I am officially sick of Windows Mobile OS and how all the Android and iPhone applications are always sooo much better than the Windows equivalents. A friend of mine (a previous iPhone user) just went out and purchased an HTC MyTouch. The MyTouch was on the T-Mobile network which  he unlocked and now uses on the AT&T network, running Android of course!  So I just couldn’t handle it anymore, I either needed to fork over a few hundred bucks or find another solution so I could run Android.  I won’t go the iPhone route and pay the Apple Tax and get the Apple restrictions!  So while searching the net I found an awesome project headed by the XDA-Developer folks, which will let you run Android native on your HTC phone. I have an HTC Tilt from AT&T and I had found similar projects before but they were always something not really complete or where I would have had to possibly destroy my phone in the process. And like most people I NEED my phone to stay working so that I can work. Now you can just run a program called HaRET from within Windows which reboots your phone into Linux, which then loads Android. At this point you are no longer in Windows and Android is running native on your phone just like it would be if you had bought the phone with it. If you god forbid want to boot back into Windows all you have to do is reboot the phone. The HTC Tilt currently has all the primary functions working with the exceptions of a camera; which is basically crappy on this phone anyhow, bluetooth; this is a bummer, WiFi; even more of a bummer, and GPS; for some people it works. Everything else pretty much works though, LCD, touchscreen, keyboard, ambient light sensor, LEDs, SD controller, power saving, battery control, rear speaker, phone, 3G radio, USB, 3D (OpenGL), JOGwheel, suspend/resume and vibrate. I have been using Android on the phone for a couple of days now with only one major crash where I had to reset everything. The only bummer with that is that you have to wait until Windows loads and then wait again for Android to load, good thing it seems pretty stable so far. There are also other models of HTC phones that this will work on such as the HTC Polaris, HTC Vogue, HTC Raphael, & HTC Diamond phones. For more information on installing Android on your HTC phone check out the Android on HTC website.

I want to give a big shout out to the XDA-Developers.  If you end up using this and liking it you should definitely think about buying these guys a beer!

Here is a video of Android loading on an HTC Tilt/Kaiser