It goes to show how far ahead of its time the HTC HD2 was that it can run the latest Android and Windows Phone 7 ROMs despite being two years old!
I recently saw that my friend Judie from Gear Diary was using a modified HD2 running Android in my Twitter feed, and this got my little Gadget Monkey mind intrigued. I actually hacked my HD2 to run Android last year, and while it worked, the ROM was too buggy to use full-time – too many weird errors messages and random reboots. The good news is that the latest custom Android ROMs are far more stable than the first ones were, and since my HD2 was already modded to run custom Android builds, trying one of the new ones was as simple as copying over the relevant folder to a microSD card and running the relevant executables. The first ROM I tried, ShiftPDA Gingerbread, was big on the eye candy, but it didn’t support Android Market or any of the Google apps! I quickly replaced this with one of the Vanilla Froyo builds, which worked a lot better.
Being the fiddler that I am (as in, I like to fiddle, I don’t actually play the fiddle), however, I wasn’t content with running Android that way, which was using the old-fashioned ‘boot from SD card’ method. My HD2 was still running a modified version of Windows Mobile 6.5, and whenever the phone rebooted, it would reboot into WM6.5 and I would have to manually boot Android from there. How inconvenient! The clever hackers over at XDA Developers figured out a way to load Android into the NAND memory of the HD2 so that it would boot into Android automatically each time. Perfect!
Three hours later, I was finally booting into the Hyperdroid Gingerbread Xtreme Edition ROM. Yes, it really did take me that long! Having to decipher all the extra little bits that I needed to install, that is, HardSPL 3, MAGLDR 1.3 (I first installed MAGLDR 1.0, realised that it wasn’t the one I wanted, then spent ages trying to figure out how to upgrade it to 1.3!) and Clockwork Mod Recovery 1.3. It was then a matter of flashing all of these things to the HD2 and then flashing the Hyperdroid ROM. This initially only took an hour and a half, but then it got stuck on the Android boot screen, and I had no idea how to fix it! Cue another hour and a half tearing my hair out trying to figure out why it wouldn’t go past the boot screen! Thank God I finally figured it out (switching to the 150MB CWM fixed the problem), otherwise it would have put me off my entire Sunday!
After all that effort, I now have Gingerbread installed natively on my HD2. Yippee! I’ve only been playing with it for the last 10 minutes or so, but from what I can see, it runs FAST! The developer has also done some trickery with the screen res and has increased the LCD density to 167 – this basically makes the resolution bigger so you can fit more on the screen – perfect for the HD2′s massive 4.3-inch screen size! I can’t remember now why I wanted to get a HTC Desire HD, he he. The hacking community working on the HD2 are so diligent that it’s really the perfect device if you’re the sort that likes to try the latest and greatest ROMs – it seems that custom ROMs for the HD2 come out before any other device!
The increased pixel density doesn't actually let you insert any more widgets or shortcuts than you could with the 800 x 480 native resolution - it just looks roomier
You can fit lots of apps within each screen for the app launcher!
The higher pixel density is heaven for browsing desktop-formatted web pages!
HD2 is the perfect device for who likes to play with hacks and mods. it makes a phone less a ‘phone’ and more a expensive toy! =o)
btw, pixel density actually are decreased to make the screen looks in a higher resolution. the original pixel density of HD2 is 217. =o)
Oh, and you can insert more shorcuts and widgets in desktop or app drawer, you just need to use a launcher that support it, like launcher pro, adw launcher, etc… then go to settings of the app and set how many columns and rows. As a matter of facts, you could do it even in original pixel density, but things would be squeezed. You could change it editing the file at /system/build.prop
regards!
Hi I have the hd2 and I’m running android gingerbread 2.3 and I can’t change the gmail account. I need to do this in order to use the android market. I’m pretty amiture but have scouredthe web to try to fix my problem. Do you have any insight to situation?
What build of Gingerbread are you using? I remember running into this issue on one of the first builds I tried, and I couldn’t find a way around it. My solution was to simply use another build.
I really like the clock/weather widget shoing in the above pictures, anybody know what is it??
Already running this, FYI, if you split your screen into more horizontal and virtical sections using ‘Settings’ > ‘ADW Settings’ > ‘Screen Preferences’ > ‘Destop Rows/Columns’ to 8 each, you get much more ability to utilize the extra screen space.
Personally, i’m a fan of high-res screens on laptop/desktops/tablets, but think for this application such small items will probably annoy me in time, wonder if there is anyway of decreasign the res and returning to a high DPI saturation while still using this excellent rom?
Ideas anyone?
Matt
wael, sorry for the delayed reply! The clock/weather widget is Beautiful Widgets from memory