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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

Android SDK emulator update brings GPU support

April 11, 2012 in Android X86, OpenGL

News from the H

The Android engineering team has released Revision 18 (r18) of its Software Development Kit for Android, used by developers to build and test mobile apps for Google’s mobile operating system. The update brings better performance and other new features to the bundled Android emulator.

The most notable of these changes is the addition of built-in GPU support: the emulator can now use the host system’s GPU to boost the performance of apps running in it. Android 4.x, Ice Cream Sandwich, makes heavier use of the GPU to perform animated transitions and other display effects, so the GPU support will make it run more efficiently and realistically in the emulator. The support will also be helpful for developers running resource-hungry apps like games.

Other changes include better emulated CPU performance, and support for hardware features such as sensors and multi-finger input – developers can now use these hardware inputs via a tethered Android device. A future version of the SDK and emulator will add support for more hardware including Bluetooth and Near Field Communication (NFC).

 
Hardware Accelerated Android Emulator

Support for OpenGL ES 2.0 has also been added, meaning that that OpenGL games will now be able to run inside the emulator. However, the developers note that “there are a lot of GPUs out there, and we haven’t tested all of them for this beta release”. Users are asked to providefeedback and report any bugs they find.

Further information about the Android SDK update, including a video of the emulator’s virtualisation mode, can be found in the announcement blog post. Revision 18 of the SDK is available to download from the Android Developers portal; installation instructions are provided.

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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

Necessitas Qt for Android x86

April 5, 2012 in Android X86, Qt framework

I am attempting to port an Android Qt (Necessitas) app to x86.  I
figure all I have to do is to build QT from source using the x86
flag.  However, it was not nearly so simple.  After some research, I
found a way to get the build working.  However, it still seems like
something is wrong.  If anyone else here has had success building QT
for x86 and deploying an app, I’d like to solicit your feedback on my
procedure below:

1) git clone git://anongit.kde.org/android-qt.git
# Is this the right repo?  I notice it doesn’t have qt-mobility or qt-
webkit.

2) Remove the following lines from: mkspecs/android-g++/qmake.conf and
mkspecs/features/qt.prf
contains(NDK_ROOT, “.*r6″)|contains(NDK_ROOT, “.*r5.*”)|
contains(NDK_ROOT, “.*r5″) {
!contains(ANDROID_PLATFORM, android-4): !
contains(ANDROID_PLATFORM, android-5): !contains(ANDROID_PLATFORM,
android-8) {
message(“Your NDK-version is out-dated. A work-around is
enabled. Consider updating your NDK (workarounds are required until
r6(a))”)
QMAKE_LFLAGS_SHLIB += $$ANDROID_PLATFORM_PATH/lib/
crtbegin_so.o $$ANDROID_PLATFORM_PATH/lib/crtend_so.o
}
}

3) Edit android/androidconfigbuild.sh
NDK_ROOT=~/necessitas/android-ndk-r6b
NDK_PLATFORM=9
NDK_TOOLCHAIN_PREFIX=”x86″
NDK_TOOLS_PREFIX=”i686-android-linux”
TARGET_ARCH=”x86″
ANDROID_ARCHITECTURE=”x86″

4) ./androidconfigbuild.sh -q 1 -h 0
# -q 1 is for configure/compile
# -h 0 is for static version

5) Wait for the build to finish

6) Copy to ~/necessitas/Android/Qt/480/x86

7) In Qt Creator, Open Project

8) Go to Projects | Build Settings | General | Manage Qt version

9) Add ~/necessitas/Android/Qt/480/x86
#Observe the following error: Qt version is not properly installed,
please run make install

QT Creator version information
Qt Creator 2.3.1
Based on Qt 4.7.4 (32 bit)
Built on Oct 16 2011 at 16:03:12

Thanks for helping me out and I hope this information is useful for
anyone else attempting to do the same

UPDATE

Found the problem.  Forgot to the set install flag (-k 1) in #4 when
executing the build script:

android/androidconfigbuild.sh -q 1 -h 1 -k 1 -i ~/necessitas/Android/
Qt/480/x86

Setting -i <DEST_DIR> also eliminates the need for step 6.

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Avatar of The Admin

by The Admin

Latest Android SDK supports x86 emulator images with hardware acceleration

March 26, 2012 in Android X86

Today we are releasing an update to the SDK Tools and the Eclipse plugin. Revision 17 brings a lot of new features and bug fixes in various areas such as Lint, the build system

The emulator is seeing some big improvements as well:

  • Thanks to contributions to AOSP from Intel, the emulator now supports running x86 system images in virtualization mode on Windows and Mac OS X.

