Android 4 Coming To the Raspberry Pi

SmartAboutThings writes "Raspberry Pi ... might be getting a functional Android port real soon. According to a post on their official blog, they have managed to port almost all the basic functions of Android 4.0 on Raspberry Pi, besides audio support. This comes after the Raspbian OS has been released for Raspberry Pi, and it promises to be 40% faster." For anyone hoping for source to the graphics accelerator, you're still out of luck: everything video related is still implemented using a blob.

Comments

Android is designed to be lightweight

[h111]

That Raspberry Pi supports Android should not come as surprise to anyone. Android has always been designed to be extremely lightweight and to be ran on minimalistic hardware. Unlike full suited competitors like iOS and Windows Phone 7, Android is best designed for feature phones and "smart" phones that don't require much.

The oddest choice, however, is that on top of the Linux stack pretty much everything runs on freaking Java virtual machine. I do hope that Rasbperry Pi, however, is not trying to emulate that. Other than that, great job guys. When you can get Android running on $29 hardware, you know you're dealing with some mad OS that can run on every piece of crap you put it on.

Great job Rasperry Pi guys!

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[Anonymous Coward]

Android does not run the Java Virtual Machine. It runs a totally different virtual machine - Dalvik. Yes, you use the Java programming language, but the bytecode is NOT Java. It's Dalvik.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[ShanghaiBill]

pretty much everything runs on freaking Java virtual machine. I do hope that Rasbperry Pi, however, is not trying to emulate that.

The Raspberry Pi has a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, which includes an ARM1176JZF 700 MHz processor. The "J" in ARM1176JZF indicates that it includes the Jazelle hardware accelerator for Java. So it should be able to run Java very efficiently.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[jawtheshark]

More close to 40€ for Model B. I know, I have two. One was from RS Components and was ~38€ and the other one was from Farnell/Element 14 and was ~42&euro, including VAT and shipping. You need a micro-usb power supply (hard to find relatively cheap, at least where I live. Best buy them with the device) and an SD card. The full price of my two Pis including SD and power supplies: 106,21€, where SD cards and power supplies were bought locally and on sale.

Now, I just need 6 more for an 8 node beowulf cluster ;-)

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[DrXym]

It doesn't use Java. It uses a register based virtual machine called Dalvik. It has been designed to be as lightweight as possible. The Android OS also uses a cut down user land and a cut down C runtime called BIONIC. It can run on low memory devices but I doubt Android 4.0 was ever envisaged to run on such a tight setup and I doubt the performance will be great.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what you're saying is that it's "write once, run anywhere but android"?

Java has never been that portable anyway. If you want to write code that you can run in virtual machines on pretty much any platform I would go for NES-compatible. There aren't many platforms out there without a NES emulator.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[Nerdfest]

Don't feed the troll (or shill). New user, brief comment history is pro-Microsoft 'information', much of which is not even true. This is a bit better than the usual over the top, obvious stuff though.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[jawtheshark]

In the price I quoted, the SD card and power supply were included. I have no need for cases and I have a big enough switch (so no wireless required). In summary: No additional costs. It's a fun little device, but it's not meant as a drop in replacement for your crappy nettop. It's to experiment with and try to build fun stuff with.

For the record, one of the things that makes it awesome is that it has RCA out and not only HMDI. Why? Because I don't own a HDTV and many people most likely have an old spare TV lying around. No additional cost. I found it thrilling to see the linux boot screen coming up on my old 83cm 16:9 CRT TV (which we use daily. We don't replace hardware that is not broken, hence I have no HDTV and won't until said CRT will break)

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Let me say this again. The thing you are buying that is called a "Raspberry Pi" is priced at $25 for the Model A unit (not yet in production) and $35 for the Model B unit (in production and commonly on backorder). Tax and shipping is separate from the retail price of the product. VAT, being a tax, is a tax and thus separate, as an additional tax, beyond the $25/$35 price. Shipping, being shipping, is shipping and thus separate, as shipping, beyond the $25/$35 price. SD cards, being SD cards, are not "Raspberry Pis" and thus are separate beyond the $25/$35 price and so on for other additional peripherals.

So though it may cost /you/ 42€ for a Raspberry Pi when you include additional costs related to complying with legal requirements, getting it to your door and creating a running setup from it that doesn't mean that the Raspberry Pi itself, which sells for $25/$35 (model depending) does not cost $25/$35. When I buy a pack of gum for $0.99 I pay $1.06 because of taxes. When I order cat food online for $25 for a case I pay $35 because of the $10 shipping. It doesn't mean my cat food isn't $25 a case. It means I pay for shipping.

