Android 4.0 is coming! - Raspberry Pi

Wow, going places….this is great.

Cant wait!!!

damn, it is really smooth
any eta for a release?

Wow, this is impressive, now if only we could hook wiimotes up as input devices and id have this setup on my tv anyday

If you can hook up a bluetooth dongle to your rpi that should be possible. there are already open source drivers.
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiimote/Library#Input_interpreters

Great news. I am so happy. Brings an easy to use Java dev. environment to the Raspberry Pi. So, So, So happy. I am an Android developer who has a Raspberry Pi.

There’s already an accelerated full JDK in the repos:

root@raspberrypi:/tmp# java -version
java version “1.6.0_24”
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.11.1) (6b24-1.11.1-6)
OpenJDK Zero VM (build 20.0-b12, mixed mode)

So you’ll have a choice of VMs.

A choice of VMs, although Android doesn’t use a Java VM, it uses a Dalvik VM. The Java bytecodes get translated into DEX bytecodes on installation. So it all hangs on how well DEX code performs on the RPi compared to Java.

Any ETA on Android-compatible VideoCore libs?

Have you noticed that the Android mouse cursor has the same colour scheme as the RISC OS mouse cursor? Is that a coincidence or does Android have a RISC OS fan developing for it?

That’s just the standard android mouse cursor colour scheme.

I noticed that too!

It is a similar colour to the RISC OS one, isn’t it?

The RISC OS one had a longer “tail” though, I think; maybe twice the length.

I wonder how well it will work with the Android version of XBMC
But so far it looks amazing!!!
I cant wait to get my Pi to start playing with this stuff!!!

That looks awesome. Please make the kernel sources and appropriate firmware and library files available, if possible.

Amazing!

So where can we grab a copy of Naren’s port in progress of Android 4.0?

Even pre-convergance I think many of us would really enjoy tinkering with Ice Cream Sandwich.

In the meantime there are a few CyanogenMOD Android Pi images available here:
http://androidpi.wikia.com/wiki/Android_Pi_Wiki

To avoid a million different forks appearing, we’re going to wait until we have a release candidate, which I’d anticipate taking at least a month at the moment. We’ll be making an announcement here as soon as that’s ready, of course.

*sigh* I appreciate your intent, but that means I have to make start making weird forks from the CyanogenMOD Android Pi images (their 4.0 image is much less stable than Naren’s appears to be). I can’t wait a whole month before getting my hands dirty! I urge you to reconsider. Please trust the very eager, enthusiastic, and quickly growing Rpi community to fork responsibly.

What ? There’s nothing else to do with the Raspberry Pi ? Answers like yours isn’t very nice regarding the foundation.
If you really can’t wait, you can always buy an expensive smartphone or tablet and use Android on that thing.

Oliver, I think you misunderstand me. I don’t need to wait for their release or buy a tablet. I already have Android running on my pi. It just happens to be a far less stable build than the one Eben, et al. are demoing here. Liz/Eben inform me that they shan’t release their build yet because it is in their opinion not ready yet, and they wish to avoid unnecessary forks of Android for pi. Unfortunately I fear their actions will have exactly the opposite effect. It leads eager people like me who genuinely want to contribute, into making our own forks where we attempt to remake the same code they are sitting on but won’t yet release. Ultimately not releasing any code for a month gives people like me that much time to generate code on our own. Code which is likely to be far more divergent & fractious, than if we has access to their build in it’s current form. Given that RPi is a GNU/Open-source project I don’t think is unreasonable of me to request access to the code (which I understand is unstable), nor is it unkind of me to make my own forks in an attempt to reproduce what they’ve shown here in lieu of access to their build.

This is not how it works.

Whats the harm, as long you have one repo marked as ‘official’?

I really don’t get this.

I know people want to play with Android on the Pi, but what Naren’s demoing here isn’t suitable for release yet. Once we have something we’re happy shows off the Pi’s capabilities in the best light we’ll happily release the code into the wild.

I’m with the ‘official’ stance on waiting for a bit more polish on this. As someone who’s fed up re-integrating and merging forks I’ll wait. Can respect that others would love to get their hands on it sooner :D

“Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” – Eric S. Raymond

As a developer and a customer, I would just like to know what is the possible harm in releasing this code to other developers? I understand you think it’s “not suitable for release” and you don’t want it to fork. However, that’s the joy of open source. We get to play with code that’s not ready and we get to fork code all we want. It’s of course your choice to do whatever you want, but I really hope you embrace the open source philosophy. I’d rather stand on your shoulders than start porting android over myself. You never know, we might be able to help and contribute solutions to issues you’re having….that’s the whole point isn’t it?

If michaelr has the skill he could just contact Razdroid himself and help them through the provided link. This is not an anti-open source move Eben is making here. I’d assume he just doesn’t want to officially support something himself until it is ready. With anything he does the community will flock to it. If that puts the rasberry pi in a bad light then he has made a mistake. I don’t think a guy like Eben got as far as he has in life by making mistakes all the time. With all he has done for us, we should definitely not lecture him about the merits of open source. He has done so much to be as transparent as possible with everything. Not to mention how much Liz has also devoted to making it successful. It is an amazing outcome and it deserves our complete respect.

Thank you Arms – that’s very much appreciated.

Another month gone by…and still nothing, huh? How is ignoring your customers, not releasing early, and not releasing often working out? Razdroid is running fine for me and I assume diverging further and further from your code. Good luck!

Charmed, I’m sure.

“Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” – Eric S. Raymond

Another month gone…

“The wise make proverbs, and fools repeat them.” – Isaac D’Israeli.

And repeat them. And repeat them…

That is awesome! I am waiting for the release!

