The HTC HD2 is a touchscreen phone with a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a large 4.3 inch 480 x 800 pixel display, and plenty of other features you’d expect from a recent Android or Windows Phone 7 device. But the HTC HD2 ships with Windows Mobile 6.5. Hackers have been installing Android (and other operating systems) on it for ages, but now a member of the xda-developers forum has released a simple tool that allows you to easily switch back and forth between Windows Mobile and Android.

The app is called RunDroid. The first time you run the app you’ll actually need to use a file explorer to launch the app from within Windows. But you can configure the app to auto-run at boot so tat when you reboot yourphone you can choose between operating systems.

The app works by leaving Windows Mobile installed on the phone’s main memory, but running Android software from an SD card. If you have multiple versions of Android, you can use the latest version of RunDroid to choose between them.

via xda-developers

VMWare and LG are starting to show off technology that essentially lets you run two instances of Android side by side on a single phone. The companies first announced plans to develop virtualization technology for smartphones a few months ago, and now it’s on display at Mobile World Congress in Spain.

Here’s how it works. You can use your Android phone for personal use, downloading and installing apps, checking email, making calls, and customizing home screen widgets to your heart’s content. Then you tap a button to instantly switch from your personal profile to your corporate profile. From here you can access your work email account and contact manager, run applications your corporate IT staff has installed, and connect safely to a corporate network.

The demo unit LG and VMWare are showing off has the secondary operating system running from from an SD card. That way you can basically bring your personal phone to the office and have your IT department load the appropriate software on an SD card to let you use your phone for both work and personal use.

Then not only can corporate IT folks remotely lock or wipe your profile without affecting your personal data, but they can also deactivate your phone simply by removing the SD card.

You can check out a hands-on demo at Engadget or view VMWare’s promotional video after the break.

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Ever wish you could run Google Android on your aging iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G? Now it’s easier than ever, thanks to the launch of a utility called BootLace 2.1. It’s available for download from the Cydia store for jailbroken devices. That means you’ll need to jailbreak your phone before starting… but that was kind of a no-brainer. Did you really think Apple would make it easy to install other operating systems on the iPhone?

As long as your phone is already jailbroken, you won’t even need to connect your iPhone to a computer to get Android up and running. You can do the whole thing by downloading over the air packages. You just have to add the following repository to the Cydia store and then download and install a few apps.

http://repo.neonkoala.co.uk/

1. Install Bootlace
2. Install OpeniBoot
3. Install iDroid

Once everything is installed, just launch the OpeniBoot app. You can click “QuickBoot” to reboot your phone into Android. From the OpeniBoot tab you can configure the boot menu and determine which operating system will boot automatically. The iDroid tab lets you install, upgrade, or remove iDroid.

If you want more detailed instructions you can find them at iPro Blog or Redmond Pie. You can also read more about iDroid, OpeniBoot, and Bootlace in the iDroid forum.

Update: It looks like you may soon be able to install Android on the iPod touch 4, iPad, and other newer iOS devices.

KaosFroyo for the Droid Eris

There are dozens of custom ROMS which allow you to run modified versions of Google Android on a variety of smartphones. Don’t like the software that came with your HTC Nexus One? No problem. Just pick an alternate ROM that has the features you’re looking for. Want Android 2.1 on your HTC G1? Yup, you can do that too.

But what if you want to have the best of all possible worlds and run several different custom ROMs on your phone — at least until you decide which you like the best? Well it turns out there’s a way to do that too… although it’s still a work in progress.

Independent developer punk.kaos has released a tool for the Droid Eris that lets you boot a ROM from the phone’s SD card instead of internal storage. This lets you load one version of the operating system on your phone while carrying another on your SD card.

If I’m reading the instructions correctly, it’s not as easy as picking which ROM to boot from a menu at startup. Instead you have to modify some files to switch between ROMs. But it’s a start.

For the most part, punk.kaos says that Android runs just as well from an SD card as from internal storage, although you’ll want to stay away from slower SD cards. While the multiboot tool has only really been tested on the Droid Eris, it should be able to run on at least some other Android phones as well.

via xda-developers

It’s been a few weeks since we first saw Google Android running on the iPhone 3G. Want to know how to do it on your own phone? PC World has step by step instructions.

There are a few things to note before you get started. First, this hack is only for the iPhone 3G. iPhone 3Gs users need not apply. Second, while you can make and receive calls and run Android apps on an iPhone 3G using Google Android, power management hasn’t been implemented yet, which means your battery will run down really quickly — like in about an hour.

On the bright side, if you follow the steps very carefully, not only will you probably wind up voiding your warranty, but you’ll also have a dual boot phone which can load either iPhone OS or Google Android, so you can still use your iPhone with Apple’s software most of the time and reboot into Android on occasion as a nifty party trick.

It was just a few weeks ago that we first saw Google’s Android operating system running on an iPhone. But that particular hack was limited to a first generation iPhone 2G. Well now developer David Wang is back, and this time he’s managed to squeeze Google’s mobile operating system onto an iPhone 3G.

Audio isn’t working at the moment, but almost everything else is. Multiotuch works, and the iPhone can run Android apps, surf the web over WiFi or 3G, and do almost everything else you’d expect an Android smartphone to do. It can even make calls, but since audio doesn’t work, nobody will hear what you’re saying. But you can send text messages.

Wang’s Android port lets you dual boot the iPhone OS and Android on the same device. It takes a while to switch operating systems, as you can see in the video below. But once Android is up and running, you can quickly suspend the phone just by tapping the power button.

The installer file should be available for download soon. Bear in mind, this particular version of Android is designed for the iPhone 3G, not the iPhone 3Gs.

You can check out a video after the break.

via Engadget

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Like the open nature of Google Android, but prefer the sleek build quality of an iPhone to any Android handsets currently on the market? No problem. Now there’s a way to run Android on an iPhone.

A hacker going by the name of planetbeing has ported a debug version of Android to run on the iPhone’s hardware. It can make and receive phone calls, surf the web over WiFi, play music, and do pretty much anything else you’d want a phone to do. As an added bonus, you don’t have to completely wipe the iPhone operating system — you can dual boot.

There are a few catches. First, the version available for download today only works with the iPhone 2G. Second, the iPhone simply doesn’t have as many buttons as most Android phones. So planetbeing sacrificed the volume buttons to the cause and turned them into call and home buttons.

He says overall, Android on the iPhone is still a bit buggy and unstable. But for a first release it looks pretty impressive. Unfortunately the lack of physical buttons is going to be a bit of a hurdle for all future development.

You can check out a demonstration of Android on the iPhone after the break. And if you’re the adventurous sort, you can download the pre-built image yourself.

via Techmeme

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