CyanogenMod 10 (Android 4.1 JB) on TouchPad

[ludi]

I finally did some research this week on dual-booting CyanogenMod on the TouchPad and discovered it was possible without harming the WebOS install, so I finally decided to do it this weekend. After enabling Developer Mode on the TouchPad and then getting PreWare set up on my desktop, I basically followed these instructions, downloading most of the files from the goo.im repository, except that instead of CM9 (4.0 ICS), I decided to try out the latest CM10 (4.1 JB) compilation from November 7 even though it carries all kinds of "preliminary" warnings. (Among other things, 4.1 has the Project Butter UI enhancements, and the latest CM10 compilation is supposed to have the best battery life.)

First reaction: Wow

Second reaction: Sweeeeettt

There are some bugs with the notification volume levels (choice are basically Off, Loud, and Louder, in contrast to WebOS and its choices of Off, Softer, Soft) and I can't change the default keyboard mapping without crashing the Settings utility, although it does otherwise work fine with my hp BT keyboard. But after getting the Google Play Store set up and logging in, I basically have this thing doing 90% of what my phone can do, and it's been stable so far. It's slightly slower than my Galaxy Nexus in loading larger apps but this is impressive for 18 month-old hardware running an alpha compilation. And I can still boot to WebOS with nothing but the extra bootloader step. Nice! And so far, highly recommended.

[derFunkenstein]

Depending on the dedication of the people maintaining the device, Cyanogenmod can be either really awesome or really awful. Since they had to do Touchpad support from scratch, I had a feeling it would be the former.

[NeelyCam]

This is fantastic! I have ICS (CM9) running on mine now; maybe I'll try upgrading over the holidays.

Hmm.. I wonder if CM9 or CM10 is available for Atrix 4G yet..

[MadManOriginal]

Does the Wifi/web browsing battery life not suck? That was the only thing I was was genuinely disappointed with about the Touchpad.

[ludi]

Does the Wifi/web browsing battery life not suck? That was the only thing I was was genuinely disappointed with about the Touchpad.

Since pulling it from the charger dock this afternoon, I've had it running for about 7.5 hours with BT and Wi-Fi both on, including a brief reboot to WebOS, and after a combined 2 hours web browsing, 0.5 hours casual gaming, 0.5 hours tweaking the settings, and 4.5 hours of standby, I'm at 75% battery life. I checked the battery meter in WebOS just to be sure and it matches what CM10 is reporting, so it seems to be doing great.

The only significant disappointment, so far, is that the NPR streaming app crashes instantly after launch

EDIT: Add another 0.5 hour of light browsing, and at just over 8 hours I'm about to attempt USB charging overnight...and it's at 69%. Seems like a good performer, overall.

[ludi]

Looks like the power management issues from CM9 are still present, it will not charge from USB when the OS is up and running. It detects power and indicates charging, but nothing goes to the battery. Interestingly, the hp TouchStone inductive charger works fine.

Also, I must have started an unstable process somewhere because after a flawless run yesterday, I've had four spontaneous reboots today. Hmmm...

[MadManOriginal]

Does the Wifi/web browsing battery life not suck? That was the only thing I was was genuinely disappointed with about the Touchpad.

Since pulling it from the charger dock this afternoon, I've had it running for about 7.5 hours with BT and Wi-Fi both on, including a brief reboot to WebOS, and after a combined 2 hours web browsing, 0.5 hours casual gaming, 0.5 hours tweaking the settings, and 4.5 hours of standby, I'm at 75% battery life. I checked the battery meter in WebOS just to be sure and it matches what CM10 is reporting, so it seems to be doing great.

The only significant disappointment, so far, is that the NPR streaming app crashes instantly after launch

EDIT: Add another 0.5 hour of light browsing, and at just over 8 hours I'm about to attempt USB charging overnight...and it's at 69%. Seems like a good performer, overall.

That is way better than I remember using WebOS or CM7 (Gingerbread.) Cool deal...almost makes me wish I'd kept it

About the charging...by the time I put CM7 on mine the 'dead battery in CM = dead Touchpad' issue was resolved, but I was paranoid and made WebOS the default OS in Clockworkmod. I figured that might help minimize the chances of a dead Touchpad due to low battery in Android. Something to consider if you're seeing any kind of charging wierdness.

[ChronoReverse]

As I recall (I haven't been on WebOS forever), even on WEbOS, a regular USB port from a computer doesn't provide enough current to charge the Touchpad while it's on. Unless it's not charging even with the HP charger?

[ludi]

Unless it's not charging even with the HP charger?

Bingo -- doesn't matter what the source is, including an HP charger. It will report active charging but the battery does not charge, and the battery status indicator in "Settings" will still indicate "discharging".

[ludi]

Just updated to the Nov.16 nightly yesterday. Not a lot of time to play yet, but in theory it resolves the occasional rogue reboots I was seeing at one point, and it also allows the dynamic CPU speed governor to go as low as 192 MHz instead of the previous 384 MHz limit, which should help with battery life.

No love for the charging problem yet, but the NPR app is working again.