I like the idea of this very much. Android is a very usable platform for a lot of stuff that the Raspberry Pi excels at actually doing. I am curious, however, how well does Android 4.0 run on the RPi? Isn’t it generally optimized more for 512MiB+ memory devices like 3.0, or is it more low memory friendly? (I’m losing track at this point of the different versions I’ll admit.) Otherwise might it be better to aim more for a version like 2.3, which is still supported by basically all modern software?

On the subject of software-support, how well will this run? I know a lot of software has ridiculous requirements like actually requiring that you have a multi-touch screen device (something I’ve found out the painful way since my Android PDA is single-touch) when they shouldn’t really need it (I could understand devs not wanting to go through the extra effort of developing to support both — though if you’re producing a commercial app this laziness seems unforgivable to me since it’s not THAT hard to support both — but many don’t really need it and just use it for zooming or something which is easily solved by having zoom buttons or even no zoom at all in some cases.) I noticed also though that, when I tried the Android x86 port, results were BAD. Almost no software at all would work with it. I’m not sure what requirement it was basically failing since Android is braindead enough to refuse to tell you why a software is unable to install when a requirement isn’t met (which has annoyed me on a few occasions when something that was previously compatible suddenly declares with a later version that it is not and won’t install anymore and won’t really tell me why not.) If it was the interface at fault though it could be a problem since this thing is basically the same in that respect (eg keyboard + mouse rather than touchscreen would be the norm. I know people can add a touchscreen, but not many will increase the costs that much.) Will we be seeing a decent compatibility range in the reasonable future, or is it going to be as crippled as Android x86 is? Because I found Android x86 to be basically useless even on a device that it had excellent support for like my EeePC (where I would have to assume the maximum amount of hardware support was present.)

Omg, if I can get Shadowgun to run on my Pi I won’t need an Ouya! Can you say $35 game console?

Nope,

Tegra 3 is MUCH more capable (CPU wise) than the rPI & it has 4x the RAM

And GPU-wise, Tegra 3 is a total disaster compared to the BCM2835. Sure it’s stronger on the CPU, but for a games console, I’d suggest that a GPU needs to be as capable as possible, and almost any high-end application processor would have been a better choice than a Tegra 3. Plus it’s much more expensive, runs far hotter…and RAM isn’t an integral part of the chip, it’s something we (and Tegra devices like OUYA) add *to* the SOC.

“and RAM isn’t an integral part of the chip, it’s something we (and Tegra devices like OUYA) add *to* the SOC.”
Ram isn’t but the memory controller is. And the details (types of memory supported, bus width and number of chip selects) of the memory controller determine how what type and how many ram dies are supported and hence how much ram can affordablly be hooked up .

My understanding is that the SoC on the Pi only supports one die of ram compared to 4-8 dies for some higher end arm chips and 64 dies for a desktop intel chip.

Further my understanding is with DDR3, 2 gigabit (256 megabyte) dies are the norm, 4 gigabit dies are available but at a premium and 8 gigabit dies are not really available yet except in small quantities for testing.

Hi Liz, perhaps you should warn the Ouya team? What is the point of having the Ouya setup if it is low on GPU power.
Also, how did you manage to get a better GPU than them (or the android USB CPU makers who use the MALI 400) at a lower cost?

Because Eben works for Broadcom on the Videocore GPU series.

I very much doubt you’d be able to run Shadowgun. It probably uses native code that will have been compiled for ARMv7 and which won’t work on the Raspberry Pi.

Android running on Raspberry Pi sounds like similar project Ouya device which has created lot of interest via Kickstarter program.
I would like to see this release candidate comes out within a month, so that I dont have to wait for the Ouya to be release in 18 months.
Android has more popular games/apps than what is available already for linux flavour out there.

Question to the foundation, how can we see the progress of Naresh?

Not quite, the Ouya uses a Tegra 3 quad core SoC, which is a lot faster and more modern, and has a ton more GPU power.. it’s broadly the same as what you’d find in a Galaxy SIII or a Nexus 7, both of which have a lot more raw horsepower than the Pi.

Not entirely true. The Videocore IV GPU is a better device that the Tegra 3 GPU – the CPU on the Tegra is more powerful, but the GPU is less powerful than the Raspi.

Well, that’s a bit misleading… As it stands, you need to purchase extra codecs for decoding mpeg2 and vc-1 streams. Beyond this, there is no comparison when it comes to 3D processing, or more demanding loads overall. If all you need to do is playback video, the Broadcom chip is plenty… If you need more, such as for gaming, especially 3D, the Tegra 3 is a better option. There’s also the entire package to consider, not just the video playback.

proper cool. well done Naren.

I’ve been waiting for Android to order :)

2 PI FOR ME PLEASE ! :O , THX YOU !

This is certainly very encouraging news indeed, and I am sure we all wish Naren good luck… and good speed, with this project!

Watch this space… as they say! :)

Please, could you comment on how the Python is going to be supported by Android? From that I understand, in Debian one can easily download binaries and use Python in no time.

there is a scripting layer via the app “SL4A”
no idea if this is a good tutorial, but it is one: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/mo-python-sl4a-1/index.html

Can’t wait, been trying some x86 versions on an old Dell Mini 10v, but no working network support as yet, so this would be great

Would anyone like to speculate whether access to GPIO would be possible when running Android on th Pi.

~~Pics~~ disk image or it didn’t happen!

This would work great with a touch monitor!
Any ETA for a release?????

It’s hilarious that ICS can be ported to the Pi while 90% of cell carrier devices in the field today will never be upgraded only because the carriers don’t want to bother spending any of their customers’ former money. It’s too bad Google’s threat to become a carrier was really just a head fake to try to pry concessions out of the incumbent carriers, which failed.

For many apps, multi-touch is required, the piggy apps that only run in 1+ GB of RAM systems aren’t going to fit, and the sloppy joe apps that need 1+ GHz of processor speed are going to be outta luck. So, that narrows it down to … the ICS start screen and system user interface menus? :D

“narrows it down to … ” anything but games and augmented reality

And any apps that rely heavily on sqlite or other datastorage systems that are not directly file based.

