By I always admire the work people put into getting Android to work on non-Android devices. In this case, I was impressed to see that Kevin Tofel from jkOnTheRun – who is debating getting an Android MID like the Archos 5 – was able to get Android (partially) working on the x86 based Samsung Q1 UMPC which has a 1.33GHz processor. Unfortunately video embedded is disabled but click through and scroll down for the video:
Basic things – like the touchscreen – aren’t even working on this so it isn’t like you’re going to be able to use this as a primary or even secondary device. It’s more of a way to hack around, see what works and test out the potential experience.
How did he do it? With the help from the folks at Android-x86.org who have just published their most recent version of Android-x86 based on Android 1.6, including the live cd iso and usb image so you can download and try it out yourself. Of course, you should only do so if you know what you’re doing, and if you don’t and you implode the universe or merely break your device, don’t blame us!
But props to getting this working – interesting indeed. Watching the video really makes my ponder the possibilities of the inevitable Android/Chrome collision course.
I don’t want a collision.. why would I need all the device drivers and other bits of extra software that would totally be useless on my phone ? The ability to run programs from more programming languages, making some things more easily ported.. ok.. You want a full on merging, then well Linux is where they started.
Will this work on a virtual machine?
Terry: yes, of course. See the screenshot on http://www.android-x86.org