Counterclockwise: HTC HD2 and friends run any OS under the sun

26 March 2017
With most phones, you're stuck with the OS that came pre-installed. What if that wasn't the case?

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AnonD-656123, 26 Mar 2017Well, the main problem is lack of open source drivers for m... moreI unfortunately didn't understand a lot from ypur comment since i barely know anything about GPUs, but i could feel your excitement about the subject! And from what i understood, this seems to be the future! Unfortunately smartphone manufacturers have something with not adopting anything that is risky for them and taking the easy route, same goes for customers, but this is an internal change in your phone's internals, so it should work, hopefully... Althought i don't see much use for it now...Let's just hope everything turns out fine!

    • M
    • Moj
    • HId
    • 06 Aug 2018

    AnonD-227943, 28 Mar 2017The article forgot that the hd2 can also run desktop os's a... moreit was on QEMU not on bear metal!
    that means you can run it on any smart phone no matter what brand and hardware it is!

      • M
      • Moj
      • HId
      • 06 Aug 2018

      JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017First of all, I'm not a tech illiterate, I just share what ... morewooooow saying STH without hard proof!
      first waterproof smartphone: actually it was simens or motrolla not sure abut that but i assure you it wasn't sony!
      first to have EIS that is superior to OIS: what????? do you even have any idea WTF are you talking about?(Main advantage of OIS is that there is no image degradation as necessary compensations are made before optical signal is fed to the CCD. But the hardware for mechanical motion of lenses buts a strain on your battery backup(which is not noticeable by 3500/4000/5000 mAh this days battery) and also adds to the weight of the device. EIS has become quite popular these days because of they are light and less expensive and with improvement in algorithms used for stabilization image degradation is minimal. But at low resolutions and in poor lighting conditions, you might see significant degradation. With devices which don’t have a very high resolution(like 40 MP) , OIS is more effective technique and also out performs EIS in dimly lit areas.)
      first phone with 4K video recording: how you get that? https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMax=2013&nVideoMin=2160 no sony and Acer Liquid S2 wasThe first 4K camera in a mobile device
      -first memory-stacked camera sensor on a smartphone b: AFAIK it was norm but sony boasted the amount and speed!(might be canon or nikon's idea)
      soooooooooooo who need sony? they only good at sound for now which there are better option on yhe market like H/K and B&A and beats and ................

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        • AnonD-227943
        • LaT
        • 08 Apr 2018

        You forgot to mention that hd2 cpuld run windows desktop os's too,at least up to xp,i ran xp
        (embeded) for a long time,it worked perfectly ok,just slowly,all you needed to make the hd2 a proper palm pc was a powered usb hub,for kb,mouse,monitor etc,as long as you gave it plenty of time (and cool air) it would get there eventualy,i even got one of my hd2's to run and complete a few elements in maya ! Alright,it took about 36 hours,but that wasnt much slower than most laptops of the day,the few that could be "persuaded" to even attempt to run something like maya that is !!

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          • AnonD-653559
          • NK9
          • 07 Apr 2017

          Boot Laces for the iPhone... dual boot your iPhone with android 2.2

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            • AnonD-227943
            • LaT
            • 28 Mar 2017

            The article forgot that the hd2 can also run desktop os's as well,everything up to xp could run,as long as you only ran very efficient software's,xp embeded was the best,it lots of un un-needed stuff cut out or turned off..
            If you want one to try,always try to get an American T-Mobile version,it has twice the ram of the wwe version,1.5 gb v 678 mb,it makes a huge difference,but you have to be very careful with flashing roms, they are not swappable..
            As for devices that dual boot,that's nothing,at one point one of my hd2,using a boot loader app could boot you into any of 11 os's,mobile and desktops !!
            The best htc ever made,their last really good device,if they had just listened to users/buyers and had just simply upspeced the hd2 to make an hd3,it would have sold very well..
            Sony/Ericsson made the same mistake with the earlier p910i,instead of upspecing it to 3G,they came out with the horrible pricey p1,which was horrible to use as well as over priced,we went back to using our p910i's instead of the p1's..
            And the p1 totally failed in sales,where as the p910i took them by suprise and they couldn't make them fast enough to keep up with demand..
            Companies are on the slippery slope of bankruptcy the day they decide to stop listening to buyers/users and instead think they know best..
            HTC have almost ceased to exist,Samsung will not be far behind HTC,they have both arrogantly thought that folk will pay more and more for what makers "think" folk want instead of actually asking us first what we really want..