(I’m an Android developer – RAM is a big problem on Android. You’ll be hard pushed to get DECENT apps running within anything less than 256mb, and even thats pushing it)

To give you an idea, a basic app with a small sqlite database containing a simple list of names will take up around 80mb of ram alone.

I love the diverse developments owners are using their Pi’s for.

We all want tomorrow’s generation to be more adept at understanding what is going on inside their computers and using this information to enhance their experience. And educate them for the future jobs market.

However will developments like this serve to dilute the message of the foundation? By encouraging more people to use the platform as just another media server.

There are many of these available already this one is only £59 http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/03af8ae8#/03af8ae8/1

This is not meant to be a criticism of this work which should benefit all users, just an opening shot to encourage debate.

Oooh, can you say Netflix on the Pi? :D

Please make sure to include the USB gadget modules in the Android kernel. That way, someone can write a library to create an Android Open Accessory accessing the GPIO pins.

Now all we need is for someone to develop a cheap screen (not necessarily touch-sensitive) that can be used with it (preferably a little more portable than a 15″ LCD!), so it can be used out and about…

some folks have modified a motorola atrix lapdock to use as a screen, they often come up discounted and ebay has afew

How did you deal with the hardware-accelerated EGL 2.0 that apparently Android 4.x needs to run? Were you able to use the binary blobs from the Linux releases? Or are there open source EGL userspace drivers?

Thank you for working on this port.

Now if I could only get an in-dash screen that didn’t suck ass resolution-wise, this would work great as an in-dash carpc.

You would need to modify the mount and it is a bit pricey but how about this…..

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HD-1080P-7-inch-LCD-Field-Camera-Top-Video-Monitor-Kit-DSLR-HDMI-IN-battery-/280791776732?pt=AU_Cameras_Photographic_Accessories&hash=item41607e7ddc

“Super bright 1080P HD DSLR 7 inch monitor…”
“Screen Resolution: 800 x 480”
:-S

Whoops missed that!

There was however a 9.7″ screen with better. Still looking for a touchscreen one though!

Adafruit has a burgeoning selection of RPi accessories. Including this nifty 2″ screen:
http://adafruit.com/products/911

OMG! I just need a matching keyboard….. Then my son’s guinea pigs can have RaspBMC too!

He’s already appropriated MY RPi to use as a media server in his bedroom :(

I’d never have dreamt of such a thing when I was 6!

sweet now that xbmc is also coming to android, we have a big platform that runs on arm and has alot of apps :)

Well this in combination with the fact they are porting XBMC to Android makes me think some legs in this project yet :)

The mot important question for me is can I use it to play angry birds?

Ditto!

Judging from the daily removal of birds from my fruit cage, rasspberrys and angry brids don’t go together.

Yes. Seen it running fine on other Videocore IV based devices.

I wonder is also Jelly Bean possible? This release seems to be optimized quite much.

Awesome! I cant wait!

I wonder if it is possible use grub or similar to dual boot with linux?

Greg

Wouldn’t it be easier just to change card in SD slot?

… and I’m really struggling to go the other way and get linux running on my arm-based tablet so it can do something useful. Grrr!!!

You guys should target Jelly Bean for this. Project Butter and the UI speed improvements will help with the stutter in the UI!!! Still with ICS working, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get JB working. Great work guys :)

Since I have 4.1.1 on my phone it’s a lot more responsive! I think this would be a good idea!

“Touch the circle”
/me touches the screen *nothing happens*
/me touches it harder *nothing happens*
/me touches it EVEN harder *screen breaks*

That’s why Android isn’t ready for non-touchscreens :p

You plug a mouse in you donut.

LMAO! That just made my day :)

Would it be possible theoretically to add the Xbox connect thing to this so you could just do all the tapping etc for a keyboard and mouse from a distance?

That may be a good idea. It would be almost like using a tablet and therefore interface better with the Pi. Could use the motion sensing or whatever on the Kinect to use the UI and apps aswell as playing Android games. Anyone else know more about this?

Maybe even the wii remote would be a good idea for motion control

I can’t wait!

will it have google play?

I think screw Ice cream sandwich. it was so short lived and that jelly bean should prevail. why not skip ICS and go strait to jelly bean. you would already get project butter and it would run ultranice.

It’s not that simple. Its takes a colossal amount of effort to get GPU accelerated Android running. Effort that started at Broadcom well over a year ago (and with a big team of people). ICS isn’t that short lived if you are developing the underlying code for that long.
Although JB is an incremental upgrade to ICS, so the jump, once all the underlying stuff is working right, shouldn’t be that great.

With ics would this mean that flash would work in the browser? It’s a bit of a bummer that the linux side of things won’t be supporting flash any time soon…

cool! great that android is coming to PI. i don’t have a problem waiting to get my raspberry pi. one month is nothing.. thanks guys for the great product that is raspberry pi.

I’m not sure if this comment belongs here or elsewhere or if it’s been said before, but I think the important thing is not how good or not the Raspberry Pi hardware is, or how suitable it is for using with any particular OS but more about giving people the opportunity to run whatever they want on it and use their skills or just plain determination to get it to run well. The ‘limitations’ of the Raspberry Pi will lead to efficient programming and inventive/ingenious solutions. I believe modern PCs with their enormous amounts of memory and fast processors ( my first computer, a Transam Triton, had 1k of RAM and a 1kHz processor) has led to some very lazy programming, with the answer to it not running very fast or well to be just add more memory or faster processor. I look forward to seeing what people get their Raspberry Pi to do, and I think a lot will surprise us.
That’s it, said my piece. :-)

As long as it supports touchscreen the it will be perfect for my carputer project. I don’t care if it is a multitouch or not but would not complain if it did. :)

I am right there with you. I am currently running Centrafuse on Windows 7, and it has not met my expectations. I hope that a raspberrypi running android will do much better!

exactly what i will be using it for, already have a dell inspiron 6400 15.4″ screen, a logic converter board off ebay from “NJYTOUCH” and a 15.4″ touch resistive overlay screen to go with… so android hurry the fook up please :)

wonder if the onlive app will work? that would make a nice games console

waiting for ics, come on guys!! :D

Come on guys! Release it already!! Doesn’t need to be perfect!

yeah, I’d like to try it, where can I get it?

