Everyone is psyched up about Android, but Google is still sitting on their new OS for the next few months.

Its no secret that HTC is behind some of the first handsets to run Android, so that got people thinking- will Android be available on current HTC handsets when it is released?
And if not, how hard would it be to port over, assuming HTC uses similar architecture in their manufacturing?

Well the phone hax0rs extraordinare over at XDA-Developers and PPC Geeks didn’t want to wait to find out. Apparently they have been working on ways to port leaked versions of the OS and all its open source linux-based goodness over to current HTC devices!
Now, its not a full port, and still relies on the Windows Mobile OS underneath for device drivers and what not, however after loading itself into RAM, the Android OS takes over the GUI and presents the user with an early look of things to come.

The problem with this, however, is that you need enough RAM after Windows Mobile boots to load the Android OS into and run. On the new devices with 128+mb of RAM, (such as the HTC Tilt, Vogue, and Diamond) there is plenty of memory to go around, however on many current devices including the Sprint Mogul (Titan), the 64Mb limit is far too tight.
People have managed to get it to boot, but portions of the OS, such as data connections, didn’t work.

That is, until now.

PPCGeeks forum member “l33tlinuxh4×0r” with the help of “dzo” have managed to get it to boot and be functional despite the limited 64mb of RAM.

“Android boots, The touch screen works. You can make phone calls. You can browse the internet.

This will NOT mess up your phone. It runs from ram and there are no permanent changes.”

(Copied from original thread here)

The needed files and instructions to make this work can be found here.

Its still not perfect- apparently not all the hardware buttons work, but this is very exciting for current HTC users who are interested in Android.