Having recently replaced my HTC Touch Diamond with the new Android running HTC Desire, I was very glad to finally be free of the clunky and frustratingly slow experience Windows Mobile v6.1 offered. The phone had served me well, but it was nice to upgrade to a far faster and also open platform.
Being a regular reader of popular technology news and gadget sites however, I came across by accident a project dedicated to getting Google’s Android operating system (OS) running on these earlier devices. Herein I detail how I fared.
The Project
Head on over to connect-utb.com to find the project and also the latest downloads. The Android builds found here support the following HTC devices:
- Touch Diamond
- Touch Diamond 2 (Topaz)
- Touch Pro (Raphael)
- Touch Pro 2 (Rhodium)
- Touch HD (Blackstone)
At the time of writing the Android v2.2 (Froyo) release was Alpha and so left alone for the time being. Instead, the build dated 21st June 2010 was tried out.
The Method
The releases from the above site aren’t available as ROMs, which has the upside of meaning that you don’t have any risk of bricking your phone yet – but the downside of meaning anytime you switch it on you must boot Android from within Windows Mobile. After extracting and downloading the build of your choice, you will be left with the following contents in a folder:
HaRET, the Handheld Reverse Engineering Tool is a Windows Mobile application capable of acting as a Linux bootloader. What we need to do now is copy all the above data to the Internal Storage (4GB flash) on the Touch Diamond from a computer in order to start the ball rolling.
Wait just a moment though, because we now need to place the startup configuration file in the root of our flash drive to tell it which phone we’re using. By removing the phone’s cover and battery, I found the label read “DIAM100″. This meant I needed to look in the STARTUP CONFIG folder labelled above and copy the startup.txt file from within the DIAMOND100 folder to the root of the phones Internal Storage as well.
Finally, all we need to do is run HaRET!
Goodbye Windows Mobile…
Welcome to Android 
Now you must be patient on the first boot, as there’s a lot for the little phone to do the very first time. Everything’s surprisingly snappy immediately though, but even better the second boot in. You may get some messages saying that some applications are not responding, giving you the option to either Force Quit or Wait – I strongly suggest the latter.
First Impressions
Wow. These guys really have put a lot of work into this, everything bar the camera works very well indeed. I was able to connect to my home wireless network, enter my gmail account details and synchronise my contacts, calendar and email.
Unfortunately it seems as though battery life is taking quite a hit in comparison to the stock Windows Mobile system. I think performance is held back as everything runs from the flash storage right now too. I’m confident however that with ongoing work, Android will really show off its’ superiority despite the age of this phone.
Keep up the good work!
