Android apps on non-android OS

[SNESFAN]

The subject of android on the Pandora infuriates me like none other. 2 Years my friends... 2 years... and not even an ounce of progress from that ancient internet video of it booting by a dev that took off a while ago. I've all but given up hope that it will ever happen. I will try to do it once my Pandora arrives, but I'm getting to the point that I have enough android devices to hold me over, and I'm gonna get that PSP phone at some point in the near future, I've already set aside $1000 from my tax refund check "just in case"


anyway, enough of that, what this is about. One of the conversations about android on the Pandora brought up the subject of Dalvik VM emulator to run android apps. Dalvik in case you are curious is basically the guts of android that all the applications run on, it's java based and gives android a lot of it's "polish" anyway. Next month at MWC a company called Myriad, a main contributor of android mainly in the areas of the Dalvik VM, is going to be showing off their product called 'alien Dalvik' what it allows is for other OS's to run android apps.


what this could mean for the Pandora? It would allow the stubborn assholes that refuse to acknowledge the benefits of a port of android on the Pandora would allow, or the developers that have the skill to do the port but don't want to be bothered by the amount of work involved, even though it was demonstrated possible in a extremely short amount of time, and heavily documented on how to do it (given you know what you're doing). It would give both those groups of people, in addition to the rest of the community, the ability to sample "the majority" of the android catalog on the Pandora without giving up the precious angstrom as the primary (and currently only) OS.


Anyway, as you can tell it's a sore subject with me, but I'm on the edge of not even caring anymore if this happens or not as more and more devices come out that more meet my personal wants and needs. By the time I finally get mine after 2 years of waiting, I might try the Pandora once or twice and put it on the shelf with the rest of my gadgets. This will probably be the last time I bring up the subject, except for when the source of the files being mentioned comes out so hopefully someone will at least port that... unless that is also too much work. :rollseyes: anyway... enjoy


http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/myriad-alien-dalvik-runs-android-apps-on-any-phone-starting/

 

[DFP]

Would be cool if it could run Android and get it PlayStation®Certified for Playstation Suite.

 

[Coldbird]

As you said its polish, fancy widgets and whatnot... sadly those come at a price and the only reason you do not notice it on "highend" android devices is because they simply are highend... with several hundreds of mb if not gb to waste on RAM and 1ghz+ cpu minimum, this sure poses no problem there...


However running such a thing on the Pandora would end up in a catastrophe, as a lot of the available horsepower would go to waste for exactly that polish instead of what it should be used for, namely gaming and fast / good apps.


You should realize that the strength of the Pandora-OS lies within its direct connectivity to lower level hardware, there is hardly any overhead to waste power on and apps are - mostly - coded in low-level languages like C and C++ giving it yet another speedbost over interpreters...


A emulator that runs just fine on the Pandora now, would sure have trouble keeping fullspeed emulation up when a interpretive layer is stuck inbetween hardware and software...


While I do welcome the Dalvik Emulation - mostly for apps like Skype and other closed source goodies which are unlikely to ever get a Pandora port, I'm still a bit skeptical about Myriad and unsure whether such a killer application would really get opensourced in a way that we can make use of it...


But in the end... I shall step back and stay in the shadows again, seeing how this unfolds.


Thanks for the post, this sure caught my interest.

 

[Mr_Loon]

The subject of android on the pandora infuriates me like none other. 2 Years my friends... 2 years... and not even an ounce of progress from that ancient internet video of it booting by a dev that took off a while ago. I've all but given up hope that it will ever happen.

You have to remember that until the start of this year there were less than 1000 Pandoras in the wild. Now the herd is growing the chances that someone has a Pandora, an interest in getting Android running on it and most importantly the ability to do so will surely increase.

 

[SNESFAN]

I would agree that the polish brings alot of bloat, but android was originally designed for a target hardware with specs less than what the pandora offers, time has passed and newer generations of android have come and gone, and now the pandora is behind the bleeding edge.


however... the pandora shares the same hardware of that of the motorola droid, exact same TI SoC to include amount of ram. It is still able to run the newest versions of android and all of the current apps and emulators just fine. The amount of bloat you think is there is not really as bad as you think. The whole os was designed for variable lower spec'd handhelds in mind, it just takes advantage of the higher spec'd bleeding edge ones as well.

 

[Lozrus]

I have an Archos 43 here, it's a pretty neat, thin mini-tablet (OMAP 3 based, I think) which runs Android. But it has one fatal flaw, a resistive touch screen. Take it from me, Android is very frustrating to use with a resistive screen simply because it's been designed around capacitive.


