Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Android
First I want to show you an operating system that I am sure you all have come across at some point in time. This
operating system is still a distribution of Linux although its main purpose is very different from any of the other
distributions I have covered in this topic. Of course I am talking of the one and only Android.
The first thing a lot of people ask when they learn that the Raspberry Pi has the same architecture as most
mobile phones is if they can install Android onto the Raspberry Pi. Well, you will be happy to hear that the Raspberry
Pi can support Android. While I have wanted to see the inside of the Android distribution for some time now it has
been quite low on my list of operating systems to install. The Raspberry Pi raised this quite a lot: after all, I no longer
needed some strange development board or an expensive ARM board. I now have a cheap board that supports a
range of operating systems; it sounds like a perfect time to install Android.
A History of Android
It might be a good idea to know where Android came from. Android, Inc., was first established in 2003 and its main
product was supplying an operating system for phones called Android. Not a lot of development on the Android
operating system was seen by the public eye until 2005 when it was bought by Google. Then in 2007 the Open Handset
Alliance and the first Android project were revealed. The world had to wait until 2008 before it got its first glimpse of
a real Android-powered phone.
At this point in time Android was seen as an impressive project but with little power to ever end up as a
mainstream mobile-phone system. After all, at this time there were many smartphone vendors with a well-established
commercial product; with the likes of Apple and RIM's BlackBerry, Android was in for a challenge. Google did
something that paid off and that was creating the Open Handset Alliance alongside the Android project. Google
could now bring chip-set makers like Texas Instruments and Qualcomm alongside wholesale carriers like Sprint
and T-Mobile and of course the hardware giant Samsung. Now all these different vendors could openly talk about a
hardware and software platform to meet their needs. No longer were the wholesale carriers just selling a service: they
were influencing the devices for their service. The hardware vendors knew exactly what end consumers wanted. This
was Android's big advantage. Android needed all the help it could get: if any of you had the misfortune of using an
Android phone with the 1.6 (donut) version of Android, you know that it was a very immature platform.
Another big advantage Android had was that not only could you make a super top-of-the-line smartphone but
you could also take the exact same code base and apply it to a cheap handset and easily remove some features. You
now had a constant end-user experience and your developers could write applications for a wide range of devices
with ease.
Android, unfortunately, has not always played nice with the open source community. During the 2.6 kernel
era it split off its development because of issues merging back into the mainline tree. In addition to this a lot of the
main handset makers lock down their smartphones to prevent end users from modifying the system. So now you have
an Open Alliance using mostly open source technology on a closed hardware platform. This is where the Raspberry
Pi comes in. You can now easily get a small taste of the Android operating system from the initial installation and, yes,
you will have root.
there are other ways you can experience android like hacking your smartphone or buying a more expensive
development board. Some of the more expensive development boards will give you a better all-around experience
especially when it comes with a touch screen. none of them will be close to the raspberry pi's price point!
Note
 
 
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