              • ?
              • Anonymous
              • P@Y
              • 27 Mar 2017

              JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017First of all, I'm not a tech illiterate, I just share what ... moreThat's why your beloved sony co founder fled to America to study how radio communication work under galvin manufacturing corp. (motorola) after world war 2 and he even study in bell labs how sad the reality is.

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • P@Y
                • 27 Mar 2017

                JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017And that's why Sony topped off the chart of 2015 as the bes... moreAccording to DXO mark in 2015 the top 3 best camera phone is:
                1iphone.
                2.samsung.
                3.motorola moto x 3

                and sony is no where to be found in top 5. stop your nonsense fanboism accept the fact that sony is behind.

                  • ?
                  • Anonymous
                  • P@Y
                  • 27 Mar 2017

                  JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017It's a thing that tells you about how much Sony cares to yo... moreand I already enjoyed the update way back in early November in my moto z force, totally a fanboy how sad stop comparing your sony to Motorola and Samsung in fact your sony is behind.

                    • Q
                    • Qwerty2017
                    • wrp
                    • 27 Mar 2017

                    AnonD-558092, 26 Mar 2017I want a phone with dual-boot with W10 and 7.1.2. But the f... morehahahaha, truly JOKE OF THE WEEK....

                    Win10 is one bloody HEAVY OS, than none other than intel core i series can run & operate without lags, which means intel pentium or celeron or "quad-core" atom can't do shit when it comes to running FULL-FLEDGED Win10.

                    So, if x86 intel pentium OR celeron which uses CISC can't, do u expect ARM RISC can do better? HAHAHA, truly FUNNY...

                    THIS is why win10 mobile OS can't compete with Android OS; they don't have HUGE apps market AND they can't offer HUGE apps available for Win OS PC, cuz the hardware don't & can't do shit...

                    IF Intel can optimized their "battery-eater" x86 architecture & put core i3/i5-level into a SoC, MS might have chance with their Win10 to overthrown Android OS as easy as Symbian OS in the past, because all-in-one, PC-level performance smartphone is the FUTURE.

                    BUT, that is just a pipe dream. EVERY geeks knows since eons ago, x86 is the WORST architecture ever when it comes to mobile computing, since it is TOO power-hungry unlike ARM Cortex

                      JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017And that's why Sony topped off the chart of 2015 as the bes... moreNo, Sony smart phones did not take the best photos in 2015. I know that according to DxO the Z5 was the best, but I actually use the Z5 and it is not that great believe me.

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                        • JØRDAN
                        • N98
                        • 27 Mar 2017

                        firefox os simply looks like a cheap knock off of jellybean.
                        @Jordanbaby, Sony is eons behind huawei and samsung when it comes to camera specs.

                          • ?
                          • Anonymous
                          • 0xI
                          • 27 Mar 2017

                          JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017First of all, I'm not a tech illiterate, I just share what ... moreYour pov is too narrow. Yes, sony makes some great things, but that doesn't make samsung or other companies worse. You have shown blatant fanboyism.

                            Anonymous, 26 Mar 2017And that's why your beloved sony is not included top 10 bes... moreAnd that's why Sony topped off the chart of 2015 as the best camera phone and the XZ is still reigning supreme even today, much better camera than the G6 still

                              Anonymous, 26 Mar 2017what is the use of providing the first security patch? it w... moreIt's a thing that tells you about how much Sony cares to you for not keeping you waiting a very long time. Let's not talk about security updates, whose non-Google OEM released Android 7.1.1 first? It was Sony. They even had Nougat to their Xperia Z5 series and Z3+ before Samsung even had Nougat on their Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Even Sony's Nougat update brought a lot of improvements overall, like better battery life, better audio, etc. Whereas Samsung even degraded the experience by the S7 Edge scoring 92h of endurance rating compared to 98h of it on Marshmallow

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                                • AnonD-558092
                                • 6Ba
                                • 26 Mar 2017

                                I want a phone with dual-boot with W10 and 7.1.2. But the full-fledged W10. That would be perfect

                                  I still have mine, both in my desk drawer and in my heart. #make HTC great again
                                  Sent from my S7 edge

                                    • ?
                                    • Anonymous
                                    • P@Y
                                    • 26 Mar 2017

                                    JordanBaby, 26 Mar 2017"Impossible" -the word that every fanboy says when they ca... moreAnd that's why your beloved sony is not included top 10 best smart phone camera how sad is that.