Looks fantastic, did you do any benchmarks? I wonder how it does in quadrant.

This is an awesome thing to buy and play around with. Really would be cool to have a tiny computer that runs android.

You should probably update the faq question about Android with a link to this post

wow .. android 4.0 on rasberry pi ,
search ends here.

but will it work smoother and faster

Please please please release the android app ASAP

Wanna create a car pc with obd2 reader output to car double din player

Fantastic! Icecream and Pi works for me mmmmm.

thanks a lot for working on this port!

i wish i could help for faster progress…
mhm

What steps would it take once android is ported to run gps via the pi? if say for example an external usb gps was added. would support be native?

what about gps ?
i can use dongle-usb-gps ?
there are gps module exist in kernel ?
or i need compile new kernel with gps module ?

raspberry pi application as GPS for car with LCD (there are 10inch in market)
it can be very very good

one problem to applicate it as gps is kernel modules if need connect external usb module gps .

Many GPS devices simply appear to the kernel as a serial device. Bluetooth GPSes do as well.

I would hate to throw a Fork/Spanner into the works but the Android Market(Google Play) is closed to Unlicenced hardware… All of those Free apps are not obtainable?

I recently bought an Android Tablet from a major well known store(Wal Mart) and found out that I cannot use the Android Market to get apps for it. I was limited to the few apps offered with GetJar which were full of ads!

Yes it would be nice to get the Android Market with this port of Android on the Pi because of the thousands of apps that are already made to run for it.

This Hardware “Licencing” will take a bit to work out with Google if they would even look at it.

I know having a Linux port like Android would make the Pi more useful but I would hate to see something as Open Source as being Locked Out.

I had a device that didn’t have access to the android market. If I wanted to, I could have ‘rooted’ the device which would have allowed me access. But I’m not sure of the legitimacy of such a use.

I did however use the Amazon AppStore. I’m not sure of its availability outside the US, but is has a reasonable array of free and paid apps. Not as good as the Market but far far better than most of the manufacturer supplied alternatives offered on cheap tablets.

side loading? Who needs anything more than netflix and hulu plus? Well a web browser with flash enabled hulu plus anyway

Any progress on the broadcom drivers?

Currently i’m using 200 Pi to interface with a business application over HTTP all over the campus and would love to use Android 4 to do so.

We are using touchscreens and no keyboard/mice so Raspbian is not as ideal as ICS.

Thanks!

Any progress with the image* I know Broadcom drivers are not a total problem :D

Hey,

want to have it now! When is it coming?
How is the status? Need support?

Thanks You

Looks very nice.
I assume I would have to do some work to get it to work with my touch screen and Wi-Fi stick. How would I go about do that?

Does anyone know if this would play games from the Play Store? would love to hook mine up to the TV and play angry birds or something :P maybe get a bluetooth controller as well though…

If AudioFlinger makes problems, it may be helpful to use PulseAudio instead
http://arunraghavan.net/2012/01/pulseaudio-vs-audioflinger-fight/

not to appear impatient, but i wonder how progress has been coming along on the audio support.

testing android and netflix on this device is eagerly awaited. with the release of xbmc for android there may finally be a feasable way to use xbmc with netflix on something other than windows, or using a windows vm running playon.

It has been almost a month since the original post announcing ICS for Raspberry Pi. Can we get an update with an estimated release date? Even if it were released without full audio support, it would give the community the opportunity to try to resolve this issue. That might be the faster solution?

Any idea when this will be released? I know people have asked, but this post was a month ago.

I’ve been keeping a tab open with this page and refreshing it every day for the past week… I’m itching to get this on my pi and show it off at work

any word on whether the 4.0 port can stream netflix. not a big deal to me as i refuse to touch the service but I’m trying to convince my parents to get a pc to attach to the tv in their bedroom and this might be something they would consider provided they can stream netflix to it

I think the entire community would be happy to test this development release, to help finding and fixing bugs and to test android because some people can’t wait the official release, we want use night builds!!!! :) keep on working hard eben, you’re great!

ive been reading a small bit into this netflix on android business. apparently netflix wont work on an android device unless it both supports drm, and the drm modules internal identification code or whatever is registered and approved by netflix.

considering that the broadcom BCM2835 is used in the roku 2 which supports drmand runs netflix, i would wager that the ras pi has the built in ability to satisfy netflix requirements.

this hardware level drm business is also what gives the chromebook the ability to get netflix, but not standard desktop linux.

considering that this soc is already in the roku2 there is a fair chance that the nexflix app will immediately work upon install.

Although the SoC does support the DRM, I doubt it’s turned on in the Raspi – but I can try and find out for sure.

Wow, Netflix on the pi would be a complete game-changer! Please, please try and find out if this is possible!

Can’t wait to get my hands on Android 4.0 in Raspberry Pi! Awesome!

When will it be available for download?

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! Basically turned off my pi until this comes out since raspbmc is still such a work in progress and alot of add ons are not working…..!!!!!! PLLLLLLLLLLEASE with a cherry on top!

You’ll just have to be patient. Or help.

Why don’t you use Raspbian?

i was thinking of it but there is no way to use netflix via linux

I think a lot of people would like to help, and would appreciate being able to do so.

i would help if i could program but alas that is not my strength

Any update on a release? I know that is the obvious question; however, I’m sure it’s on more minds than my own. I’m really looking forward to this.

