Running Android on HTC phones

Android on Touch HD

So I'm getting more and more fed up with Windows Mobile as a operating system for my mobile phones, and finally the idea of this closed marketplace tipped me over the top. So I tried to first install Android on my HTC Touch HD and then later on my HTC Diamond. Sad to none of them have worked enough to give me a complete android operating system but I did want to point out where to go if you wanted to try it yourself. There's a lot of fluff out there and so it can be difficult to find exactly how to do it correctly.

So if you have a Orange HTC Touch HD aka HTC Blackstone you want to follow this guide to installing Android 1.0.

  1. Disable the PIN from wince
  2. Unzip to your SD card (it should create a directory named tmp):

    android_cupcake_2009-03-10.zip

  3. Unplug your phone from the USB or configure it to use “Activesync” and not “Disk Drive”.
  4. Softreset or reboot (switch off and on) your phone
  5. Run haret.exe on your phone (under /tmp/boot)

If you have a Orange Touch Diamond or HTC Raphael or O2 XDA you want to follow this link.

  1. Download this file diam-20081229.tar.gz Mirror
  2. You also need a copy of Haret.exe.
  3. Unpack diam-20081229.tar.gz to your computer (e.g. your dekstop).
  4. Create a folder on your Diamond's Internal Storage named 'tmp' and put the three files from the 'imgs' folder from the zip, along with the three files in the root of the zip (initrd…gz, default.txt and zImage) and the 'haret-0.5.2' executable into that folder
  5. Start haret from your Diamond.
  6. When nothing is happening ond screen anymore type '/init.android' (without the quotes) and press enter.
  7. Android should now boot!

Best thing about these procedures is that if it works it doesn't screw up Windows Mobile so you can still use it after a soft restart. So you might as well try it and see what happens.

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Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io