Android

Android is an operating system based on the Linux kernel, and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers.

Android 4.3.1 (Jelly Bean) for XO-4

OLPC is preparing an Android, Sugar and Gnome dual-boot system for the XO-4.

Our next development release of a dual boot build is available.

The build is based on our arm-3.5 kernel, with changes which can be found in the arm-3.5-android branch of our olpc-kernel repository.

Installing

• make a backup of anything you want to keep on the XO-4, because it will be erased by this test,
• ensure the firmware is upgraded to Q7B37,
• download the .zd file, from our build directory,
• at the ok prompt, type this:

fs-update u:\32013a4.zd

• when the installation completes, type this:

boot

• at the prompt "Linux or Android", press shift-L, and allow the system to boot first into Linux, for partition resizing,
• shutdown Linux and reboot, and press shift-A at the prompt to boot into Android.

Known problems

• the boot choice menu is only a minimal design,
• power button does not always cause sleep,
• cannot automatically resize on 4 GB eMMC model of XO-4, must boot Linux first,
• not implemented; camera, hardware video codecs, touchpad, ambient light sensor,
• the microphone jack may not be operational, has not been tested,
• if playing music, closing lid stops music playing, waking up and pressing play does show playback, but no audio is heard until repeated stop and play,
• might not coexist with olpc-update,
• does not coexist with deployment security, the Android kernel and ramdisk are not signed.

Do not rely on this build for any critical data, in particular do not associate your regular Google account with this build if your Google account is critical to you.

Test cases

• boot,
• use power button for sleep and wake,
• use of e-book switch (close lid) for sleep,
• use of headphones to play music from USB drive in MP3 format,
• use of bluetooth to pair a headset,

Boot menu

We have an improved boot menu. Using the existing cheat codes the rocker down key is for selecting alternate operating systems on an XO laptop.

Please test:

• copy the boot script olpc.fth to the /bootpart/boot/ directory,
• copy the icon file android.565 to the /bootpart/ directory,
• copy the icon file xo.565 to the /bootpart/ directory,
• reboot

The chosen operating system remains selected until the rocker down key is used at boot to change it.

The first time the menu appears, there is no chosen operating system, so the highlight is not on either operating system. To restore this state, clear byte 84 of the RTC CMOS:

ok 0 84 cmos!

See Also

• latest and prior announcements on devel@ mailing list,
• Android (operating system) on Wikipedia,
• How to build Android for the XO-4,
• How to build an Android kernel for the XO-4,
• Kernel patches for the XO-4 to enable Android.

• Sugarizer for online use,
• org.olpc-france.sugarizer.apk Sugarizer for offline use.

• Mike Lee's review of a previous release, with photographs and videos