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Intel Porting Android To x86 For Netbooks and Tablets
According to Liliputing, Intel is bringing the sweet eye candy of Android to x86, which — if all goes well — means it will land on (more) netbooks and tablets soon. I'm more excited about ARM-based tablets, for their current advantage in battery life, but the more the merrier, when it comes to breaking up the tight circle of OSes available for any given arbitrary class of computing devices. Given all the OS swings that the OLPC project has gone through, maybe it should be thinking of Android, too.
1.6 has been ported by the community for some time now.
http://www.android-x86.org/
As a Mac "Fanboy" as some would say here, I'm glad this is happening. I think the more competition in OS's the better. Apple changed the whole smartphone landscape with the iPhone, and Google challenged Apple to step up their game with Android. No need to start a flame war. When tech companies compete, the consumer wins because of more choices in the market.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I guess this is a reponse to Meego 1.0 coming out for netbooks as a free download. I don't think meego will amount to much, but if it creates enough competition to push android ahead, that'll be cool.
Still... regarding Android on x86, I'd really prefer to see an ARM/OMAP-3 release, to run on N900s etc. There's a hack available now, but device drivers are still an issue.
More importantly... what's the status of Marketplace on this "port"? Is marketplace now open for anyone to use if they install Android? If not, this port will be useless, except as a dev platform or an interesting proof of concept.
I personally prefer the direction Intel was going with Moblin/Meego to Android. I wonder if this means Intel is going to leave Meego development up to Nokia?
Till we have x86 pocket computers on par with the droid or the iphone, hopefully they wont be as locked down however...
In terms of performance per Watt, the Core i7 family beats ARM significantly, last I checked. In terms of idle performance, the ARM tears it up, of course, coming in at a quarter watt versus about ten times that for the Core 2 Duo. The Atom, in turn, slaughters comparable ARM CPUs in idle power, with comparable performance-per-watt, but has lower total performance-per-clock, IIRC.
What does this tell us? Maximizing battery performance of a device depends on expected load. For a device that's idle most of the time (e.g. a phone), go with Atom if you don't need faster total performance, otherwise go with ARM. For a device that's expected to be doing work much of the time (e.g. a laptop), go with a C2D or something. Not only do you get better performance per watt, you also get better total performance, better compatibility (e.g. Wine instead of a full emulator stack) with existing computer-based applications, etc. I can't imagine an i7 in my phone. I similarly can't imagine an ARM in my laptop any time in the near future.
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I have been running Android 1.6 on an old eeepc 701 for quite a while now, thanks to the good folks over at android-x86.org. Android is quite well suited to a low power, small screen machine like the 701.
Also, consider this: When running the android bowser, more and more sites default to a mobile version. I've found that the mobile versions of many sites are preferable to the full versions. I suspect this is at least partly to do with the mobile interface being streamlined.
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The mention of arm tablets in the same arena makes me want to puke!. Arm cannot do enough to be a real computer, only a pocket toy. I want to see more X86 tablets and Atom isn't good enough either. AMD or Via has a good enough x86 for this though. I actually would prefer the Via Nano if they ever get a bit more horsepower in it.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
"Eeep!" - Microsoft
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Can I feed this troll mommy?
Actually I think you have is ass backwards.
The tablet computer is designed to be carried around, and have long battery life. It is not designed for serious computational work. The proper way of doing stuff these days, is to have a big ass computer at home which can do your real work, and the tablet as a sort of mobile interface to its power when that kind of owe is necessary.
Most of the time it won't be because you don't need that kind of power just to browse the web.
Really? Because I'm using an iPad right now in the form of a computer because it replaced my MacBook Pro. It seems to have plenty of horsepower to run browsers, iWork, and Skype. Which is pretty much what I ran on my old laptop and that is what most people using desktops are doing. Seems to be powerful enough to do what I, and most people not on Slashdot, need.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
What OLPC OS swings? The ones being shipped today, like million plus that have been distributed over the last few years, still use Sugar on top of customized Fedora.
eclecti.cc
No kidding. OP needs to dial down the fanboi-ism a bit. I like android quite a bit, but it's not due to "sweet eye candy" of which there is precious little present by default. Android is notable foremost because it works nicely for certain use cases (small form factor touch screens, small focused micro applications) not because it looks pretty.