Hey there, honestly, is this project dead or alive. I kept up looking for at least 2 weeks now. And nothing. Dead end, no time, whatever? Looked really great in the beginning, but can’t understand why AudioFlinger should be such a killer, as well as there seems to be workarround with PulseAudio. Next question, what’s up with the idea to hand over to XDA. I have the feeling that this project (of course it looked so good) slows/kills any other efforts in developing an android custom mod for the pi. So please, give at least a small statement over the current process, that we now, if we’re should further looking forward or if we should start some new straight away. And don’t get me wrong, i really appreciate your work, and that’s exactly why i would love to wait for this, than start all over and reinventing the wheel. Greets…

No, it’s still going.

Is there any additional information available concerning the Android release date for Raspberry?

No date yet, I’m afraid; I’ll try to hook up with Naren soon.

Excellent! I (and the community) hope it will be released soon, very soon :)

It’s been a week since this post – no news?
I was hoping this thread would make my Friday but I’m growing very bored now :(

Me too! A very boring friday :(. May the next weekend be filled with Android joy :)!

Still hoping for a quick release!

You people really are very impatient. Remember, the Foundation is a volunteer organisation, relying of peoples spare time to do this sort of thing and even more specifically, Broadcom engineers spare time, which is in VERY short supply at the moment due to work commitments.

It has now been a looong time since any decent news about Android on Rpi. What is the current situation?, I think by now the community is entitled to a good explanation to as what is going on? myself like many many many others have been waiting awfully long, but still no joy. My RaspberryPi Pad has now been sat on the side collecting dust I have almost lost interest full stop!. There are also many highly skilled developers out there offering you help. Why do you not except this and speed the process up? Is there an underlying GPL license violation that has brought things to a grinding halt? or have your computers simply crashed? for the past 2 – 3 months? A RarberryPi forum update about the situation would be really appreciated, not just by me, but by the thousands of potential users out there… playing the silent card is now seriously damaging you reputation as a core development foundation, by the time Android is finally ready for Rpi myself and many others will have moved over to the Pandaboard as it is rapidly out doing the Rpi in terms of support and the amount of poneys under the bonnet. Would you like to offer any thing at all in response to this? I just want to no whether it will be here or not? and if so this year or next? they are two simple questions to answer so please…?

Actually, you deserve no such thing. Apple doesn’t tell you anything about their upcoming OS changes until they chose to do so, it’s proper business practice. That said, when there is additional news to be had, the RPF will release it. As for why they haven’t said anything else, they actually mention their reasons for keeping quiet in the post, so I would imagine that would still apply. There are other android projects going on right now. You can read about them in the forum or there’s one listed in a link at the top of this post. Still, this are an infinite amount of other things you could be doing with your pi. There’s no need to let it sit on a shelf unused just because you don’t have android on it ;-)

There is unfortunately a window of opportunity here, and the longer this takes the less valuable the port.
At the moment most of my work is focused on the android platform and taking advantage of the raspberry pie is very interesting but can only wait so long.

There are a lot of us that have a background in porting, if there is any help that can be provided please let us know, otherwise I need to move on… we are at the point of no return.

Thanks

Could you add a config.txt file so we can overclock easily, that would help run the apps and games from Play Store (if thats available)

Using phrases like “publicly released” and “release the sources for you to play with” sounds rather like trying to divert attention away from the fact that the VideoCore uses a proprietary binary blob.

Being binary-only is causing problems for many people trying to do system integration with the Raspberry Pi, has made many more skip it entirely and let’s face it — although no one will enfore it – it’s a blatent GPL violation and always has been.

Please release the code you brag about sharing! Here’s the deal. I’m about to pull the trigger on a PandaBoard because…duh…why would I wait another month for ICS + RPi? I was already there with the dang board…by the time you release this code ICS will be pushing 12 months and JellyBean will be mainline. Panda already has support there. Other customers on this thread aren’t joking…that windows is closing quickly my friends! Finally, sounds about right to me…this post smells of PR hype. GPL license violation? It’s taking months to get the final quirks out of the audio library? Hah!

Booting up Android would solve one of the biggest shortcomings in the Pi right now, namely the lack of a Skype client for voice/video chat. Free international communication is a huge value add in developing countries where people often have friends and relatives working abroad these days. Hope Android build is stable soon.

That’s the BIGGEST shortcoming? Blimey – we must be doing pretty well then!

Stil waiting with hope

So I’ve been politely waiting for nearly 2 months now. Any chance we will ever see this Android release?

C’mon guys isn’t this an open-source project?

Great work Eben and whole Rasberry Pi!

Although it wish to join some other members in question about the possible term of releasing Android for RaspPi ? I have a project on my mind and would like to implement it using raspberry pi..

Could you possibly release any alpha in a short term? I’m sure it will be a lot better than any other android release which is described as “barely usable” anyways.

i would like to use this respberry board in volume for mass production for different products.

If there is a build that runs as well as the video claims, why has it not been released ?

when is it coming out ?? and where can i get it

For those of you that can’t wait any longer.. dont. Just move on. The devs working on this have other commitments that will not end and it also requires them to take time away from their families to develop. Shame on those that demand it and make empty threats about limited opportunity. Go away. The dream of Android 4.0 on your pi is just that. So find another project or find another platform that Android already runs on if that is what you really need and you dont have time to wait. The rpidroid port is more for fun and to see if it can be done more than it is for real life use or production. If it happens, then great, you will be surprised right? So why not let rpidroid be a gift when it is ready and stable enough for release? – If the devs release a crashy unstable slow version you will just complain and be “let down”. right? right. All their hard work will go unappreciated and for all that they have done for you. So simply put, stop acting like spoiled brats and give it a rest for a bit. It will come when it is ready. :)

Please don’t give up of this project. I’m willing to help in any way I can, I’m not much of a programmer but I can do testing, compiling and much more.

