HP seeds its own TouchPad kernel source for Android 2.3
updated 06:20 pm EST, Wed February 8, 2012
May have been working on Android-based TouchPad
HP has provided the developer community a software kernel that could enable its now discontinued TouchPad to run the Android OS. The kernel and some other GPL components evidently had been used by the company to adapt some of the tablets to run Android on the device's hardware. RootzWiki has posted the officially blessed code for download.
The code appears to be fairly complete except for the Wi-Fi driver. HP has indicated that it's looking into the absence.
Analysis of the kernel gives indications that it was written by a team of HP developers working independently from company's webOS group. This gave rise to speculation that, at one time, HP planned to ship the TouchPad running Android. This could have been put on the backburner after HP acquired Palm, although 2.3 shipped several months after the takeover.
Making the kernel publicly available could accelerate the efforts of other independent development groups such as CyangenMod to create a stable, fully functional version of Android which was TouchPad-compatible.
