Even the old Nexus S can run Android Marshmallow

So you have one of the classic Google Nexus devices just laying around gathering dust – the Samsung-made Google Nexus S. Google developer Dmitry Grinberg has been making a lot of fun projects these days, especially trying to get older Nexus devices to run Android Marshmallow. He’s successfully ported Android 6.0 to other older devices, but the age of the Nexus S and the hardware that came with it produced some challenges. That said, the effort to port Android M was still successful.

We may have to remind you of the Google Nexus S. Some people say it’s a rebranded Samsung Galaxy S. That would be an oversimplification, but the two models are closely related. The Nexus S was launched in 2010, and originally ran with Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It was updated up to Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, but no further than that. It was powered by a 1Ghz Cortex-A8 processor, powered by 512MB RAM and 16GB internal storage. Pretty old, right?

Plus, the PowerVR GPU was given a driver that Android M would not use, so some coding gymnastics had to be done there. There were other cool hacks done for this build, given more detail at the source link below, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

But the port is relatively successful, and Android Marshmallow runs on the Nexus S as well. Get the developer’s specific instructions on how to do this, if you want to give your Nexus S some Marshmallow flavors. The download links are all at the source link below.

SOURCE: Dmitry Grinberg