Hi everyone,
Today, I'm asking you about something a little bit more specific that just what kind of hardware should I use to develop on Android.
Indeed, I'm currently working on a multi-part project based on Android, mixing software and hardware parts.
I've got my Nexus 5 which is quite good as a development platform but it's my personal phone and, well, it would be quite ****ty if I bricked it.
So, now I need a development board with the following hardware:
Procs: ARM Quad procs 64Bits or Intel Dual/Quad 64Bits
RAM: 2GB Ram minimum
Storage: 16Gb / 32 Gb
System-Storage: eMMC Flash NAND 4Gb
Connectivity: BTLE 4.0 - Wifi b/n/ac - LTE/LTE-A
Even if the product do not have all the requirements, the Intel EDISON platform seems gorgeous to me as it has the perfect size/form factor for my project.
Unfortunately it do not support Android Out of the box, and I'll have to provide extra migration effort if I use this board for my project.
So, my question is, how do you proceed when you've got a multi-part project?
Why kind of dev board do you use? Do you develop on a relatively close to the finished product platform or do you use a more versatile devboard and then create prototypes etc on another project phase?
Related
Not sure if this is the correct forum to post this. I have searched the web and this forum and only found partial answers so please excuse me if this has been discussed. If so a reply with the link would be very helpful.
With AMD and Intel both producing low powered x86 chips, especially AMDs C-50 which incorporates the Radeon HD graphics processor on the same chip, I was wondering if there are any limitations for hardware manufacturers to use these kind of chips on Tablets running Android.
I know currently Google does not have an x86 port of their own, but are there any particular reasons that would stop them if the chips were comparable in power usage and have faster performance? What would be some drawbacks? Would all the apps run fine on the x86 architecture or would each app need to be recompiled to run on these devices?
I guess what I'm really asking is with your expertise do you see x86 processors as a future of Android tablet computing?
Thanks in advance for all the input.
In theory, they'd just have to re-write the bytecode interpreter on the Dalvik-VM (Assuming it works like Sun's Java VM) Everything you run on your android is on a virtual machine, meaning it has the capability of being cross platform. So yes. It's very possible.
http://www.androidx86.org have you checked this site out??
1st ICS build for virtual machines
Just check out this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=19824180
Given the choice with all other things being equal, I'd take a modern ARM over an X86 chip, unless I'm going to run Windows ware. I've used x86 for like almost 20 out of nearly 23.5 years, and wouldn't trust an X86 Android tablet, now that I've dug into my TF .
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
Spidey01 said:
Given the choice with all other things being equal, I'd take a modern ARM over an X86 chip, unless I'm going to run Windows ware. I've used x86 for like almost 20 out of nearly 23.5 years, and wouldn't trust an X86 Android tablet, now that I've dug into my TF .
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wouldnt trust it for what reason?
Windows 8 will be released with an x86 and ARM version.
The Android OS itself runs very smoothly on x86, I have been using a small hp thinclient t5565 as a debug machine instead of my phone or a virtual machine for 2 weeks now and it performs admirably. Granted I cant play HD games on it, but thats what I have the Enjoy 7 tablet for. android-x86 is just brilliant, in many cases the generic froyo and gingerbread builds breathe new life into old rusty machines, making them very useful once more. The only thing missing, is better generic hardware support for ethernet and various 3D display devices. I am currently looking at an option of using android-x86 as a swop and go solution, since my test machine runs the installed system completely from a USB thumb drive. Which means if it breaks, pull the stick out, pop in another machine and you are back to work. Perfect solution for a POS terminal, library internet access machine or even something to keep the kids out of your hair.
ashmem in Android x86
I developed a simple shared memory IPC in Linux already and I would also like to do it in Android x86.
Does anyone knows on how to do this(shared memory or should I call it "ashmem"?) ?
I really need your help. I'm still a beginner in Android x86, so I hope you can give a step-by-step guide.
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
after reading the description, i'm confused about whether it's ubuntu running on top of android, or it's dual booting
anyways, hopefully we get it working on touchpad
From the way it looks it works only if you plug it into a tv out via hdmi and it runs inside android. I imagine this will only be for a very few select phones.
No source, speculations all the way.
Straight From the description:
" Easy to integrate to your Android phone
Ubuntu for Android drops in cleanly alongside the rest of Android, so it is easy to integrate into current production roadmaps. The hardware requirements are straightforward and, with a broad range of ARM and x86 hardware supported, it can realistically be added to phones already in development.
Of course, your phone needs the docking capability and hardware support for HDMI and USB. But that’s standard for high-end models in the current generation of devices in development"
samsky said:
Straight From the description:
" Easy to integrate to your Android phone
Ubuntu for Android drops in cleanly alongside the rest of Android, so it is easy to integrate into current production roadmaps. The hardware requirements are straightforward and, with a broad range of ARM and x86 hardware supported, it can realistically be added to phones already in development.
Of course, your phone needs the docking capability and hardware support for HDMI and USB. But that’s standard for high-end models in the current generation of devices in development"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And there's the nail in the coffin for touchpad buntu....
Hey all looking at getting a dev board for use as a mini pc. Wondering can you compile android on arm hardware or only on x86 hardware. If you can compile android on arm I will get a high end quad core dev board, if not will just go for a mid range dual core board. Thought it would be a fun project to have an auto android builder along with file and print server.
