A few months back, deep in the midst of the TouchPad fire sale, at least a few of HP’s webOS tablets shipped out the door and to customers with an unexpected install: Android. While HP never figured out exactly how their internal build of Android got released into the public, they’ve gone ahead and released the kernel and GPL (General Public License – i.e. open source) components. It’s worth noting that releasing this is not something HP had to do – while those that ship Android devices are required by the licensing terms to release the kernel to open source, HP’s release was accidental and thus open sourcing was not required – this release can be chalked up to goodwill, even if resulting from being pressured into doing it.

As was noted on RootzWiki, the source code released appears to have been developer separately from webOS on the TouchPad, possibly as a precursor project to HP’s acquisition of Palm. The last change in the code was in March 2011, three months before the TouchPad’s July 2011 release, but well after HP announced the webOS tablet in February. The crew at RootzWiki is understandably encouraged by the release and intends to adopt various portions into the CyanogenMod 9 Android 4.0 port.

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The last few weeks have seen a change in the smartphone landscape, thanks to Google’s acquisition of Motorola and HP’s decision to stop producing any more webOS flavored hardware. Is there an opportunity somewhere for HTC to get involved and perhaps acquire webOS or another OS to call its own? The [...]

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Digitimes reports that in order to boost sales and clear inventory due to weaker than expected demand, Android, webOS and QNX tablet makers are planning across-the-board price cuts by the end of September.
We don’t see it as much of a surprise that the tablet prices will be falling about six months after launch, [...]

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Our digital news stands are about to get quite a bit better. Time Inc. has promised that by the end of this year, it will bring all 21 of its magazine titles to the “leading tablet platforms”. Although, by “leading platforms” apparently Time only means iOS, Android and WebOS. Sorry, BlackBerry [...]

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AT&T has a pair of opposites available as the carrier launches today the Samsung Infuse 4G with a huge 4.5 inch display, and the HP Veer 4G which has a petite 2.6 inch screen. The price of each device is as different as the screen is on both models. The Veer 4G is [...]

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Gartner is a well-trusted tech oracle, but when it comes to predicting events in a 5-year timeframe, predictions become largely equivalent to palm-reading. Well, there might be one exception – tablets. Apple has basically created the tablet market with the original iPad and Gartner’s latest prognosis says that Cupertino is to remain the dominant company. [...]

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In the very near future game creator Rovio will be releasing an update to the Angry Birds Seasons game with special levels designed for St. Patrick’s Day that includes the pigs wearing green Irish hats.
This edition of the game is called “Go Green, Get Lucky.” In the preview trailer posted at [...]

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Though many have jumped on the tablet bandwagon with devices like the successful Apple iPad, 99.7% of the world’s population still has not seen the need for a tablet and therefore have not purchased one to date.
The research was conducted by RBC Capital Market analyst Mike Abramsky who managed to create [...]

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The battle of the heavyweights has officially been staged – the Apple iPad 2 is the successor to the original iPad, which dominated the tablet segment in the last year, but the new contenders appear with an equally mighty dual-core muscle and tailor-made Android Honeycomb not breaking a sweat under its power.
The iPad 2 comes [...]

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The new flagship Android phone from Google and Samsung, the Nexus S, was "rooted" from day one of its availability. Our pals at Android Central noted the event and today pointed us to a blog post by a security engineer who works on the Android team at Google, Nick Kralevich.

Kralevich notes that with the Nexus S and the Nexus One, it’s not quite right to call it "rooting" the phone, as those two Android devices are designed from the get-go to easily let developers get root access to hack away at the device. To say that you’ve "rooted’ the Nexus S is a bit of a misnomer, all you’ve really done is turn on the access that was there waiting for you. Other Android devices, he rightly notes, are locked down by manufacturers and carriers and so must be "rooted" by taking advantage of some kind of insecurity to open them up for full development playtime. 

….all of which should leave users in webOS land slightly bemused. Read on.

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