The weird part is that linux-kvm acceleration is missing in the notes but are present in documentation area
If you scroll down to
Configuring VM Acceleration on Linux

ps: still no Python by default and still no ndk included by default

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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

The Android x86 team has released Android x86 4.0 RC1, based on Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

February 29, 2012 in Android X86, News

News via webupd8.org and from the main site android-x86.org

New features:

  • Support Multi-touch, Wifi, Audio, Bluetooth, G-sensor and Camera.
  • OpenGL hardware acceleration for AMD Radeon and Intel chipsets
  • Kernel 3.0.8 with KMS enabled – most netbooks can run Android-x86 in the native resolution.
  • V8 javascript engine
  • Simulate sdcard by internal storage
  • External usb drive and sdcard are auto mounted to /mnt/USB on plugging
  • Experimental support of Renderscript
  • A text based GUI installer which supports ext3/ext2/ntfs/fat32 filesystems
  • Hybrid ISO (you can dump the iso into a usb drive using “dd if=android-x86-4.0-xxx.iso of=/dev/sdX”)
In my test Android x86 4.0 worked great on my  Asus EeePC: the camera, Wifi and so on are supported out of the box. The only issue I’ve had was related to suspend/sleep: I was unable to unlock the screen, but at least in my case, there was a fix (see under tips below). Also, applications compiled for ARM like Chrome, Firefox or Netflix and others don’t work (they don’t even show up in the Market) unless you recompile them.

If you don’t have a netbook or laptop to test it and you want to give it a try in VirtualBox, for a custom ISO with a patch that adds ethernet support, see THIS post (thanks to Paweł Lesiecki!) but please note that this build doesn’t have the Android Market installed by default (and comes with some other customizations). Since this not an official Android-x86 ISO, use it at your own risk!

A few Android-x86 4.0 (ICS) tips:

  • When using it in VirtualBox, but make sure you select “Disable Mouse Integration” (under the “Machine” menu) to get the mouse to work once you boot the Android x86 4.0 Live ISO
  • Disable screen autorotate from the Android-x86 settings, or else some application might rotate it for you (and that’s quite annoying if your device doesn’t support it)
  • If you can’t unlock the screen, try to use the built-in wake-up keyboard shortcut if available (Fn + F1 for my Asus EeePC), then use the mouse to slide the keyguard
  • For shutdown / power off, you can use an application such as Shutdown.

Android x86-4.0 RC1 screenshots

Here are a few screenshots from my Asus EeePC running Android-x86 4.0 RC1:

android x86 4.0 screenshot
android x86 4.0 screenshot
android x86 4.0 screenshot
android x86 4.0 screenshot
android x86 4.0 screenshot
android x86 4.0 screenshot
android x86 4.0 screenshot

Download Android x86 4.0

Android-x86 4.0 has been tested / it should work on AMD Brazos (MSI 110W), Asus EeePC or some Asus laptops/tablets and Tegav2 / Viewpad 10. These are the officially supported devices, but Android-x86 should work on others too. An old list of supported devices / hardware can be found HERE.

Download Android-x86 4.0 RC1 Live CD ISO.

To use it, write the ISO on an USB stick using Unetbootin, Linux Live USB Creator (LiLi) or using the command line (example: “dd if=android-x86-4.0-RC1-eeepc.iso of=/dev/sdX”, where “sdaX” is your USB drive). For more info, see the Android-x86 installation page.

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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

Necessitas alpha 3 update 4 #android #qt

February 23, 2012 in Android X86, C++, JNI, NDK, News, OpenGL, Qt framework, Uncategorized

This release brings the followings fixes:

Qt Framework:
- As I already said, thanks to Marijn Kruisselbrink java part is fixed !
- Fix Black screen thanks goes to Chris Browet
- I fixed software keyboard forces caps on

Qt Creator:
- it will automatically update your java files !
- fix signing packages.

SDK:
- windows & mac build kindly provided by Ray Donnelly

Cheers,
BogDan.

 

ED: one cool stuff is that now android x86 is supported if you look on TODO list

Also you can consult what is DONE in the alpha3

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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

Android-x86 with VirtualBox support – new build available android-x86-vm-20120130 with Ethernet enabled

February 22, 2012 in Android X86, News

Daniel Fages announced on builddroid.org
Hi,You probably know the android-x86 project.
With the ICS release, the VirtualBox has disappeared. So, I proposed to work on the VirtualBox support for android-x86, thanks to the work I’ve done to support VBox on AOSP.

I’ve done the following work to support VirtualBox :

  • As planned, much less work to do than AOSP support :
  • Audio support needs some changes : enable the ‘PCM’ control
  • Battery polling mechanism (also posted to the Android Gerrit)
  • 3D Acceleration disabled (if not, the SystemUI activity keeps crashing)
  • Ethernet enabled with DHCP-only (waiting for the ‘official Ethernet patch’ for ICS on android-x86)

You can find source patches here and can download a test ISO from here.