Look, Newegg has 8GB of ram for $45 right now! What's that, UPS shipping is another $6? Oh no, that means Newegg really only has ram for $51. No. The ram is $45. It's advertised at $45 and it costs $45. What's that, I can go to AlliedElect and order 4 Raspberry Pis and pay $35 each and $7 shipping? I mean, $36.75 each of course, because shipping doesn't exist and isn't priced separately.

Look, the 13" Apple Macbook Pro with Retina Display is $1200. Wait, tax isn't included in that, how dare Apple claim their computer is $1200 when I have to pay $1275 for it? Despicable, it is. It makes me wretch.

Stop pretending that the Raspberry Pi foundation is being disingenuous about pricing when 1. they have always marketed it as a just the actual computing device, not the storage, or the power supply, or the display or keyboard or mouse or modem or electricity or sense of smug self satisfaction you get from claiming they're lying and 2. it's not their fault that you have to pay for shipping and VAT.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[Tapewolf]

I heard there were licensing implications for using the Jazelle module, which is why nobody does...

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[jawtheshark]

Europeans have the strange habit of looking at the full cost of a device. To a European that 13" Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display costs 1275€, and *surpise* in the European stores it is that way that it will be displayed. (Given VAT is more around 20% than something else, that MBPro would be 1440€ and shipping most likely complimentary)

I have never said that the Raspberry Pi foundation has been disingenuous about pricing,. I just told what such a thing would cost effectively. In the end, to the customer, it is that price that matters.

Finally, I have the invoice of my Farnell Raspberry Pi on my desk here right now and it says: 27,25 GBP, without VAT, without shipping. Go figure, that isn't 35$ either! It's 42$. I'd wager to say that getting a 35$ sans-tax, sans-shipping Raspberry Pi is impossible today. Perhaps in a year, but now? Definitely not. Do I blame anyone for that? Of course not! It's still a nice toy which is not expensive.

I have a hard time understanding what provoked the aggressive tone in your post, as I just tried to show to others what they as a customer will pay. It still isn't much.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[RabidReindeer]

Java has never been that portable anyway.

You're doing it wrong, then. Even Android Java is portable at the source level as long as you stay away from the the Android-specific packages and keep to the basics.

You can't be all things to all people, but Sun did a fairly good job of making something that did a reasonable approximation while at the same time hooking efficiently into the native platform OS.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[drinkypoo]

I would love a $50 model that has a gig (or dare I ask for more?) on board.

VIA has something you should look at. Only 512MB but that's an improvement anyway. Unfortunately they want $30 for shipping, which is asstacular.

Re:Android is designed to be lightweight

[TheRaven64]

Jazelle is not publicly documented. The technology basically reserves a few registers for VM state and the rest for the stack of the current program. You use a special branch-to-Jazelle-mode instruction and then it starts executing Java bytecodes, trapping into the emulator for complex ones. There are two problems with this. The first is that the lack of documentation and the requirement to pay a patent license fee if you do use it even with the (expensive) documentation means that there is no open source implementation. The second is that it executes JVM bytecodes, not Dalvik ones.

Maybe not that lightweight

[Dr. Manhattan]

On the other hand, Android likes a bit more RAM than 256MB. My original Droid has 256MB of RAM, and had some issues with version 2.2 (Froyo). I had to do some fairly extensive tweaking to get acceptable performance with Cyanogenmod (2.3 Gingerbread). I'd be quite nervous to try to run ICS with that amount of RAM...

Re:Maybe not that lightweight

[Fallingcow]

It continues to amaze me that modern "light weight" operating systems are so much more resource hungry BeOS was, doing essentially the same tasks—especially since they get to offload so much basic UI work to the graphics chip!

My phone's much more powerful than my old Pentium 133Mhz machine w/ 64MB RAM (luxury, I know) was, yet BeOS on that clunker was 100x more responsive and less prone to weird UI bugs, brief hangs, and outright lockups than my Android phone. iOS is (a lot) better, but still very greedy and bloated by comparison.

Then again, it ran circles around its contemporaries in the desktop operating system arena (including Linux), so maybe it was just so good that it's asking too much to expect even a company with vast resources to write something comparably nimble and capable.

Re:Maybe not that lightweight

[pipeep]

They do get to offload a lot of the work to the graphics chip, which undoubtedly helps, but they're also expected to perform compositing now, and typically to include all sorts of extra graphical effects. On top of that, as h111 mentioned, we have all these interpreted languages and VMs (such as Dalvik), and all the work done by modern web browsers to handle fancy interactive websites.

It's the price we (or rather, perhaps, the typical consumers) pay for prettier graphics and easier software development.

Re:Maybe not that lightweight

[Fallingcow]

Than Android? Than Windows and Linux in the same time period?

To either I say: hahahahahaha.

Bee Ess

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is designed to be lightweight? What nonsense.

Ice Cream Sandwich? Raspberry Pie? I think I gained five pounds just reading this article.

Lightweight? I think not.