HTC Kaiser

Those based in America may be familiar with the AT&T Tilt aka HTC Kaiser. To put it simply, some good-natured soul has taken the Android OS and ported it to this device, running on top of Windows Mobile 6.5.

The video, which documents this achievement, clearly starts off in Windows Mobile. The actor navigates through the File Explorer where they view their Storage Card and load up a special program called HaRET. This boots Linux from where Android is then loaded. The whole things takes a short while to get going, but once it does, Android appears to be fully functional with touch-screen support and all. For me the most ironic part is the first and only YouTube comment on this achievement asks not how did you get Android running, but “…how did u get the wm6.5 on your phone(?)” Check out the video after the jump, along with my thoughts on porting Android.

Ports of Android are still relatively few and far between, not least because it’s a rather dangerous endeavor with considerably high barriers to entry. With that said, contemplate a normal linux distro such as openSUSE. When you install SUSE to your machine, it basically does the whole thing for you, including tracking down the drivers that you need and so on. Windows does the same. What would be lovely to see in the future is a porting facility for Android that uses a centralized database of drivers for the generic hardware parts that are often found in most phones, especially by the same manufacturer. Admittedly, my knowledge of such things is next to none, so I therefore have no idea if something along these lines is feasible. But hopefully someday getting Android onto any device will be just a case of a few clicks.