What kind of a demotivational comment is this? And talking about the their families, come on buddy.

They like to work on these projects and they will. We’re just showing our support for them.

Actually, I prefer to be with my family, but also like to work on this stuff but horses for course.

Any chance you could get one volunteer to do:
1. organize other volunteers
2. start a invitation-only alpha testing, preferably with ppl who can do git pull && make test and can write good bug reports
3. exchange with http://androidpi.wikia.com/ developers

Or, they could treat this like the Open Source project that it is and let the community help them with the build. No, instead let’s keep the development of one of the most popular Open Source OSes for one of the most popular development devices privatized. What’s the big secret? Why is it so important to keep developers who WANT to support Android on this device from doing so? Nobody’s asking for them to give up their families. We, in fact, want to help RELIEVE their burden by having something to contribute to. I don’t see why that’s such a problem.

Awesome! don’t forget NTFS support for USB flash drives!

hi ,love the raspberry pi where in scotland can i buy one, and can you keep me updated with future projects please steven

Not the right place to post that comment, but see the main website for where to buy. All projects of interest are posted here at some point.

Any news on a release date for Android 4 for RPI …. Pls.

I hope we can atleast get some feedback on the latest update on the development of Android for Rasp Pi

Its been 2 months already and i am sure a lot of people are waiting for some good news

Thanks

I can’t wait to have a working Android 4.0 Raspberry Pi!!! Atleast then I will have a use for my Raspberry Pi. Right now it just sits collecting dust, because i don’t know programming and Rasbian freezes up every time I attempt to do anything. Sure, I could use it for XBMC, but it is strictly for media and doesn’t have the diverse functionality that Android does.

Use the latest distro – if it still keeps freezing, you might need to return the device as faulty.

You should be able to do loads of stuff on a Raspi without Android…..

Refer to the Android version for ARM. Trim Slice
http://www.trimslice.com/wiki/index.php/Trim-Slice_OS_Installer#Android_Installer

Its better to start with something that is already there and tweak it.

Can you please add 8192cu.ko to this? I have a wireless 300N that uses this module.

Hi Devs,

Thank you for the work you are doing on this. I think that Android on the PRi will open up a lot more capabilities. If any help is needed, I would like to contribute. I am an intensive problem solver. I know Java, C#, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and I am willing to learn any language to expand my programming knowledge. Just let me know.

Note: I will post this same message on your wiki.

I’m thinking to build rpi in my car with android, that way I can have media center in car which is grat. I’m only wondering how will android on rpi work with touch controller on usb from ebay? There are linux drivers for it and controller has it’s own power supply.

Any further news on this please?

Nearly 3 months later. Can we get an official status update on this and a better ETA?

Yeah an update would be nice as it seems that this project has been dropped to me?

I just ordered my Pi so I hope that they haven’t dropped this project!

Can we please have an update!

YES PLEASE!!!!

When will the release day ?

half a year… far too long. used the pi for something else and switched to another mini computer WITH android. cya.

Bye!

Gomez – hey what did you go with as an alternative ? I am very interested in exploring a 4.0 alternative while PI is in development…

Is there any news at all about the progress? I’m sure the community will pitch in if given the chance, so share with us. Do you need help with development or help?

Sounds like a lot of people are very willing to help on this project. Would be nice to see it released. Until then I will keep playing with Raspbmc

I couldnt get raspbmc to run most of the add ons i was hoping for. plex was unstable, hulu is finicky, no netflix, food netowkr and other channels do audio but no vid due to codecs. Was really hoping for the android version to try and use some of this stuff via ICS and flash + general apps if they would run. fingers crossed but Ive retired my pi until then due just to no real use atm.

i comandi per android dove ce il luchetto a destra nel dsctop cosa si fa ????

you know what is the date for the release?

it works but the screen is blinking all the time . i got a message about UI not working
the mouse leaves a trace of a lot of arrows .and it is very slow

Any new update about android port to Raspberry Pi?

Chrismas is comming, and Android / Pi Bundle is a nice gift…

So is there any possibility or can i broke down this idea….

Many other Projects are much faster without that special internal knowledge…
Marketing?

I thik by a news of 31.July, and this great Announcement you should update, any other isn’t vary fair to the community and the people waiting for month now.

Thank you for your fantastic work!
Chris

As far as I know there is little or no progress on this since everyone is busy on other things. Android isn’t a priority at the moment – we have the camera to get working, and various bugs that need sorting out, and very few people to do it at the moment.

you know what is the date for the release?

Disheartening to say the least, but understandable. I still look forward to seeing android (especially 4.1+) running on this platform.
Thanks for the continuing efforts.

who needs a camera? just get the OS running with hw accelleration enabled so we can start USING android on our raspberries..

i don’t even want a camera, i just want an internet pc with access to the google play store.

and i’m sure i’m not the only one ;)

Yes you are! Don’t assume just because you want something that everyone else does as well. There are many more educational possibilities for a camera than the almost zero for Android.

Anything on this? I tried gingerbread.. and it sucks. this looks promising but the lack of a recent update is sad

You have a very good project that your users are eager to use and many of them are welling to help work on it. Yet, since you are busy and do not consider it a priority, you prefer to let this project die rather than hand it to the open community.

In case you have not noticed, that is what happens to closed source software which corporate would prefer to see it die rather than make it open source. So unless you start actually releasing any part of the source code of this project, this is an anti-open source project.

Just to add one thing, saying that porting a popular OS like Android is not a priority is stupid and dumb especially when compared to a feature like camera support. Many similar products exist and running Android is the most important feature that made it successful. For example, “The Pocket TV” managed to collect over $500,000 in funds via kickstater. Can you find any popular product that are mainly oriented around your so called camera feature?

The availability of an Android port for raspberry pi does not bug me. What really bugs me is having an open hardware project, with software development team that holds on to a dead project regardless of how eager the community is to get their hands on which simulates the close minded and selfish corporate way of handling projects.

