Android modders have proudly picked up the flickering webOS torch – even as HP creates 53 jobs in Sunnyvale and Shanghai to resurrect the once proud mobile operating system.
As we previously discussed, an early build of Open webOS 1.0 was recently spotted running on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, while a developer by the name of Steven Troughton-Smith is working on a port of Open webOS for the popular Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet.
And yesterday the WebOS Ports team released the WebOS source code for the Galaxy Nexus.
“The [team] has been extremely kind to the open source community, and have provided everything you need in order to build the port for the Galaxy Nexus. With this also comes the ability to port this to other devices as well,” wrote Jerdog of XDA Devs.
”While there isn’t anything currently in the works on XDA, let’s hope that this news sparks new interest in an OS that has potential to grow outside of Palm and HP’s (mis)management.”
According to Derek Kessler of webOS Nation, there are still some “pretty significant holes” to be filled before the port becomes something you’ll want to run on a daily driver device.
Indeed, support for the camera and Bluetooth support are still missing, while the video acceleration is being described as being “pre-Alpha.”
“[However], even with the current unfinished state of the build we’re still psyched to see it made available,” said Kessler.
”Not just for the thrill of booting webOS on new hardware, but also because making it publicly open source in typical WebOS Internals style means that other interested developers are going to be able to pitch in to improve and move along the porting process.”