Given all the OS swings that the OLPC project has gone through, maybe they should be thinking of Android, too.
Funny you should mention that. According to Negroponte, XO-3 will most likely use Adroid. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/one-laptop-per-child-android-meet-dr-negroponte/3976
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Seriously. The whole reason I bought an incredible was because I felt the default UI of android devices was so ugly. It's worth a big delay in updates just to move a bit beyond that.
Everything will be taken away from you.
So where would this leave Chrome OS theoretically?
... Is Microsoft's tablet/small device OS?
Yes, there are "tablet" versions of Windows ever since XP, but where is the small, lightweight, finger friendly OS for tablets?
I brought this very fact up earlier in another post with regards to Microsoft's ability for growth here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1695766&cid=32667752
Fine, we've got a computer on every desktop as Bill Gates dreamed, and Microsoft has 90 percent of the market, since the late 1990s. When this happened, the question to have been asked was "Now What?" Apparently nobody asked, not in 10 years, at least. They got soft. Complacent.
Vaporware and demo products don't count. I had someone honestly tell me that KIN was not meant to be profitable, or even good. What? Is this what softies actually believe?
Microsoft: Google is eating your lunch. Apple is eating your lunch. Every mobile device maker is eating your lunch.
Oh well. That's like telling the same thing to IBM in 1980s when the clone makers started making "IBM Compatible" PCs. IBM didn't listen then, and Microsoft won't listen now. The King never listens when he's been told he's naked.
--
BMO
Cloud-based touch-centric resource efficient virtual desktops running on x86 virtual machines, from any client running any architecture.
What this means, literally, is that Intel has decided not to go down with the ship.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
sweet eye candy of Android to x86
Really?
Pointing out to delusional people that they are delusional is rarely productive.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
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But will current android apps with this port? In other words, are apps interpreted or binary?
If they are binary, then google has to make sure developers make a universal binary, like apple did with their PPC->intel transistion.... or this effort will be DOA.
The absurd part is the 'seems to be powerful enough', and 'browsers, iWork and Skype'. You're defending the iPad on the basis of it being "good enough" when for half the price it costs, you could get a low end laptop/high end netbook with no need for qualifiers like that. And rather crucially, this would be a platform that could expand easily to meet future unseen needs you may have, unlike the iPad, from which you must get a permission slip from Hallmonitor Jobs.
How many USB ports did your old MacBook have?
I'd love to have that functionality in my android phone.
In terms of performance per Watt, the Core i7 family beats ARM significantly, last I checked. In terms of idle performance, the ARM tears it up, of course, coming in at a quarter watt versus about ten times that for the Core 2 Duo. The Atom, in turn, slaughters comparable ARM CPUs in idle power, with comparable performance-per-watt, but has lower total performance-per-clock, IIRC.
Bizarro world, apparently. I just searched for the DMIPS/mW figures for a Core i7 and an ARM Cortex A8. Guess what, the first clue is that the Core i7 is listed in DMIPS/Watt. A Core i7 is about 1DMIPS/mW, while a Cortex A8 is about 16DMIPS/mW. The ARMs are an order of magnitude more efficient. I didn't really have to search - it's common knowledge in the industry and it's always funny seeing Slashdot articles and posts which haven't got this yet.
The Atom is still nowhere near: about 2DMIPS/mW. Even that sucks for idle consumption compared to pretty much anything ARM even from 5 years ago. Most ARM SoCs made for a portable device idle - and we're talking total system with background processing here - somewhere between 5-50mW depending on whether you're talking about an MP3 player or a big tablet. The clue, as always, is that Intel stuff is talked about in Watts, not milliwatts.
Basically the only thing Intel CPUs are better at is peak performance, and by a large margin. Not performance/watt. Not idling. Atom, when we're talking complete system, doesn't even have a peak performance advantage compared to Cortex-A9 based SoCs. And all that peak in an Core i7 goes to waste because you just don't need it for the target devices.
Android is (almost!) free and that's cool and all. But see, I don't really want to run such OS on a PC.
Give me my standard library, and C. Then I can build whatever I need.