I already bought an Android stick to use whenever I want. But it would have been a lot nicer to change between Linux and Android by simply swiping the SD card. Also, you cannot ask every kid who is learning both just for fun to buy 2 pieces of hardware. Anyway, if you want to do the same thing just Google: “android hdmi stick” amazon has so many choices for you.

Story line:
1- raspberry pi team announced that they are working on an android port.
2- the community, including developers, requested access to the project.
3- the team do not want to have projects built based on theirs so they refused to open source it.
4- About 5 months later, project has little or no progress and considered not to be a priority = DEAD.
5- Source Code remains unpublished.

I have a 512MB Pi.. I’d really like to try this version of Android. Is there a way I can get a copy of it?

Do it for the sake of having RPi as gaming platform with OnLive :)

Hi,

Where do I get this? I really really want to use my Raspberry Pi for some droid development.

Thanks,
Joe

Add me to the list of people who want Android running on their Pi! :)

Can you please I form me when android is ready for the pi

I had such high hope for this… My only hope now is that they will at least release it to the public so that the community can finish their work.

Has this project been discontinued? The video was very promising!

No, it’s just on the back burner at the moment. Lots more important stuff to spend the limited engineer time on.

I’m posting here only to make the list of people waiting for Android on Raspberry PI a bit longer (kind of a UUUUUUPPPPPP).
I hope that you will do that trick A.S.A.P. and make Raspberry PI even more powerful, giving us the Andorid choice.

Thank for your work guys.
r3N0oV4

Add me too to the list of hopeless people who wanted this release….:)

Need atleast a post about the status so that we can have a grip on this project. Do that atleast….

Slow progress and rigid approach to importance like this, is what is going to kill mine and many others interest in the Raspberry Pi.

I know that there are many different uses for the Raspberry Pi, but the possibility of using android on the Pi, should be considered an important project.

I can without a doubt tell you that if the Raspberry Pi organisation keeps up it’s rigid and close-minded approach to development, I will not hesitate to jump on the Gooseberry wagon when the time comes. If the Raspberry Pi organisation does not deliver, it is just natural to consider what other options are out there.

The Raspberry Pi is fun, but only as fun as it’s limitations, and not focusing on such a vital need expressed by the community, will in my opinion, limit the applicability of the Pi, to such an extent that it no longer becomes a viable solution. Especially if you consider the other options that are out there.

I work for an unnamed tablet manufacturer and am used to handling Android code bases and have done porting/upgrades to different hardware/android platforms/upgrades. It sounds like there was a desire to do merging of codebases and/or managing them, and I could help with this.

Following the front cover claims on LUD 120 … http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/get-android-on-your-raspberry-pi,

aaa801 said: “22 November 2012 at 8:31 pm

This is mighty misleading isn’t it?
I’m from the razdroid team that is actively working on porting android with acceleration to the rpi
And this is not at all possible with the current level of development at this moment in time.”
”
So … there is a “team” that is “actively working on porting android with acceleration to the rpi”

More than one moderator hearabouts said that was not the case and then flamed me for even suggesting this situation – which I didn’t!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggh!

Hello Ray,

The Foundation themselves have no team working on the Raspi port of Android at the moment. There may be people out there attempting to do it without Broadcom/Foundation support. Anyone can get hold of the Android source and try and get it to run on the Raspberry, but without HW acceleration, the end result is very slow. Since Broadcom already have all the drivers to run Android on Arm with Videocore support, it’s just a matter of time to get those ported to the Raspi – much quicker to wait for that than to write all the drivers from scratch – after all, Broadcom have had a large team of people working on them for the last year or so.

why android 4.0 on the downloads page and say it lacks audio flinger support, im sure someone in the pi community could figure out how to implement it

Check out the threads in the forums on Android development.

ok thanks i have been looking over them, interesting stuff

It sounds like you guys don’t have a lot of time to work on this, that’s understandable. I’ve been watching to see if any other versions come out in the meantime, but nothing much seems to be happening. I have a suspicion that other developers are holding off, waiting for this version to come out.

I know you guys are worried about forking versions and whatnot, but please have faith in the open source community. Please release what you have and let us help! It will be great!

The problem is the drivers from Broadcom, we cannot release those at the moment, and that’s where all the acceleration is. So, really, there’s not much that can be done by the community until those drivers are out there, and they are still in development at Broadcom, who are very busy with customer projects at the moment.

I thought it is an open source.
See http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/all-code-on-raspberry-pis-arm-chip-now-open-source/

It’s not the actual driver that’s open source. Think of it as though you want to talk to someone who speaks another language and you’re using a translator. The driver is that person and the translator you’re using to talk to them is the portion of code they’ve open sourced. Now the driver is what actually talks to the hardware so although we can talk to the driver and pass it menial commands, we don’t know how it works or what it is actually telling the hardware.
If you note in your link they talk about this in the promoted comments.

cant wait im going to have android on my tv!

Please release all parts which are under GPL. The driver can stay binary for the time being!

the GPL is possibly the most evil license ever created, second only to the AGPL.

No GPL, unless required. MIT, BSD, or Apache, please.

This is what my Rasp pi does while booting Android (no matter which distibution). any ideas? Could it be because of monitor resolution?
http://tinyurl.com/bjab6jv

düzgün çalışmıyor biraz çalışmaları lazım açıkcası

Where can I download it and when???

I must show my continued support for the Raspberry pi and yet remind them of the desire for Android Pi at some point in the future.

Consider this post a continued sign of support and desire!

I recently downloaded it and it was a bit clunky for my taste.. But I also bought a Rikomagic which is smaller than the pi, and has android installed. Not as flexible as the Pi though. But it also has built in wifi and apparently you can root it if you wanted to. I haven’t tinkered with it much yet but was able to install the netflix app and watch a tv show. I’m still going to keep an eye out for Razdroid for my Pi

I have not used this but love to thanks for keeping me posted.