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                                      • AnonD-656123
                                      • rbf
                                      • 26 Mar 2017

                                      Well, the main problem is lack of open source drivers for most hardware found in phones/tablets. Manufacturers usually create open source Linux drivers for WiFi, Bluetooth etc. but GPU drivers are the problem here. The only official open source drivers are by Broadcom for the Raspberry Pi GPU (written by former Intel Linux GPU driver developer). There was some effort made for Tegra, there is at least some kind of kernel driver but no real open source userspace driver to do actual 2D/3D work (see https://github.com/grate-driver)

                                      There's freedreno which is reverse engineered driver for Adreno GPUs(!), but I haven't heard of anyone using it to run Android for example. There's the Lima project for Mali GPUs, also no idea if anyone's run Android on it. Then there's etnivav for Vivante GPUs, which is actually being used for the GCW Zero.

                                      And now we come to the juicy part, Intel! Intel has been actively developing open source drivers for Linux for several years. This includes 2D/3D acceleration, video decoding and encoding (H.264, MPEG 2, H.265, VP8 and JPEG depending on hardware support). And some people have apparently made efforts to use this driver for Android (see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Android-x86-6.0-RC1)

                                      There are many tablets with Intel Baytrail and Cherrytrail GPUs that run Android. I don't know if they are using Mesa, but I believe it should be possible to modify the existing Mesa drivers to work for whatever version of Android you want (7.1.1, maybe even 8.0!). This makes them the most attractive hardware for experimenting with custom OS like Firefox OS, Sailfish, Ubuntu since you're not dependent on weird hacky methods to use hardware drivers written for Android (which is why these other OS use stuff like libhybris or are built with Android kernels or some other hybrid of Android and that OS).

                                      And Intel provides awesome GPU documentation - https://01.org/linuxgraphics/documentation - if you expand hardware PRMs, you'll see documentation for building your own GPU driver from scratch all the way from Ironlake to Kabylake!

                                      I have no idea why Canonical didn't atleast make a Ubuntu tablet with Intel GPU, that would have been way easier than trying to write compatibility layers for Android GPU drivers on ARM tablets.

                                      Yes yes, people talk about battery life concerns, but they would have made way more progress internally, and could have freed up time to work on improving battery life.

                                      Now, the most exciting part, Intel Broxton! Unfortunately canned right before phone hardware came out - ;( - but, during the beginning of 2016, Intel did briefly sell a Realsense developer phone with Intel CPU, GPU and Realsense camera technology (basically the perfect phone for me). Which would have been awesome for porting Android, Sailfish, Firefox OS, Ubuntu, KDE Mobile etc. It had an Intel Broxton SoC (Skylake GPU!). Well, you can still get Intel Broxton in the Intel Joule developer kit, connect a screen through MIPI-DSI, hopefully connect some LTE modem with SIM card slot, create your own case etc. But I digress. There's also a very interesting gaming device called GPD Win - http://www.gpd.hk/gpdwin.asp - sadly, no cellular data option.

                                      After Intel comes AMD, who also release open source GPU drivers for Linux. Not as good as Intel, but they've become pretty good in the last few years. Sadly, no Android tablets or smartphones use AMD CPUs/GPUs, although you could probably get an AMD Windows tablet/laptop hybrid and slap Android x86 on it (ditto for Intel equivalents). There is the SMACH Z gaming device which looks interesting. Unfortunately, too bulky to be carried around like a phone, and can't take/make phone calls although it can do cellular data.

                                        [deleted post]...It's ironic how you call others ignorant, yet you try to advertise, "How great Sony is!", at almost a religious level, and disprove anyone else's opinions. Heck, I bet you don't even realize how Sony phones use the best camera sensors, yet their processing software bleed in comparison to every other smartphone manufacturer. Or, how the Xperia X and X Performance were buggy messes when they released, overheating after just 5 minutes of 1080p recording. You would just deny all of this, like the fanboy you are

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