For this reason alone, I really doubt anyone would enjoy using Android on the Pandora, which is a shame because in all other respects it could probably run very well. However, having Dalvik to run some apps would certainly be a bonus.


Complaining about unpaid, volounteer developers not doing it is a bit unfair. Yes it was shown running in quite a short amount of time, but I'm willing to bet that most drivers were not functioning (the biggist job with any OS port). Do you really want Android without Wi-Fi, bluetooth, sound or OpenGLES?

 

[second exodous]

Oh goody, another Android thread. It's been a while since the last one.

 

[DavidBowman]

Hey man, take a deep breath. There aren't enough Pandoras in the wild for there to have been any significant development on it just yet.


It's not as though the team promised Android on the Pandora either. Why so frustrated over something that was, at best, only a possibility?


I have the original Motorola Droid, and I can tell you that while I love it, it will not be a replacement for my Pandora. It's slow, it doesn't have a great battery, and there aren't enough apps on it that I really want to use anyway due to the interface. The Pandora appeals to me much more for everyday computing. My Droid is just my phone - a nice phone, but nothing more.

 

[mahousaru]

I would agree that the polish brings alot of bloat, but android was originally designed for a target hardware with specs less than what the pandora offers, time has passed and newer generations of android have come and gone, and now the pandora is behind the bleeding edge.

What do u mean by behind the bleeding edge?

 

[second exodous]

I would agree that the polish brings alot of bloat, but android was originally designed for a target hardware with specs less than what the pandora offers, time has passed and newer generations of android have come and gone, and now the pandora is behind the bleeding edge.

What do u mean by behind the bleeding edge?

Great, now with that remark we'll have someone look up 'fan boy' in the urban dictionary and we'll all be accused of it because the Pandora doesn't run Android. Or because we don't think it's old tech, or whatever, the definition is very board in the urban dictionary.


Anyway, we're fan boys for some reason or another.

 

[SNESFAN]

@mahou saru- bleeding edge means the latest and greatest.


@david bowman- I'm calm, just at my limit of waiting. I'm frustrated that something that would add a significant amount of functionality isn't even being looked at or worked on. Some people have openly acknowledged that they themselves are capable of doing the port but refuse to do it for moral reasons or lack of seeing the point, or whatever reason. That is what is frustrating.


@lozrus- windows/x-windows wasn't designed for a touch screens either, let alone resistive touch. But you gotta take what you get sometimes. I would gladly pay, support, contribute, or help in anyway I could, a developer that put their time into porting android. I'm going to give it a shot when I get my Pandora, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'll document everything I do or find out in hopes others are willing to do the same for me. But as time goes on, I'm just starting to care less and less.

 

[ivanovic]

@david bowman- I'm calm, just at my limit of waiting. I'm frustrated that something that would add a significant amount of functionality isn't even being looked at or worked on. Some people have openly acknowledged that they themselves are capable of doing the port but refuse to do it for moral reasons or lack of seeing the point, or whatever reason. That is what is frustrating.

Honestly, those people who got their pandora so far might not see any benefit from porting android to it. So why should they do it? Yes, open source development is often very egoistic because this model does actually *work*. You work on projects that you want/need/like and implement what you want/need/like/feel like implementing. Of course things change once you are paid for doing stuff, but so far I think no one is getting paid for porting OSes to the pandora. So basically the lack of seeing the point is about the best reason there could be.

 

[DavidBowman]

@johnsongrantr - I understand your frustration, my friend. I was a day one preorder myself. I only recently became active again because I got my shipping notice a couple weeks ago (it's waiting for pickup at my local post office now).


It'll get there. The more that get sold, the more people will develop. There was already a proof-of-concept video, I'd be willing to bet that you'll see it eventually.

 

[second exodous]

An OS that you have to be constantly be touching the screen to use doesn't work optimally on a clam shell device. If the screen was where the keypad was then it is right there for your thumbs but that is not the case. The Pandora is just not designed around Android, if you want Android it would work better on a tablet or a phone but now a clamshell gaming rig.


I just don't see how any body that wants Android for their OS would even look twice at the Pandora. Wait for Chrome OS or whatever Google is putting in the cloud for PCs.

 

[Caine]

Some people have openly acknowledged that they themselves are capable of doing the port but refuse to do it for moral reasons or lack of seeing the point, or whatever reason. That is what is frustrating.

