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Android 4 Coming To the Raspberry Pi

Posted by Unknown on from the working-down-the-feature-list dept.

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.

9 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Android is designed to be lightweight by h111 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Android is designed to be lightweight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Android is designed to be lightweight by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Android is designed to be lightweight by DrXym · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Android is designed to be lightweight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    5. Re:Android is designed to be lightweight by ZeroSumHappiness · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Android is designed to be lightweight by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Maybe not that lightweight by Dr.+Manhattan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --
    PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
    1. Re:Maybe not that lightweight by Fallingcow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.