The first public build of Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is now available for the HP TouchPad. The tablet originally shipped with HP’s webOS software, but hackers have been installing Google Android on the TouchPad for months.
Up until recently, only Android 2.3 Gingerbread was available for the tablet, but now the CyanogenMod team has releasedCyanogenMod 9 Alpha 0 for the TouchPad. It’s based on Android 4.0 and includes Google’s new user interface which is optimized for tablets without physical buttons. It’s a good fit for the TouchPad, which doesn’t have the home, back, and menu buttons found on most earlier Android phones and tablets.
Updated 2/21/12: CM9 Alpha 2 offers a number of bug fixes and a few new features including hardware video acceleration, Netflix video support, a quick settings menu that takes up less space and a menu that appears when you press-and-hold the power button. You can install the latest software using the steps below. If you’re upgrading from an earlier build, just copy the new files to your cminstall folder and skip to step 8 below — or follow our guide for updating your software using ClockworkMod.
Update 2/16/12: Nightly builds of CyanogenMod 9 Alpha for the HP TouchPad are now available. You can find the latest nightlies by following @CM-Tenderloin on Twitter.
Here’s how you can install CM9 on the HP TouchPad.
First I’ll talk about installing it from scratch — assuming that you’re starting from webOS and you’ve never installed Android on the tablet before.
Further down in the article I’ll also explain how to upgrade from CyanogenMod 7 or other Android software.
1. Make sure Java is installed on your computer.
Visit the Java download page from your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer and download and install the latest version.
2. Install Palm Novacom driver
There are several ways to install the Palm Novacom software, but the easiest is to use the Universal Novacom Installer.
You can download the .jar file from Google Code, and once it’s downloaded, click it to run.
Follow the instructions and it should install Novacom on your computer. Note that this will only work if Java is already installed.
You’ll also want to make a note of where the files are installed. On my Windows 7 PC, the Universal Novacom Installer created a folder called c:\Program Files\Palm, Inc.
3. Downoad ACMEINstaller, Moboot, ClockworkMod and optionally gApps
The next step is to download all the files you’re going to need. You’ll find the latest links for most of these files at the RootzWiki forum, but here’s a list of what you need:
- ACMEInstaller2
- update-cm-9.0.0-RC0-Touchpad-alpha2-fullofbugs.zip
- update-cwm_tenderloin-1012.zip
- moboot_0.3.5.zip
- gApps for CyanogenMod 9
You can find links for the first 4 files at RootzWiki. There are a number of different places to find gApps files. CyanogenMod is based on open source software and doesn’t include the Google Android Market or other Google apps such as Google Maps out of the box.
Note that instead of update-cm-9.0.0-RC0-Touchpad-alpha2-fullofbugs.zip you can also use the latest nightly builds posted by @CM_Tenderloin.
Since CyanogenMod 9 is still in the early testing phases, there’s no official gApps add-on, but a number of independent developers have created versions of gApps that may work with the software.
You can find gapps-ics-20120215-signed.zip at the RootzWiki Forum.
Bonus round: You can open the gApps zip file and remove the apk installers for any apps you don’t want to install. Just make sure to leave GoogleServicesFramework alone.
As a matter of explanation, ACMEInstaller2 is an installer file which is run from your PC. the update-cm-9.0 file is the Android 4.0 ROM, update-cwm is the ClockworkMod custom recovery utility, and Moboot is an app that allows you to choose between Android, webOS, and ClockworkMod when you boot your tablet.
4. Place ACMEInstaller in the same directory as your Novacom files
If, like me, Novacom is in your c:\Program Files\Palm, Inc directory, just copy ACMEInstaller2 to that directory.
5. Connect your HP TouchPad to your computer and enable USB mass storage mode
Use the USB cable that came with your tablet to connect it to a PC. You should see a USB notification in the upper-right corner of the TouchPad. Tap on it to enter USB drive mode.
This will allow your tablet to show up as a removable drive on your desktop computer.
6. Copy remaining files to your TouchPad
Open a file explorer on your computer and navigate to your TouchPad. Create a new folder called “cminstall” without the quotes. Then copy these files from your PC to that new folder:
- update-cm-9.0.0-RC0-Touchpad-alpha2-fullofbugs.zip
- update-cwm_tenderloin-1012.zip
- moboot_0.3.5.zip
- gApps 4.0.3 11.12.22.zip
Do not unzip any of these files first. They’re supposed to be zip files.
If you’re using Windows, you may need to eject your TouchPad from your PC before continuing.