Will Android work on Raspberry PI?

Question

There is so much power in this little beast, it seems to be great for Android - but there is not much discussion about the Android port for it. Does anyone know more?

Answer 1

It discusses it on the forums. http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/features-and-requests/android-for-pi?value=android&type=1&include=3&search=1&ret=all

The end result is that some versions may be able to:

The consensus in the forum is that Ice Cream Sandwich requires too much processor and RAM to run on Raspi. Some of the older versions may work at reasonable speeds.

However, such efforts have not been invested:

As I said, if someone wants to put Android on a Pi, they are more than welcome. This will not be easy, and the benefits will be quite small for the effort.

And it is considered as something just beyond the scope of Pi, that is, there will be a little support:

Android simply does not help achieve the goals of the fund - it is completely orthogonal to them. This is an OS designed for passive media consumption and advertising campaign delivery.

Answer 2

From the Frequently Asked Questions about Raspberry Pi :

Will Android work?

If someone from the community can transfer the version of Android to work with 256 MB of RAM, then it will work on Raspberry Pi.

Given this typical snapshot of memory usage:

PID Vss Rss Pss Uss cmdline 1217 36848K 35648K 17983K 13956K system_server 1276 32200K 32200K 14048K 10116K android.process.acore 1189 26920K 26920K 9293K 5500K zygote 1321 20328K 20328K 4743K 2344K android.process.media 1356 20360K 20360K 4621K 2148K com.android.email 1303 20184K 20184K 4381K 1724K com.android.settings 1271 19888K 19888K 4297K 1764K com.android.inputmethod.latin 1332 19560K 19560K 3993K 1620K com.android.alarmclock 1187 5068K 5068K 2119K 1476K /system/bin/mediaserver 1384 436K 436K 248K 236K procrank 1 212K 212K 200K 200K /init 753 572K 572K 171K 136K /system/bin/rild 748 340K 340K 163K 152K /system/bin/sh 751 388K 388K 156K 140K /system/bin/vold 1215 148K 148K 136K 136K /sbin/adbd 757 352K 352K 117K 92K /system/bin/dbus-daemon 760 404K 404K 104K 80K /system/bin/keystore 759 312K 312K 102K 88K /system/bin/installd 749 288K 288K 96K 84K /system/bin/servicemanager 752 244K 244K 71K 60K /system/bin/debuggerd 

You can see that the first four processes (Android system) are about 80 million (Pss / shared and Uss / process) directly, without launching any applications. Typical small applications will use another 2 M or more each.

And I think this is from Android 2.2 - later versions are likely to have a larger footprint.

Most of the processes at the end of this list are Linux, not Android, and you can see that they have much less impact.

So, even if you can put Android in (and I have no doubt that some kind of wag will give it a chance), it still seems unlikely to me. The devices target two completely different markets.

Even the cheapest Android tablets and phones still remain in the hundreds of dollars, and they have a fair chunk of memory that can run this OS. For example, My Iconia A500 has 32G, 128 times more memory than the Pi model.

The Pi price point of $ 35 for the top-line model puts it in a completely different market.

The stated purpose of the fund includes:

We want this to be used by children around the world to learn programming.

It is for this reason that I will buy a pair for my children. I have long used (basic) Python to teach children programming, and incorporating this into Raspberry Pi is a real winner, in my opinion.

Answer 3

There's so much power in this little beast that seems to be great for Android

As others have pointed out, Pi is for a different market. If they wanted another Android device, they sent it to Android.

If you are looking for a cheap way to launch Android, why not get an older generation phone? HTC Magic has similar features for Raspberry Pi:

528 MHz ARM 11

288 MB RAM

But you also get much more than Pi:

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LCD, touchscreen sensor, light sensor, GPS, accelerometer, USB-connection, audio input / output, cellular radio station, portable power source (battery) and much more. You can find this class of devices sold at your local Craigslist for $ 20-40.