Yes I know it will be slow to compile.
blucmal said:
Hey all looking at getting a dev board for use as a mini pc. Wondering can you compile android on arm hardware or only on x86 hardware. If you can compile android on arm I will get a high end quad core dev board, if not will just go for a mid range dual core board. Thought it would be a fun project to have an auto android builder along with file and print server.
Yes I know it will be slow to compile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As long as you've got the tool chain for ARM, you can. Don't expect to get it working on Android though, since bionic (the Android "libc") quite not POSIX, and somewhat difficult to port code to. But if you are using the GNU environment, it's no problem. Myself I do lots of development directly on the ARM architecture using an ASUS Transformer. The only problem you might face, is if you need some tools you've not got the source code to, hence not being able to compile for the ARM architecture.
Check my signature for one way of running the GNU environment on your Android. There are other ways as well.
kuisma said:
As long as you've got the tool chain for ARM, you can. Don't expect to get it working on Android though, since bionic (the Android "libc") quite not POSIX, and somewhat difficult to port code to. But if you are using the GNU environment, it's no problem. Myself I do lots of development directly on the ARM architecture using an ASUS Transformer. The only problem you might face, is if you need some tools you've not got the source code to, hence not being able to compile for the ARM architecture.
Check my signature for one way of running the GNU environment on your Android. There are other ways as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok awesome quad core it is then
So with all of this talk of the new ARMv8 64-bit architecture coming to high spec devices from Android OEM's such as Samsung in 2014, do you think that we will likely see Android 4.4 bring 64-bit support, or will we have to wait for a 2014/2015 Android build before seeing 64-bit native support in Android?
Also if we do see 64-bit support what advantages do you think 64-bit will bring to Android?
Well, to start I do think that more than 4GB of RAM will help as we start to see phone's being capable of connecting to secondary displays and streaming Desktop UI's.
And the extra address space will certainly help in the graphics department, when we see more powerful graphics chips become available for smart devices which require that extra memory to enable Console quality games to be displayed on that same secondary display which is being used to display the Desktop UI, and all whilst you are browsing the web on your device at the same time to find game guides etc..
also remember that those graphics chips will possibly be outputting a resolution of 4K to your 4K TV and 1080p to your devices display at the same time, so all of those pixels may require a lot of graphics memory...
some people always say that we don't need these next gen technologies, but after see'ing what they can do then they start to complain that OEM's need to implement more, ie: when we saw the first Dual-Core device many people said that it was stupid to think that a phone needed multiple cores, but now people say that dual core isn't enough and they want quad-core devices, I think the same will happen as we migrate over to 64-bit solutions in the mobile space.
Hypervisor enforced kernel integrity + SELinux... I feel pity for those with locked bootloaders. On the other hand KVM is coming + 64bit goodness. These Cortex-A57 look yummier by the day.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda app-developers app
Yes. We need to keep up with 64-bit iPhone.
I think 64bit will run on samsung galaxy s5
Hi all, i have an pretty old device, specifically an HP iPAQ 216, and found someone that did an Android 2.3.7 ROM for this device.
I'm very interested about learning Android ROMs/Kernel development, and i'll modify that rom to make it smoother (obviously taking into account the hardware limits).
I'm very beginner into android development, and it would amaze me if this device can run at least Android 4.0.4.
The hardware of this device is:
4 inch Resistive touchscreen, 128MB RAM, Processor ARMv5 Intel PXA310 at 624MHz, 256MB Internal Storage, and an unknown graphics chip whose driver does not exist at all. That device runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Classic.
The graphic rendering, both in Windows Mobile and in Android, is all CPU-made because, even for Windows Mobile, the OpenGL libraries aren't supported.
I know it's really crazy the idea to make an eleven years old device run Android 4.x, but if it can run Android 2.3, why not 4.0?
MaicoLinuX said:
Hi all, i have an pretty old device, specifically an HP iPAQ 216, and found someone that did an Android 2.3.7 ROM for this device.
I'm very interested about learning Android ROMs/Kernel development, and i'll modify that rom to make it smoother (obviously taking into account the hardware limits).
I'm very beginner into android development, and it would amaze me if this device can run at least Android 4.0.4.
The hardware of this device is:
4 inch Resistive touchscreen, 128MB RAM, Processor ARMv5 Intel PXA310 at 624MHz, 256MB Internal Storage, and an unknown graphics chip whose driver does not exist at all. That device runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Classic.
The graphic rendering, both in Windows Mobile and in Android, is all CPU-made because, even for Windows Mobile, the OpenGL libraries aren't supported.
I know it's really crazy the idea to make an eleven years old device run Android 4.x, but if it can run Android 2.3, why not 4.0?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would respect your enthusiasm but the device isn't worth it.If you truly want the development experience at fairly cheap price you can buy the goldie Nexus 5 or it's twin Note 3.They are currently 100$ devices that have tons of development for them.Currently I am working on hlte notee 3 Ubuntu touch which is a success with 7 different roms that I compile on VPS only for learning.I have also Ran Debian 9.6 natively on This piece of worthless hardware along with compiling custom graphic libraries that somehow increase the performance.
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