Hello is the android project dead? Would love android on my pi

how about now? release or not?

Really looking forward to seeing this sometime soon. Hope the project isn’t dead.

I bought the raspberry because android would have.

I feel cheated :-(

Oh well. At least you have something you can use to learn something useful with now.

Cheated by whom?

Cheated by this:

“Naren has been working on a port of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) to Raspberry Pi, and as you can see from the screenshots and video below, he’s been making great progress. Hardware-accelerated graphics and video have been up and running smoothly for some time; AudioFlinger support is the only major missing piece at the moment.”

For if it takes time to work …
record will win the slowness guines

you have to be responsible for it is written, as it confuses people and creates false hopes.

This post should never have been published …

You spent $35 on a micro computer and feel cheated? Sell it! I’ll give you the $35, you can go buy yourself a late and feel better about yourself

when can release? looks it’s long time~!

Is this dead or not? There has been no official answer yet and i want to know if i should stop waiting.
Also, it would be great to skype with that webcam that just came out :P

The raspi media center would be practical with netflix and a decent youtube client too

soooooooo nice!!! I look forward to working with it!!! when plz!!!???

Any new info from broadcom?

Just like Nico, do we have any news regarding the Broadcom version? I just bought a Raspberry Pi and am planning to make fun with it and use it with the application Canal Touch (for Canal +) available on Android (Google Play). Thanks a lot

This is great! hope will be able to taste it soon :)

I am dying to try this out, but its been a year since this was posted. Maybe its not going to happen. Come on Broadcom!!!

Yes, dying for an update! Let’s flood the page with comments until somebody says SOMETHING!

+1 for the release of the official android image! Com on, Broadcom!!

This is the kind of things that makes me think about the real meaning of open hardware…
Android was one of the possibilities that made me buy the raspberry pi, why no one from the raspberry pi original project is pushing hard on this? Why we have no updates on the current situation?

Open source must not be equal to big effort for everyone.

Thanks

Updates please?????

dead proyect!? :(

Any News ? A working link?
all download links are a year old !!
This the the 21st Century i have seen quicker Nokia 6310’s !!

Want working “official android image” … me too.

+1 for the idea!

Hurry up please, Broadcom!!

any news for a working version of android x raspberry ?????

Did Broadcom stop to work on the driver? It would be very nice to get an update if they cancelled the project or if it will be release some time in the future.

Please give us an update so we know what’s going on!

I want to ask a question.How can i overclock on razdroid

It would be great if you can give a short update on Android4@Raspberry to all the ppl here. Your initial post is now older than a year, so please …

Hello Naren,
I don’t wanna rush anyone or anything, but could you please say if this project still live?

I’m building something using a Raspberry Pi and I’m having thoughts between installing a regular Raspbian on it or to wait for Android to be released by you which could make things considerably easier :)

Anyway, thank you very much for your time and a great deal of work,
Sergey.

I think we must assume that there will be no official Android for the Pi.
Shame
Open source community is being ignored by world tech business when it was they who gave them the tools in the first place.
The world is still going to hell in a handcart!

I must show my continued support for the Raspberry pi and yet remind them of the desire for Android Pi at some point in the future.

Consider this post a continued sign of support and desire!

Well, are there any news? It was announced on 31st July *2012* and now it is 10th October *2013* :-(

Yeah, I’ve heard that the project is still active, but very low priority (no profit). :( I would LOVE to be proven wrong and have an update, or even better, a release!

Give the amount of interest in this but the apparent low priority due to funding/profit has any thought been given to crowd sourcing to get it higher priority?

Perhaps this effort will helped/made easier by the reduced memory requirements of Android kitkat. Google’s recently announced that Android 4.4 can run with only 512Mb of ram. I thought one of the bigger problems was getting it to run reliably with less than 1Gb of ram (and of course the ARM version)

is this project still going on?

Is there anybody who can tell me when android is ported to the raspberry pi? sorry for my english ;)

I know this thread is never updated due to them giving up on us, but you can check this out and see if anybody will help.

http://kikraspberrypi.blogspot.com/

They should have a kickstarter for this, it will take off.

It’s been over a year now, I’m guessing Broadcom has given up?

I’m really interested in developing a car head unit with a PI and android but I’m siding towards Beagle’s now as they seem to have more development potential.

So with the Announcement today (or yesterday depending where you live) from Broadcom, I am more then happy to believe that we will be able to have Android up and running on the Pi!!!

Could you link that announcement for us? Please

http://liliputing.com/2014/02/raspberry-pi-gets-true-open-source-graphics-drivers.html

Is this project still active. Is anyone working on it? Android for the Pi would be very useful and save me alot of work re-writing alot of software.

exactly

Anyone know how to contact the team “omnirom”? knowing their philosophy and having this source so helpful, could make Android Kitkat working for Raspeberry. In their example, they have a version for Samsung Galaxy S (512mb ram).

Given this post is nearly 2 years old I assume Android on Pi is dead and/or the original post was a fake or can someone prove otherwise?

Because there is little educational benefit to Android over the other supported OS’s, and there being rather a large amount of extra effort required to make it robust enough for release means that a port it has never completed. It certainly wasn’t a fake post, very Alpha version was produced.

… and the link to the Github repo for this is?

Without any evidence of this I only have your word.

There is no github repo for it – it was an internal Broadcom effort. The effort is not ARM side Android code, but the HW acceleration libraries required to make it usable.

And you can believe my word or not, that is entirely up to you. I’d personally suggest believing it.

No chance for RPI tonrun in android os T_T

Pi running android os is a HOLY GRAIL

I’ve already confirmed that this project is already dead.

now it’s 2014 and theres nothing?

So help Broadcom Corporation St. Francis!

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