Does anybody have Linux or are running Sun Virtualbox to compile the drivers for the processor into the new version of Android? I have virtual Debian running to do little tweaks to roms for Linux based phones.
Maybe there is a shortcut, for example, any upgrade to 2.1 or higher from 1.6 for a phone with similar specs to the Devour might work. If not, you will have to find the drivers from other roms/upgrades first for each piece of hardware and bring them together into one rom before the new Android rom will work.
You might try any upgrades for phones that have the MSM7627 chipset. I hear that the palm pixi uses the same processor as the Devour so people looking replace their webos with Android on those phones might be helpful as well. Just imagine the hype of $45 Android phone running froyo.
There is probably a small hardware check for upgrades but should be a lot easier to hack than a full rom decompile and rebuild, especially if the hardware is similar. I would think Android would at least run just as long as the processor is right. The phone type may even only be checked before the download by the cell provider upgrade software, so once the upgrade files have been downloaded to the memory of a similar phone, if you could grab the upgrade files off and put them onto the Devour and kick it off manually then that would seem to be the first place to start.
Lots of phones with the MSM7627 chipset run higher versions of Android so upgrades should be pretty easy to find out there in torrents and upload sites.
I was just looking for a cheap Android 2.1 or higher phone and saw the A555 for $99. I don't get it though, if Android is free, it seems like a compile for every phone with correct drivers would just be out there. If I was doing this everyday it would take maybe all of 5 minutes to build a ROM for these phones.
I guess Google has finally given into the corporate hole and that's why there are no upgrades for any cheap phone models. This will doom the OS just like all the other past mobile OS's. Nobody wants to ever buy anything anymore because nothing cheap ever runs the latest apps and you can't get upgrades, so you flip flop with providers and brands into a Cache 22 where everyone is so confused that they all think they win but in fact loses because we never actually decide to stay with anything good.
The entire point of the OS was that it was free and had tons of apps, take those both away the Android OS becomes the worst of all the mobile OS's. That's basically what has happened. I mean hey, if want to run Windows 7 on my 1.2Ghz with 512MB of RAM I can, and it works, just slowly, but if I want to run a free OS Android on my phone that is still under contract but I can't and it won't be provided ever, then that is a big FAIL!