How many usb ports does your Ipad have and, for that matter, how much SD memory can you plug in. For much less money, I have a netbook that does so much more. No permission needed to install what I want. I really want a tablet in the same (or a little higher) price range that do the same thing.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
I'm more excited about ARM-based tablets, for their current advantage in battery life...
This advantage seems to have gone away, more or less. ARM chips use less power because they're RISC, which means fewer transistors. And guess what? Intel's low-power Atom is also RISC (the complex x86 instruction set is emulated using "micro-ops") and seems to do OK with power consumption. My own Atom-based Netbook can make a battery last all day.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all but as an owner of a Motorola Droid that switches back and forth from Eris to Froyo, I have to say I think the interface looks very nice. I love the Droid Sans fonts, they're very easy to read from a distance. I like the style of the widgets. The buttons, toggles, radio buttons, menus, etc. are all attractive. The gradients are dialed in very well. They aren't too much like you see in some themes and they aren't too overly subtle either. The default colors look good. Not over saturated like you get elsewhere. I'm really curious. I mean, what is it exactly that you are wanting here?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
More fragmentation. Just what we needed.
Oh, wait. Fragmentation. The connotations are disturbing...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In this context it is impossible to say, because Apple actually makes their own Free and open source OS, and gives it away to anybody who wants it.
They do? Which one?
It'll be fun to see how ugly, slow, and choppy Android is on a bigger screen though. I was actually shocked to discover how awful it really is.
Ahh..So the SCREEN is what defines the speed of the device..
Silly me.. All these years I've been upgrading processors and video cards.. I could have just got a smaller screen and had a faster computer..
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
"They do? Which one?"
Its called Darwin and it has existed for years and years. It is a blend of FreeBSD and Mach, with quite a bit of other innovative stuff thrown in for good measure. I am surprised that you never heard about it.
"Ahh..So the SCREEN is what defines the speed of the device..
Silly me.. All these years I've been upgrading processors and video cards.. I could have just got a smaller screen and had a faster computer.."
Not at all. I just think it will be funny to see people attempting to use Android as a replacement for a netbook.
I think not many people realize that an iPad is tethered to some sort of PC/laptop which runs iTunes. It looks like it will replace the desktop/laptop for a lot of things. But since you have to sync it for music, movies and updates, it becomes an additional expense -- BESIDES the desktop/laptop. Not only an expense, but it's an additional desktop/laptop to maintain as well. Maintenance costs time.
Apple wants to have your money. And you're going to pay it.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Its called Darwin and it has existed for years and years. It is a blend of FreeBSD and Mach, with quite a bit of other innovative stuff thrown in for good measure. I am surprised that you never heard about it.
In all honesty.. Never heard of it. I stand enlightened.
Not at all. I just think it will be funny to see people attempting to use Android as a replacement for a netbook.
Why? Is it really any stranger a concept than putting another phone OS on a netbook with no keyboard?
There is not only no reason why a netbook can't have a touch screen, but it has already been done. So not limited to a tiny track pad or optical sensor of some kind for any physical reason.
A phone OS if anything is a better fit for a small screen netbook than an OS more normally associated with and designed for a full sized computer. Windows on a small screen yuck. To be honest, anything under 1024X768.. Forget it. And chunky UI 7.. even worse. Same with a non modified Linux install, and then we have the problem of each manufacturer making their own half assed variation on a distro that may never be updated properly. Android on the other hand is designed for lower resolution screens and low powered processors, has a nice selection of applications, a good community going, and some pretty impressive capabilities.
As an example.. There are some really nice Japanese models that would fit the bill quite nicely. Already in existence, so not some vapour ware thing that may never see the light of day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCkVhuCC6tU
Beats the iPad in pretty much every specification. More easily portable, more powerful, more connectivity out of the box, lighter, longer battery life.. Ticks all the boxes. About the only thing against it is the price. Make it about £200-250 and you have a sale.
Add a light weight OS with a large number of low power applications, and you have a nice useful little gadget. If it uses an X86 processor, no ties to just Android for those of us who like to tinker.
Personally.. If I could justify one of these, I'd buy it. Anything that gets much bigger than a DVD case however, becomes less casually portable, which is really the only sane reason for such a device.
We will see what we will see, The whole thing may end up being a disaster. But I wouldn't bet against Android being quite successful on small form factor netbooks/enbiggened PDAs.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.