Developer roots MOTOACTV, lets you play Angry Birds on it while you run into a lamppost

There was a time when if something could stand still long enough someone would install Linux on it. The same is true for Android today. And so the latest gadget to get an Android port is the recently announced sports tracker, Motorola’s MOTOACTV.

In its defense the device already runs a highly disguised version of Gingerbread but it still wouldn’t have been easy. Developer Chris Wade, the guy responsible for the useful but woefully misnamed Dingleberry jailbreak for the BlackBerry PlayBook, is the one responsible for achieving this feat. But before he actually installed the new OS, he ripped open the device apart first. This is when he took some blurry pictures and found out that the device runs on a TI OMAP3630 clocked at 600MHz with 256MB of RAM, enough for the purpose that Motorola intended for the device. But will it be able to run a full-fledged Gingerbread installation?

Of course, there was only one way to find out so he installed a custom ROM on it by first rooting the OS. The MOTOACTV only has a back key so he added a Honeycomb-like interface with on-screen controls. He also managed to get applications working on it so you can play Angry Birds on it among others, as demonstrated in the video below. You will of course need fingers as thin as toothpicks to operate it properly but the performance is quite good, probably due to the low resolution display which would not tax the hardware much.

You can check it out in action in the video below. For information on how to root the MOTOACTV and pictures of the insides, click on the source link below.

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