[Walkintarget]

I love my TP a lot, but with no Netflix app for it, I'm getting antsy, so I've been following the latest news on this mod in hopes it was soon ready for prime time. My ONLY concern is hosing or harming my existing WebOS, as it is exactly the way I want it, offering up both music and movies that I've sync'ed from my server.

Any chance of buggering my existing WebOS by doing this mod ?? I own the HP charging pad and the BT keyboard, and I really do use the Touchpad on an almost daily basis. I simply can't afford to have it roll over and crap out on me.

[ludi]

The risk is non-zero since significant storage modifications are made. As part of the setup process, ACMEInstaller3 modifies the boot loader to concurrently handle WebOS, ClockWork Mod recovery, and CM10, and then partitions out about 1.5GB of disk space in which CM10 and associated Android apps will live (the remainder of the TP's space is viewed by CM10 as SD external storage).

I started with a fully-charged battery and ran the whole process with the unit on the charging dock. I also evicted all non-essential media and personal files from the unit before starting, just to make sure those wouldn't interfere with the storage modifications. The initial install took about a half hour IIRC, subsequent updates using CWM were much quicker.

[ludi]

...aaaannndd first ever hard lock!

I was on the desktop and had brought up the window manager to start dismissing old applications. After dismissing the final application, the system hardlocked with the left edge of the display still "dimmed" from using the window manager. Wouldn't respond to the Power or the HP/Home button, at all.

For those who don't already know, Power + Volume Down + HP/Home for about 10-15 seconds inovkes a hard reset. It came back up like nothing had happened, so no big deal, just a little surprising given how stable the 11/16 release has been. However, there are some reports of WebOS hard-locking after certain combinations of UI operations so it may be a hardware problem rather than a ROM stability issue.

[derFunkenstein]

Unless it's not charging even with the HP charger?

Bingo -- doesn't matter what the source is, including an HP charger. It will report active charging but the battery does not charge, and the battery status indicator in "Settings" will still indicate "discharging".

The Kindle Fire does the same thing (or at least did when I got rid of it in August), even when using Amazon's charger - but if you let it sit and checked back, you'd see the battery % was actually climbing. That was with CM9, though - not sure if they got that fixed for CM10

But my larger point is, maybe ti's charging even when it says it's not?

[ludi]

But my larger point is, maybe ti's charging even when it says it's not?

Naw, I gave it plenty of time to test that theory, and it's definitely not charging from USB when CM10 is running. Only the TouchStone dock.

[Walkintarget]

I have an odd issue with my TP occasionally (I'd say maybe once every other week) where it will issue a 'ping' audio note every four seconds when sitting on the Touchstone. I pick it up off of the charger and it continues to ping away, still saying it is charging. I have to power it off and back on to get it to stop. I missed taking it off the charger once and it ran overnight like that. It was very hot to the touch the following day and required a restart, but it works fine other than this odd event.

I'm giving Cyanogen 10 another few weeks before I dip into its waters. Will give me something to do over the Christmas break with my TP. I still think that Netflix will have very limited appeal to me once I have it available, but I do like to tinker, and dual booting seems like the next logical step.

[ludi]

I have an odd issue with my TP occasionally (I'd say maybe once every other week) where it will issue a 'ping' audio note every four seconds when sitting on the Touchstone. I pick it up off of the charger and it continues to ping away, still saying it is charging. I have to power it off and back on to get it to stop. I missed taking it off the charger once and it ran overnight like that. It was very hot to the touch the following day and required a restart, but it works fine other than this odd event.

I've had that a few times, and what I finally figured out is that the switchmode charger pack was going into a reset loop after being plugged in for too long. When the TP is docked, the two current loops form an air-core transformer and so an inrush current occurs in both devices every time they synch, hence the overheating. Unplugging and replugging the charger seems to resolve it.

[ludi]

Now running the 2012-12-04 ROM, which in theory enables camera support. Can't say for sure, because I can't find a free camera app or widget that works. The USB charging issue and a minor bug in refreshing WiFi, both remain. The BT keyboard layout issue seems to be fixed.

And oddly enough, the latest update to Google Search broke Google Search on the CM10 TouchPad. It was working before, including the microphone, now it just crashes. For obvious reasons, I don't recommend downloading the update.

[ludi]

Now running the 2012-12-11 ROM. The camera seems to be working with the CameraMX app (or rather, as well as a TP camera can ever work, which is not very).

Still no solution for the Google Search problem, I finally had to uninstall all updates to Search, essentially rolling it back to the Android 4.1 base version. Based on web chatter this seems to be a common problem for many CM10 installations on multiple platforms, not just the TP.

[Walkintarget]

Thanks for the update, ludi ! Plan is to attempt this over the holidays, assuming most if not all bugs are squashed.

[ludi]

Finally updated to the 2012-12-16 ROM and hot diggety dawg...USB port charging seems to be working, Google Search is working again with the latest update installed, and I think that some fixes have been made to the behavior of the WiFi subsystem as well. Haven't played with it more than a couple hours but that's pretty impressive.

The developer is still labeling the ROM as "experimental" but so far, this feels like a beta 0.7 release.