Most developers work on Pandora software in their spare time. If they have no interest in Android, you cannot demand them to work on that regardless of whether they are capable or not. Maybe you can offer other incentives such as a bounty, though depending on the required effort (time-wise) that bounty might have to be quite high.


Your other option is to wait for a developer with an interest in Android to receive his Pandora or port it yourself.

 

[mahousaru]

Latest and greatest nowadays is a hard one to keep track of and not from just the PoV of porting Android to the Pandy, but in terms of the hand-held landscape. The biggest problem IMHO is the mega-pixel myth. Bigger numbers don't make things better, all it does is lure people into fast upgrades generating more money for the manufacturer.


Of course it isn't a bad thing as more revenue means more development giving cheaper products with more grunt, but I never thought that the OpenPandora project was about that... That is more the Sony attitude with check out how fast the hardware is vs Nintendo's innovative user interaction.


More choices of OS and applications for the Pandora is a great thing, but I think these choices should be tempered with understanding the limits of the device and creating something that works well and is enjoyable to the devs as well as the community. That said I really don't think the hardware specs of the pandy should be an issue.


*EDIT*


The following is interesting...


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/08/alien_dalvik/

 

[SNESFAN]

I understand my post was a little emotionally driven, but we're derailing from the point of the entire post, this entire thread just seems to be in responce to my reaction on why android isn't being ported, the topic was Dalvik VM on pandora, forget the android port part of it, please.


My question into this is what types of apps this allow do you speculate? Ever since the introduction of android 2.0 (I think?) android sdk allowed for programmers to use native code when writing apps. Would these apps be excluded do you think? Obviously it might be too soon to tell, but it would be interesting to hear people's thoughts on it.


Most superficial programs like webapps (webpage in an app) obviously will probally work without question. Other "light" programs were also demo'd but based off what they are saying that equaly spec'd devices should show similar performance even with this layer in between. I'm also just curious where the line in the sand is drawn? My hope upon hopes is things that use DRM (mainly my favorite internet radio app slacker) will work. But I have a feeling "the majority" are excluding these specific apps that rely heavily on DRM also the copy-protected market apps would obviously not work as you'd also need the market to validate the install on the device.


In addition to skype and slacker, there are things comming down the pipe that would be killer apps to have, such as netflix and the mentioned playstation suite the increadable amount of closed sourced games coming from gamevil, gameloft, & popcap, being able to use some of this software in addition to the.. um... matureing catalog that already exists on the pandora would definatly benifit the platform if this is possible.


It was not my intentention to to turn this into another debate on the morality of why developers are not chosing to do it, I was just expressing my frusteration with it not happening. Lets say you seen a video of your favorite game working... lets just say duke nukem... and they shown a dated video of it being in the works whenever the subject is brought up... wouldn't you be upset if they kept saying "I'm sure it's comming, just give it time" anyway I'd like that portion of the subject to end now if at all possible. kthxbai

 

[3jane]

Android 1.5 or 1.6 would have fit, but I'm afraid that the Android boat has sailed for this device.


Android hackers are all about getting the latest release working, so you're not going to get anybody excited about porting such an "old" OS now. It's ancient history man.


Best hope is one of the projects around to get Android apps running on vanilla linux. You've already noted one, and wasn't Ubuntu working on something for their netbook remix?

 

[SNESFAN]

Android 1.5 or 1.6 would have fit, but I'm afraid that the Android boat has sailed for this device.


Android hackers are all about getting the latest release working, so you're not going to get anybody excited about porting such an "old" OS now. It's ancient history man.


Best hope is one of the projects around to get Android apps running on vanilla linux. You've already noted one, and wasn't Ubuntu working on something for their netbook remix?

Yes, like I said in the first part in the post right above yours, please just forget the part about the android port, that was not the intended subject of this thread, as noted in the subject.


Anyway, the other project that has the same goal for ubuntu might also work but my money is on the guys that are basically maintaining dalvik at this point. While it may be too eairly to tell if this will be open source or not, the work they put into what is in android is all open source. It would be interesting to see which one comes to market first and has the most compatibility

 

[tsh]

Alien Davlik would certainly be interesting if it can run on top of the standard kernel within X. Since ubuntu can run on top of the android kernel, it seems practical. Is alien davlik open source? Does it even address this question? Ages ago someone mentioned that there was a way of running android apps under X - did anyone pursue this?