If you’re a big fan of the small Android-powered Raspberry Pi computer, you’ll be tickled to death to hear the latest news. This tiny little credit card sized computing device originally launched running an optimized version of Android 2.3. Android fans like to have the latest version of the operating system to play with. Some people were probably a bit put off that little computing device was running an old version of the operating system.
If you’ve somehow managed to miss the Raspberry Pi a few key facts you need to know include that the device is only $35 and it’s been so popular it’s hard to find one in stock. The device uses a Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM1176JZFS processor with a FPU and Videocore 4 GPU. The GPU supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and supports 1080p30 H.264 hardware decoding.
The little computer also has 256 MB of RAM and boots from a SD card. Connectivity options include an integrated Ethernet port, HDMI port, dual USB 2.0 ports, a RCA video output, and a 3.5 mm audio out. The little device also has a header for camera connection. The best news to surface in a while on the Raspberry Pi is that support for Android 4.0 is coming.
According to RaspberryPi.org, a port of Android 4.0 has been in the works and hardware-accelerated graphics and video and been up and running smoothly for a while. The missing component delaying the launch of the new operating system for the Raspberry Pi is AudioFlinger support. According to the guys behind the Raspberry Pi, they have been mum on the implementation of Android 4.0 because it uses a different kernel and VideoCore binary image than the version available on GitHub for little computer right now. The company says it’s investigating the possibility of converging the two versions into a single common platform. Check out the video to see Android 4.0 in action on the Raspberry Pi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgJ7yck1qwY
“This tiny little credit card sized computing device originally launched running an optimized version of Android 2.3” Er, the RaspberryPI never launched with any version of Android – it was a customised Debian distro. To my knowledge this Android 4 build is the first Android build widely available for the device. I think you should clarify your article a little.
It actually never launched with any OS (or even any storage, you have to BYO SD card), but has a few available for download:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
This. Raspberry pi has never had android on it before. It was thought to be very difficult to achieve. That is why it is a big deal.
get your facts right before you post 🙂
To the other commenters ; here are the facts from an RPI owner :
Raspberry Pi comes with an SD card containing a custom build of Debian.
Cyanogenmod Android 2.3 was available before broadcom did their neat little android 4 demo.
It didn’t run anywhere near as smooth as the broadcom demo did.
Nothing goes forward this raspberry pi, it was once Android 4.0 it seems that the project died, android 5.0 which already has nearly a year and does not come from scratch, now the windows 10 everything is stopped, it will never be one desktop operating system, is for developers only.
Regret having bought it.