Intel has been working lately on “Atomising” the Android mobile OS in lieu of the upcoming Froyo (or 2.2) release so that it can be installed natively on x86 devices– Atom-based netbooks in particular. Says Renee James, Senior VP for software and services at Intel: “Our expectation is that [native x86 Android] will be based on the Froyo release and will be available this summer to developers… [it] wasn’t tremendously difficult, as we have a lot experience in Linux”. The fun is supposed to arrive for developers this summer.
I’m see that they’re officially announcing it, but wasn’t this already assumed when Google announced GoogleTV?
For the first year GoogleTV will only be on Atom based hardware. GoogleTV is built from Android and Chrome(the browser).
I’ve been looking at getting one of those cheap chinese 7″ netbooks with the ARM processor on ebay, particularly one of the ones that comes with google android installed instead of windows ce
do you have to pay to be a developer to have access to the developer builds of android? I’d love to try this out on my atom mini-itx desktop system just to see how it runs.
Acer ported Android to x86 a while back, for their Aspire One netbooks (I am typing this message on an Aspire One that came dual-boot with Android).
http://www.android-x86.org/
The problems with this current android x86 implementation are:
– no intelligent management of usb storage (the first device you plug is mounted as the sd card)
– video is x264 only with 480pixels max
– I think there is no 3D acceleration
– many applications are now optimized with the NDK for ARM processors and won’t run
Intel might solve the first 3 issues but will have difficulties solving the 3rd one.
I tried it on a eeePc 701. And I’d say it is an excellent OS for a netbook, I would love that Intel makes it really usable as my daily OS.
Edited 2010-06-29 07:22 UTC
Ok, at risk of sounding like a troll, I’d rather not see Android ported to x86.
x86 (and Intel particularly) already has far too much dominance over the CPU market. So it’s about time ARM had something x86 didn’t.
Well, ARM has overwhelming dominance in mobile/embedded market.
Which counts for nothing on the netbook market unless they can utilise the brands they’ve gained in the mobile space.
ARM should be perfect for netbooks but at the moment it’s an x86 / Windows arena.
So I stand by my point that I think this a real shame for ARM. Particlarly as iPad-style tablets are the latest fad. I can see Intel stealing the market from ARM just like they did with netbooks.
Edited 2010-06-29 10:08 UTC
It’s fine to stand by your point but your last sentence is off key.
Who can say “Intel stole the netbook market from ARM”? Netbooks are still laptops no matter what the marketing people said. Intel has always played in that field. Was ARM in the game? Had ARM initiated the netbook market or been one of its pioneer actors, maybe you could have said “it’s a shame ARM didn’t keep its market share”. Even then, markets usually involve several competitors, not landlords and thieves.
As far as I know, ARM netbooks are not common. I still have to see one in my town here in France. An ARM laptop may exist but I haven’t heard of it.
The reason why I said what i said was simply because ARM is perfect for netbooks: it’s cheap, lower powered, moderately spec’ed and ultra-portable.
You stated that netbooks are essentially laptops, which is true in a broader sense of the term. But the reality is that the two devices perform very different roles. Netbooks were never intended to be “laptops” in the traditional sense, but rather a cheap hub for online services and an office suite. Where as laptops these days are as powerful as many desktops and are usually brought to perform desktop-type processing while offering portability.
So taking the above into account, there’s no reason why ARM shouldn’t have had more success.
That said, I do think that ARM wasn’t entirely to blame. Some of the Linux distro’s bundled were so poor that it put off many people and then when MS entered into the market, they had the money to subsidise Windows so much that it became doubly unattractive to run anything other than Windows XP on x86.
Now it’s looking too late for ARM to recover as Intel already have optimised netbook CPUs out there to compete with ARM (where initially there was only the Celleron which was virtually no competition to ARM).
So while I don’t entirely blame ARM for losing the netbook battle, they should still have had a much greater market share in that product line than they currently do.
