Remember the Touchpad? Or WebOS? Yeah it seems like ages since we’ve heard those names. In case you’re unfamiliar with them, WebOS was a mobile operating system that was created by Palm and sold to HP when Palm folded. The Touchpad was HP’s first go with WebOS and both the device and the OS flopped. That resulted in a fire sale where Touchpads could be had for a cool $100 bill and I, like many, gave in and bought one.
Personally I really liked WebOS and felt like it had huge potential but developers didn’t seem to think so as nobody wanted to develop for the platform and that, along with other missteps, lead to its demise. The Touchpads themselves could be saved thanks to some Android magic. With a couple of clicks of a mouse you could install and dual boot Android on the device so that it didn’t become a large paperweight. While it wasn’t perfect, it worked.
Now another method of adding some additional functionality to your aging old Touchpad has come forth. A group called Phoenix is working on a project that will allow Android apps to be installed directly onto WebOS; no dual-booting necessary. You get all the functionality of cards from WebOS AND get some apps to run on those cards finally!
The group put their project up on Kickstarter to help garner some funding and they’ve already met and exceeded their goal of $35 000. Who would’ve guessed that there were so many WebOS and Touchpad fans out there still. The guys of Phoenix hope to have at least a fairly functional solution working by July so this is something I’ll be keeping an eye on.
How many of you guys out there got caught up in the fire sale and have a Touchpad kicking around collecting dust?
