The day HP strangled its tablet – the HP Touchpad, developers and tech enthusiasts all over the world started gaping for an Android port to the Touchpad. With a Dual core Snapdragon processor, the Touchpad stands neck to neck with the other Tegra 2 based tablets and for sure has been a worthy contender in the tablet race. People did like webOS quite a bit; the absence of a well developed app community however, provided very limited functionality on webOS devices. The only reason why it could not fight with others and eventually production cam eto a standstill.
CyanogenMod however is the ray of hope for all the Touchpad users (the ones who bought it for $99 and for the ones who paid a hell lot extra). CyanogenMod lets you take your Touchpad for a spin by allowing you to install Android on it.

Follow this tutorial at your own risk. CyanogenMod 7.1 is currently an alpha release, so there is a risk that you might brick your device.

So, here we are, taking about installing Android on HP Touchpad. I am going to talk about installing CyanogenMod 7.1 (which is a port of Android 2.3 Gingerbread). There are a few shortcomings though, as listed here under:-

1. Camera doesn’t work
2. Often doesn’t wake up from sleep mode
3. WiFi gets disconnected at times
4. GPU acceleration is missing
5. Animations are a little jerky
6. Some android apps don’t work

The process is pretty simple, let’s start with setting up the device.

Step 1: Setting up your Touchpad

1. Download the HP webOS SDK from this link. It’s a 200+ Mb file, so be patient
2. Restore your Touchpad to factory condition via webOS Doctor (this is an optional step)
3. Make sure that you have enough free space on your Touchpad. Android would require about 2Gb of dedicated partition from your secondary memory (Touchpad hard drive).. rest of it would be be at your avail to install apps, store music, video or other files
4. Connect your Touchpad to your PC
5. Create a folder called cminstall in the root directory of the Touchpad
6. Download the “README and Installer”, “CM7″, “Clockwork Recovery”, and “Moboot” files from this link.
7. Copy the 3 zip files (a.k.a. update-cm-7.1.0-tenderloin-a1-fullofbugs.zip, update-cwm_tenderloin-1012.zip and moboot_0.3.3.zip into the cminstall folder.
8. Unzip the “README and Installer” file called ACMEInstaller.zip
9. Now run the webOS SDK installer and select Custom installation and only install the Command Line Interface Tools. Remember the directory to which the SDK is being installed.
10. After the installation is complete, navigate to the installation directory and copy the file called novacom.exe. Paste it in the same directory where you’ve unzipped the ACMEIntaller.zip file

Step 2: Starting Touchpad in recovery mode

1. Connect the Touchpad to your PC via a USB cable.
2. Restart your Touchpad (Settings -> Device Information -> Reset Options -> Restart)
3. The screen goes black; hold down the Volume Up button until a USB logo appears on the screen. Your Touchpad is now in recovery mode.

Step 3: Installing Android on Touchpad

1. Pop open command prompt and navigate to directory that has the ACME Installer and the novacom.exe file
2. Now enter the following command in the command prompt
   
   novacom boot mem:// < ACMEInstaller
3. The installer would start unpacking and installing Android on your Touchpad.
4. If things go wrong or get stuck, repeat Step 3.
5. If things go really wrong and you no longer like Android, restore your HP Touchpad to factory condition using webOS Doctor.

That’s it! Enjoy Android on your Touchpad