HP Touchpad goes Ice Cream Sandwich (CM9 Alpha 0)
I took the plunge and put CyanogenMOD 9 Alpha 0 on the HP Touchpad last night.
I’d been thoroughly enjoying CM7 on it (from version 2 onwards) but I’ve been itching to flash a new ROM on something, anything! And my phone still hasn’t seen a stable enough ICS release on it to make it a daily driver. And my Nook Color is being borrowed and has no Cyanogen Team alphas as far as I know. (Other individuals have released ROMS but I get antsy when thinking about flashing anything other than a CM or MIUI team ROM.)
I was worried because the major non-working functions on the CM9 Alpha 0 build (among many other things) was nonfunctioning hardware video decoding. This meant no HD Youtube videos, and as I quickly learned after flashing, none of the HD video podcasts I have. That was until switch Doggcatcher to use an external player — I started with Moboplayer but have since switch to MX Video Player — and have been soft-decoding the video. It’s smooth and without stutter. Though I have noticed a sound issue. Sound dies and I haven’t figured out what action causes that to happen. Sound issues and a non functioning Mic are logged as issues by CM though.
From Gear, Rigs, and Goodies ( I started using Thumb Keyboard for a better typing experience. Though I wish I still had FlexT9 for the swype-like experience.)
Everything beyond the occasional video/audio problems are fixed with some quick ZIP file flashes (to fix the Market not loading, and the Calendar not syncing)
Transitions are incredible!
I installed ICS Browser+ for these neat control scheme that removes the traditional navigation bar from the top of the browser to an invisible control menu that only appears when you slide in from the left or the right of the screen!
Matias Duarte adding a little of that webOS flavor (touch producing ripples becomes touch produces circular color glow that expand and contracts with push and release of your finger in ICS)
So fresh!
Of course, the only thing I’ll be doing with my Touchpad now is playing Whale Trail…
wheeeeeeeeeeee
