The HTC HD2 is my all-time favourite handset; it has nearly done enough to give Windows Mobile 6.5 a new lease of life, bringing a 4.3 WVGA capacitive touch screen, 1GHz worth of snapdragon processor and 512mb of RAM to the flagging mobile OS.
However, it was not what it had done for Windows Mobile 6.5 that drew me to the HD2, it was the sheer potential unleashed by the magnificent developers over at XDA-developers that drew me to this beast of a smartphone.
First we had the SD incarnation of Android ported over to the device, using a modified version of the Haret loader to switch OS the loader kicked Windows Mobile 6.5 off of the device and ran Android from the SD card instead. This method had its downfalls but it was the first step towards the HD2 showing its true power.
Android from the SD card was buggy and laggy to begin with but quickly became fast and smooth and almost fully functional with the only minus point being no 720p qaulity HD video recording.
There was then a modified version of Ubuntu (the full desktop Linux OS) released that could also run on our HD2’s – we were beginning to be spoiled for choice.
This was not enough for the hungry owners of the HD2 (myself included), who would now only load Windows Mobile 6.5 in order to change the version of Android we were running on our device, thus almost completely killing off the need for Windows Mobile. We wanted more and we didn’t want Windows Mobile any longer. We needed a way to boot Android from the HD2’s NAND memory, the internal device memory where the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS was stored.
Step up Cottula. This man is considered a genius in the developer world at XDA. He had some help from too many developers to mention but it was this man who developed MAGLDR, this was what we had all been waiting for – a custom boot loader that allowed us to remove Windows Mobile 6.5 from our HTC HD2’s and boot Android directly from the internal NAND memory. The HD2 finally felt like Android was meant for it.
It ran smoothly, it was fast and best of all this caused the amount of Android developers developing specifically for the HD2 to explode, meaning there was enough Android ROMs for the HD2 to have a different one every day of the month and not get bored. You could customise your HTC HD2 to your hearts content, all using an operating system that wasn’t meant to work on it!
So while the developers at XDA were working hard to get Android on the HD2 perfected (as there was still the odd bug and no HD video recording), Microsoft had announced Windows Phone 7, the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5, which was promised to take the world by storm. This gave our developers a new challenge.
So we move swiftly on after some long months of development, and we get the news that Cottula has a Christmas present coming a little early for the HD2 owners who like to keep one eye firmly on the HD2 pages on XDA – a new version of MAGLDR is released that has a new option on it. Users could now boot WP7 from NAND. This gave two possibilities; you could choose to boot either Windows Mobile 6.5 or the new Windows Phone 7 on your HD2.
It was the latter, that Cottula and our XDA china cousins had brought WP7 to the HD2 – a device that could now run 4 operating systems: Windows Mobile 6.5, Android, Ubuntu, and Windows Phone 7.
With Windows Phone 7 came the ability to record HD videos at 720p. Yes, on a handset that was never given the option to do so when originally released. It was a shame this could not be converted to the Android OS, at this point anyway.
There were some issues with WP7 in that it couldn’t be unlocked to start with, but this was overcome by changing the device name to HD7 in the registry settings, and getting an activation code from Microsoft. Apart from that the OS was complete, well, apart from what Microsoft had left out.
So we now had a lot to do with our HD2’s; there was the Android Gingerbread (2.3) update and then the WP7 NoDo update was ported to the HD2. Then we finally got 720p HD video recording on our Android HD2’s, coupled with the Sense 3.0 port that we got just last month.
We also had some attempts to port MeeGo to the HD2 – it booted but with no hardware acceleration the OS was slow, buggy and unusable. But with the release of the Nokia N9 there is a good chance this project could resurface itself.
Most recently, some clever clogs has gone and ported WP7 Mango, the next version of Windows Phone 7, to the HD2. This is a device that does just not want to die! It was a monster when it came out but with the hype Android was getting and WP7 due to come out soon, people who bought the HD2 felt cheated when the shelf life of the device was only given around 6 months…
Thanks to the developers at XDA who had other things on their mind and long live the HD2. May the hard working developers over at XDA keep the device alive as long as they possibly can and hopefully the next version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) will make the jump to the beast of a smartphone too.
Do you love your HTC HD2? We’d love to hear from you, so leave us some HD2 love below, or tweet about it to us @Gadget_Helpline.