That’s exactly my point though. They could have and should have been more common.
The netbook market is an ideal market space for ARM to flurrish, but it just felt like they were held back.
Edited 2010-06-29 11:58 UTC
I guess tablets are the interesting market right now. It’s something where ARM can compete with Intel very well (I heard this ‘iPad’ tablet is pretty popular in united states of america).
If Moorestown kills ARM on tablets, it means MeeGo & Android kill iPad => a cause for celebration ;-).
EDIT: MeeGo, Android, Windows. Not as sweet a victory, but a victory nonetheless ;-).
Edited 2010-06-29 12:07 UTC
Agreed, which is what I said to you about 4 posts up
But my whole point was saying that Intel porting Android to x86 could potentially harm ARM (and lets face it, Intel aren’t doing this to try and sell /less/ x86 chips now are they)
They aren’t perfect, they have a major downside which is compatibility.
Even with netbooks you still run into issues with plug-ins, namely Flash.
But Flash is currently being ported which will make ARM a lot more appealing to OEMs.
The nice thing about ARM is that it is forcing Intel to keep their Atom line extremely low priced. You can get an Atom/motherboard combo for around $65.
Compatibility isn’t that big of an issue with netbooks:
* Linux already runs on ARM
* There’s already a plethora open source apps out there that can read 99.99% of office documents (many of which may already have been ported to ARM)
* There’s already countless media player applications, both specifically for ARM and open source that can be ported.
* Websites mostly use open standards – and the iPhone / iPad don’t have Flash either. so even that example of yours isn’t entirely fair.
So, for what netbooks are used for, compatibility really isn’t the issue.
But i agree that ARM isn’t perfect, but then nothing in life is truly perfect
Nice for consumers in the short term maybe. But in the long term Intel’s pricing model is harmful as it’s encouraging a monopoly.
Talking about compatibility with consumer software. Itunes, MS Office, $favorite_game. That may not mean anything to you but everyone I know is tied to at least one Windows or OSX program.
They don’t use Flash but they come with a media and app store.
You’re already asking a lot from consumers to buy a computer with an unfamiliar OS. Taking away Flash goes too far and Google realizes this which is why they are integrating it in their browser.
Did you not read my post before replying?
* itunes: there’s hundreds of media players that already run on ARM. So compatability there isn’t an issue. As for syncing up to iTunes, it doesn’t matter what hardware the device has (in fact iPad already syncs to iTunes and that’s an ARM processor).
* MS Office: there’s already lots of office suits that are MS Office compatable and run on ARM (OOo and KOffice being two high profile examples)
* $favorite_game: if you buy a netbook for gaming then you’re quite simply an idiot. Not even Windows XP Netbooks would be powerful enough to run anything but card games (of which there’s already a plethora for ARM), Tetris-type games (again, lots already for ARM) and so on. So your last point is plain stupid. The kind of games you can play on a netbook isn’t propriatory gaming and furthermore there would be loads of clones already available for ARM.
Next time please read the post you’re quoting before asking questions that have already been answered in that very post.
So does Linux. In fact, software repositories have existed in Linux since before the iPhone has even been around.
Apple did this and users coped.
Google did this with Android (remember Flash hasn’t been integrated yet) and users coped.
Furthermore, why should an ARM OS be unfamiliar? My girlfriends EeePC was a familiar looking OS for her. Same Window behaviour, same Firefox web browser as on her desktop and OpenOffice looks akin to MS Office too. And Xandros is a woeful example of Linux. So if Xandros can manage it, then I’m pretty sure other distros could too.
Edited 2010-06-30 10:11 UTC
Even if they provide competition? I’m all for cheap netbooks and smartphones, I don’t really care what they use.
Why would Intel be brewing Android for x86, shouldn’t their Moblin merger with Maemo (MeeGo) be a bit higher on their schedule and someone else is already working on Android for x86.