When you pick out a phone, you’re also picking out the operating system—that typically means Android or iOS. What if a phone didn’t follow those rules? What if it could run any OS you wanted? This is the story of the legendary HTC HD2.

Microsoft makes a mess with Windows Mobile

The HD2 arrives at an unfortunate time

Credit: Pocketnow

Officially, the HTC HD2 (HTC Leo) launched in November 2009 with Windows Mobile 6.5. Microsoft had already been working on Windows Phone for a few years at this point, and it was planned to be released in 2009. However, multiple delays forced Microsoft to release Windows Mobile 6.5 as a stopgap update to Windows Mobile 6.1.

Microsoft’s plan for mobile devices was a mess at this time. The HD2 didn’t launch in North America until March 2010—one month after Windows Phone 7 had been announced at Mobile World Congress. Originally, the HD2 was supposed to be upgraded to Windows Phone 7, but Microsoft later decided no Windows Mobile devices would get the new OS.

This left the HD2 stuck between a rock and a hard place. Launched as the final curtain was dropping on one OS, but too early to be upgraded to the next OS. Thankfully, HTC was not just any manufacturer, and the HD2 was not just any phone.

The HD2 was better than it had any right to be

HTC made a beast of a phone

Credit: HTC

HTC was one of the best smartphone manufacturers of the late 2000s and 2010s. It manufactured the first Android phone, the first Google Pixel phone, and several of the most iconic smartphones of the last two decades. Much of the company’s reputation for premium, high-quality hardware stems from the HD2.

The HD2 was the first smartphone with a 4.3-inch touchscreen—considered huge at the time—and one of the first smartphones with a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. That processor, along with 512GB of RAM, made the HD2 more future-proof than HTC probably ever intended. Phones would be launching with those same specs for the next couple of years.

For all intents and purposes, the HD2 was the most powerful phone on the market. It just so happened to run the most limiting mobile OS of the time. If the software situation could be improved, there was clearly tons of potential.

The phone that could do it all

Android, Windows Phone, Ubuntu, and more

The key to the HD2’s hackability was HTC’s open design philosophy. It had an easily unlockable bootloader, and it could boot operating systems from the NAND flash and SD cards.

First, the community took to righting a wrong and bringing Windows Phone 7 to the HD2. This was thanks to a custom bootloader called “MAGLDR”—Windows Phone 7.5 and 8 would eventually get ported, too. The floodgates had opened, and Windows Phone was the least of what this beast of a phone could do.

Android on the HTC HD2? No problem. Name a version of the OS, and the HD2 had a port of it: 2.2 Froyo, 2.3 Gingerbread, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.1/2/3 Jelly Bean, 4.4 Kitkat, 5.0 Lollipop, 6.0 Marshmallow, 7.0 Nougat, and 8.1 Oreo. Yes, the HD2 was still getting ports seven years after it launched.

But why stop at Android? The HD2 was ripe for all sorts of Linux builds. Ubuntu—including Ubuntu Touch—, Debian, Firefox OS, and Nokia’s MeeGo were ported as well. The cool thing about the HD2 was that it could dual-boot OS’. You didn’t have to commit to just one system at a time. It was truly like having a PC in your pocket, and the tech community loved it.

Do a web search for “HTC HD2” now, and you’ll find many articles about the phone getting yet another port of an OS. It became a running joke that the HD2 would get new versions of Android before officially supported Android phones did. People called it “the phone that refuses to die,” but it was the community that kept it alive.

The last of its kind

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to”

Credit: TechRepublic

The HTC HD2 was a phone from a very different time. It may have gotten more headlines, but there were plenty of other phones being heavily modded and unofficially upgraded back then. Unlockable bootloaders were much more common, and that created opportunities for enthusiasts.

I can attest to how different it was in the early years of the smartphone boom. My first smartphone was another HTC device, the DROID Eris from Verizon. I have fond memories of scouring the XDA-Developers forums for custom ROMs and installing the latest Kaos builds on a whim during college lectures. Sadly, it’s been many years since I attempted that level of customization.

It’s not all doom and gloom for modern smartphones, though. Long-term support has gotten considerably better than it was back in 2010. As mentioned, the HD2 never officially received Windows Phone 7, and it never got any other updates, either. My DROID Eris stopped getting updates a mere eight months after release.

Compare that to phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S26, Google Pixel 10, and iPhone 17, which will all be supported through 2032. You may not be able to dual-boot a completely different OS on these phones, but they won’t be dead in the water in less than a year. We will likely never see a phone like the HTC HD2 from a major manufacturer again.

Related

A Love Letter to My First Smartphone, the HTC Droid Eris

No, not that DROID.