HD2 Manual Project

Foreword

This is a long outline for a project to fully document and revitalize the abilities, software, and guides of the legendary HTC HD2.

While a forum is great for development and question-asking, the reality is that forums are the wrong place for solid, malleable, community-editable guides or things that change quickly. This is a dangerous mess we are creating, where many a phone has been bricked due to confusing and outdated instructions.

What I want on every phone worked on by XDA is a complete, unified, and community-editable guide that takes users step-by-step all the way from the first baby steps with installing a ROM into the most advanced tasks, like cooking a build. Basically, we will be creating the grassroots equivalent of XDA's official book, but specially tailored to each and every devices, starting with the HD2.

After that, there is the task of reviewing and revising the software that forms the unique abilities of the HD2, and perhaps learning from them to port such abilities to other devices of the future.

The outline below is lengthy and an optional read.

Introduction

The HD2 is one of the most unique and versatile phones on the market today, with no parallel in it's ability to run multiple mobile operating systems quite well.

As such, most of my guide is the product of the many great individuals on XDA who made the HD2 what it is today, and the select few who made guides for the rest of us.

Unfortunately, as a result of the HD2's messy evolution, there are a confusing mess of tutorials on the XDA forums that can cause many a brick. If you were a new noob, where would you start? Many of the guides have info long since out of date, and many conflicting instructions that are a constant struggle to think through and understand.

This is a common trend among XDA in general, but even if it gets people to think more deeply and go the advanced route, it is not safe, enlightening, or a good learning experience to sift through rotting guides.

As such, I am going to start a project to create a new, community-maintained, and fully updated guide that will be the grassroots analog to XDA's official book, the "Android Development Codex", to better educate newcomers and keep up with new developments.

Guide

Bringing the power of the HD2 to other phones

All good things must come to an end, and that goes for even the long-running HD2. Perhaps, as one dev lamented, "They just don't make phones like that anymore." But somehow a modern equivalent must be found, and since there has not been any in recent memory, we will need to recreate the circumstances of the HD2 for other phones.

Recording the History of development on the HD2

The core of this research will involve the HD2's history and it's evolution over the years, compared to the other phones. Exactly how and why did the HTC HD2 gain it's unique abilities, how, and why? These questions are vital to fully understanding the HD2, and possibly

To the best of my understanding, the features of the HD2 are a direct result of a massive, worldwide developer community working to save the most powerful phone on the market at the time from obseletion

Software Reform

MAGLDR

While cLK is incredible in itself, MAGLDR is the true source of the HD2's unique abilities, and is the only HD2 bootloader able to run both WP7 and Android. MAGLDR is an incredible piece of software, yet it has not been updated in a year or more, even when several defects and feature-requests have come up.

Most damningly, it is closed-source, which means that the community cannot easily make a single improvement even if it wanted to.

I see absolutely zero reason why it should remain closed-source, as it is so important to the power of the HD2 and nothing new has come up from it.

We need to (politely) ask Cotulla to release the sources for this project, and perhaps merge the big features with cLK (WP7 boot, RMNET networking). No matter how great it is now, the HD2 is still evolving, and if the center of development is stuck in the past, code rot will eventually catch up to it.

HD2 Toolkit

This toolkit is pretty much the workhorse of the HD2, with a lot of thought and work into it's design. It should be treated and maintained like one. Unfortunately, both of the original developers have dropped out of the HD2, and the newest build is non-functional.