In an extraordinarily convenient turn of events, one buyer of a firesale-priced HP TouchPad at Best Buy a couple of days ago claims his came out of the box with an extra special treat — it’s running Android, 2.2 to be exact. A possible explanation for the existence of this unicorn tablet can be seen in the two YouTube videos posted of the device so far, where it flashes a Qualcomm Innovation Center (Quic) logo which suggests it could be some kind of development project that slipped into retail. We queried Qualcomm about this TouchPad’s provenance ourselves and received only a “We have no comment on the video” in return, so the decision to believe that it’s real or a particularly well executed hoax is yours. Now, you can be the first to solve this riddle since the owner has put it up for sale on eBay. Need another potential perk? How about the ability to snag a TouchPad-running-Android bounty posted by HacknMod that’s up to $2,150 as of this posting. Relevant links are below, including the initial Reddit post, both videos and the auction, so while our credit cards will remain securely in our wallets those who are more trusting — or just can’t believe that anyone would would be dumb enough to try and sell a fake — can put a bid in if they so choose.
Update: Apparently one of our own commenters, Shahzeb Jiwani, has come into possession of a similar device. Luckily for us, he’s chosen to make a ROM dump available over on RootzWiki, so check out his video after the break or head over to the thread there as they try and find out how to make this work on everyone else’s $99 tablet.
[Thanks, David & Dennis]
Alleged HP TouchPad running Android appears, can be yours on eBay (update: and another one!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:55:00 EST.
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