Project PDA

The eagerly awaited with great Smartphone Palm Pre is not yet on the market. Nevertheless, the first developers to work out already, its operating system to replace WebOS. The port of Google Android is almost ready and also the smartphone operating system from OpenMoko is expected to start soon. This is less surprising than it looks at first. An adaptation of the Google operating system for the OMAP3 processor from Texas Instruments, the Palm Pre drives, has been half a year in labor.

There is even a special device on which developers can test their software. The Zoom OMAP34x Mobile Development Kit from Texas Instruments is not as elegant as the Palm Pre, but it performs the same functions. So software developers can write and test on the same hardware used in products such as the Palm Pre used. Some rocks have yet to be overlooked: The crafters have drivers for touch screen, camera and phone functions, and write a new bootloader program of Android on the Palm Pre invites.

The freely available Bootloader of the T-Mobile G1 can not use the operating system because he always wants to start a memory card. But the Palm Pre has no slot for such expansions. This problem is now the programmers want to solve it by using the USB port on a small boot loader into the ROM of the OMAP processor, install the Android then the 8 gigabytes of internal memory of the great Palm Pre invites.

Then, a dual-boot possible, in which the user decides which OS to Start after power. Android will also later in the virtual WebOS platform.  Such gadgets are possible because the operating systems based on Linux.