HP Confirms There Is No Way Touchpads Shipped With Android

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Friday, October 7th, 2011
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The head of HP’s open source initiative, Phil Robb, took umbrage when Touchpad lovers found Android running on some HP Touchpads and clamored for the source code. Robb, who is in charge of handling open source software and distribution for the company, said there was never an Android made for the Touchpad and there is no way it could have shown up on the Touchpads, even through factory error.

RegHardware quoted him as saying:

“We have confirmed that HP never authorised the distribution of any version of Android on the HP TouchPad,” he told coders.

“From a review of our manufacturing process, we believe that all TouchPad units have been shipped out of manufacturing with the WebOS operating system only, and that no TouchPad units were shipped with Android, even by mistake.”

Android currently works on the Touchpad thanks to the efforts of a large group of programmers and hackers, but Robb confirms that HP had little, if anything, to do with the ports.

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