 1.2 GHz. The new kernel has several hiccups, including a small lag at boot, and will definitely void your warranty. If you want to take a walk on the wild side, and potentially see your Captivate spontaneously combust, hit the read link and give it a whirl. Let us know if you have any success, ok?

[Via Talk Android]

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We’ve already seen Android 1.6 ported over to the iPhone 3G, but now Android fans with questionable tastes in hardware can load up Android 2.2 on the hottest device circa 2008. In its present state, Froyo on the iPhone 3G runs about as well as a crippled gazelle, but with a bit of time and a lot of elbow grease, things should pick up. We’ve got a video of the hack in action, but if you’re feeling rather adventurous, all of the instructions and materials you’ll need to get the job done are awaiting you after the break.

[Via Engadget]

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Been desperate to load Android on your iPhone 3G ever since you first caught glimpse of the magic worked by the Linux on the iPhone team? Well today’s your lucky day, as the binaries for the iPhone 3G are now available. All of the files and instructions you’ll need are linked up, however…before you go all hack crazy, just promise you won’t blame us if you mess things up, okay?

[Via Linux on the iPhone]

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Android fanboys with a fetish for Apple hardware should pay close attention to this one, as Google’s smartphone OS has been successfully ported over to the iPhone 3G. Much like the OpeniBoot Android port for the first-gen iPhone, most of the OS’ features and functions are working properly, although at this time audio has yet to be ported into the Linux kernel. No worries though, as all of this and more, including backlight controls and power management, are nearing completion. Desperate to try it out? Sadly it will take a few days before all of the binaries are posted, however in the meantime we have the video after the jump to help pass the time.

Listen: We’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s incredibly hard for a single story to make us drop our jaws, but this is something special. A functional version of Android has been successfully ported over to the iPhone, complete with the ability to dual-boot. It’s still alpha quality despite most features working, but if you have a spare iPhone lying around and don’t mind putting in a little bit of work, hit up the jump to watch one of the greatest videos uploaded to YouTube and then load OS on your iPhone.

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Additional details on the underlying architecture of Windows phone 7 hit the internet today, courtesy of a leaked document that fell into the hands of tweakers.net. Many of the hardware requirements are already known, but there are quite a few other tidbits which shed some light on the inner workings of Microsoft’s latest smartphone OS. Just keep in mind when you’re reading this that all of the information is tentative and may change once Windows Phone 7 is officially released later this year. Hit the jump when you’re ready!

Windows Phone 7 is a 32-bit OS with a dual layer architecture comprised of a kernel layer and a user layer. Application processes are given up to 1GB of virtual memory with a total of 2GB of memory allocated to processes. 2GB is given to the kernel. Microsoft will supply the 2D graphics and DirectX 10-based Direct3D 11 runtimes while OEMs, not Microsoft, will develop and distribute the drivers for both the 2D and 3D graphics. Support for Bluetooth 2.1 is included, but apparently support for 3.0 and 4.0 is not. Presumably future updates will be able to provide support to further updates to the standard.

Windows Phone 7 OS will use two different file systems: IMGFS for system files, and TexFAT for user files. User files can be stored on memory cards or internal flash memory and have the system treat both locations as the same. Oddly enough, if a memory card containing key files is removed or the files are erased, the phone will be rendered useless and will be available for emergency calls only.

All Windows Phone 7 updates, including carrier updates, will be distributed through the Microsoft update system. Updates will be disseminated OTA or through the Zune Software installed on a PC.

Windows Phone 7 is tightly integrated with Windows Live ID in a manner similar to Gmail is to Android and iTunes is to iPhone OS. A Windows Live ID is the gateway to the Marketplace which just so happens to be the only place one can go to get applications (side-loading is not supported). The Windows Live ID must be entered in order to use the phone and is required for data synchronization to and from Microsoft’s servers. The device must also have a Genuine Windows Phone Certificate which is necessary to authenticate the device.

Changes allowed to the UI are minimal. Providers and manufacturers can add custom tiles to the home screen, but the standard Microsoft tiles can not be removed. The boot screen can be changed by carrier or manufacturer and ringtones and wallpapers can be added. Additionally, Bing is the default search engine for the device, but manufacturers and carriers can change the default search engine found within Internet Explorer. The carrier or the manufacturer can also add custom applications to the ROM of a device (excluding trial apps which are forbidden), but these apps must be first approved by Microsoft. Only 6 applications occupying a maximum of 60MB are allowed. Interesting, no?

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• The tablet’s multi-touch gestures are “out of control.”
• It’s powered by an incredibly fast ARM CPU
• It runs on the iPhone kernel.
• The internal model number is K48AP.
• There hasn’t been an updated iPhone OS build because there’s too much tablet-related code/references in the OS and Apple obviously didn’t want that to leak. Oops.
• The tablet is basically an “iPhone on steroids.”

That’s all we’ve got for now!

iPhone dev team member Planetbeing has successfully reverse engineered Apple’s hardware drivers and has managed to get the Linux kernel to boot on the 2G and 3G iPhone and the 1st gen iPod Touch. This first attempt is limited in functionality with support only for the Framebuffer driver, Serial driver, Serial over USB driver, and other items like Interrupts, MMU, clock, etc. The dev team is still working on things like enabling write support for the NAND, Wireless networking, Touchscreen support, Sound, Accelerometer and Baseband support. Despite these limitations, it is still exciting to see the iPhone boot an alternative OS and it is means we are one step closer to getting Android ported to the iPhone. Sweet! Hit the jump for the demo video.

[Via iPhone Dev Team blog]

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