As I said a few days ago, Android is now as the point where it’s past the point of just being an interestingly-branded OS. The ecosystem is growing and the development community is growing.
One of the things I’m really looking forward to is a MID running the OS. Others are thinking the same. Here’s a video from meizirkki.
This is the N810 running android. Its obviously working but it looks like it needs a bit more oomph to make it usable.
Check out the details at Guug.org and this thread at Internet Tablet Talk.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I don’t want Android on my NIT.
I want Dalvik on Maemo.
Android is great when you don’t want a full OS (ie. you don’t want to have access to the underlying Linux layer, to other Linux apps (graphical and command line), etc.). I’m fully behind that for my phone. Not for a MID, netbook, laptop, nor desktop.
Android for phones.
Dalvik on Maemo or Ubuntu variants for everything else.
theluketaylor Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 12:45 am
I agree. Google worked very hard to strip android down to the bare essentials. They did a great job for phones but they removed a bit too much for a general purpose internet tablet. I’d love to see android applications running alongside other maemo applications.
If I were Nokia I would fund the development of this. Intel is working on similar things to maemo with moblin while touting atom as the true mobile internet since most applications (and especially web plugins) are built for x86. Nokia is in a position to use intel’s claimed architecture advantage against them by bringing dalvik to maemo. x86 may be king in the desktop world but for mobile it’s still all ARM all the time. Right now as far as I know dalvik will only generate ARM binaries. That means intel can’t bring dalvik to atom without significant development time and expense.
Hildon applications are more mini-desktop focused while android applications are more mobile focused, built around always on internet and GPS. It seems like an ideal match especially when n810 wimax is here and 3G N900 is coming. Yes there is some overlap in applications (especially when it comes to the browser but choice there is never a problem) but overall I think it would be good for maemo.