Android aficionados with Raspberry Pi 4 are going to love the fact that they can now run the latest version of Android operating system on their credit card-sized PC. Thanks to OmniROM – an unofficial Android 11 port for the Pi 4, created by senior XDA member maxween, users can now enjoy the features of their choice of OS on the mini PC. There have been numerous events to run Android on Raspberry Pi before but the OmniROM port is by far the most refined builds.
The port is largely exciting because it can run most features of a regular version of Android apart from screencast, Wi-Fi hotspot or hardware accelerated video playback. Interestingly, the 64bit ROM can either be booted from a microSD card or an external USB storage.
From the information on XDA forum, the OmniROM runs Android in tablet mode – not as an Android TV device and it supports V3D, so you can play 3D games depending on how hard the game is to run. Support for V3D is still work in progress and you may experience some graphic issues as of now.
If you are someone who’s fine with a de-Googled experience – you can download images tagged with MicroG setup pre-installed. It includes the open-source Aroura Services and Store for apps. Users who want to be able to experience Google gapps can opt for the Weekly build of the ROM and enjoy Play Store and other official services.
The ROM is not probably apt for everyday usage, but if you want to run Android 11 on your Pi 4, the setup is really easy. If you already know how to flash images onto microSD card or external storage, you can download the images here and get going.