UPDATE: new build available android-x86-vm-20120130.iso.gz
I’ve uploaded a new version of the ISO based on android-x86 here : http://www.buildroid.org/Download/android-x86-vm-20120130.iso.gz

- Ethernet patch from Robill applied with some personal patch to fix DHCP

Ethernet seems to be working by default and is recognized as eth0 in the Settings ->Ethernet connection

I have tested on Lubuntu host and mouse worked only if i disabled mouse integration

 

Here is one video on how to install it on Ubuntu and Virtualbox

 

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Avatar of The Admin

by The Admin

Necessitas alpha 3 update 2

December 13, 2011 in Android X86, Applications, C++, Frameworks, News, Qt framework

Hello folks,

I’m honored to announce the second update of Necessitas alpha 3 release [1].
This release brings a new keyboard implementation which I announce it early this month [2]. As I said before there are a few small things which are still missing (I’d like to mention the selection which is not the best in town), but, overall I can say that all Qt users will enjoy a first class experience when it comes to input support. Also I tied to make it a little bit smarter:

  • If the input widget is bigger than 2/3 of the screen size your window will be resized.
  • Else the window will be moved in order to ensure widget visibility.

Yours sincerely,
BogDan.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/android-qt/browse_thread/thread/1d729d895b0379ed
[2] http://groups.google.com/group/android-qt/browse_thread/thread/3be1cba871e7e51c

[Ed:The sdk files from sourceforge are the same  for example i have downloaded for linux and ran  ./necessitas-0.3-online-sdk-installer-linux and it will download the new release ,If you have the sdk already installed you should upgrade from the menu Help-Start-Updater ]

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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

Two news about Intel and android-x86 – One is bad, another is good.

December 6, 2011 in Android X86, Firmware, News, Programming

I have two news about Intel. The bad one is, one Intel spokesman criticizedthe project, Android-x86.org publicly.

(thanks to the guy who notified us)

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4231083/Intel–Google-not-supportive-of-AMD-s-attempt-to-port-Android-to-PCs

“Huang’s non-authorized version has not been submitted to Google for integration into the wider Android open source effort, which has raised concern that it could cause fragmentation.”
The truth is we have worked for x86 porting much earlier than Intel involved the game.The truth is we have worked hard to push our effort into the Android open source project, dominated by Google. At least 30 patches we submitted have been merged to AOSP,though more are just ignored due to different reasons.
Another fact is Intel submitted some buggy patches to AOSP, but Google accepted them carelessly. I need to submit another patches to correct them, and Google accepted my patches undoubtedly.

How can a spokesman say such words full prejudice?

If I reveal all the facts that Intel had done to us, that would embarrass Intel very much!

I do think the spokesman needs to correct his words and say sorry to all of us publicly. On the other hand, the good news is, we have fixed the display issue of Intel video chipset. The source has been pushed to ics-x86 branch. Though there are still some issues in video playback.

Thanks to the great work of Chia-I Wu. I’ll prepare testing iso later when I’ve spare time.
Enjoy it.

UPDATE:

I’ve got a reply from an Intel engineer (privately).
He said “Intel platform does not yet supportICS, but Intel developers are working on it. i965 support will arrive in several weeks.”

However, I still have some unclear questions that are not answered:

  • Whether Intell will support i915 chip? That is, the video chip used in most atom based tablets or netbooks.
  • Whether Intel will release the solution to public so all the community can benefit from it.

–
Chih-Wei
Android-x86 project
http://www.android-x86.org

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Avatar of The Admin

by The Admin

Android NDK revision 7 released

November 14, 2011 in Android X86, C++, Frameworks, JNI, NDK, News

Quote from the Android blog:

Today we are releasing an updated version of the Android NDK, now in revision 7. The updated NDK lets developers who are using native code get started with the new native APIs available in Android 4.0.

Android NDK r7 includes a number of build system improvements and bug fixes, but most importantly it gives you access to two new sets of APIs:

Low-level streaming multimedia: A new API based on Khronos OpenMAX AL 1.0.1 provides a direct, efficient path for low-level streaming multimedia. The new path is ideal for applications that need to maintain complete control over media data before passing it to the platform for presentation. For example, media applications can now retrieve data from any source, apply proprietary encryption/decryption, and then send the data to the platform for display.

Audio decoding into PCM: Extensions to the existing native audio API based on Khronos OpenSL ES let native apps decode compressed audio assets to PCM format.

For detailed information about how to use these new APIs, please see the documentation included with the Android NDK r7 package. To read about the build system improvements and bug fixes included in this release, check out the release notes.

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Avatar of Popa Adrian Marius

by Popa Adrian Marius

Google and Intel team up for x86 Android

September 15, 2011 in Android X86, News

Google and Intel have announced they will be working to optimise the open source Android operating system for Intel’s Atom processors. To date, Google has supported ARM processors, and although there have been unofficial ports of Android to x86-based processors, this is the first time that Google has officially taken part in the effort to run Android on Intel hardware. The announcement, made at the Intel Developer Forum, was described as building on the companies’ joint initiatives to enable Intel architecture support for ChromeOS and Google TV.

The arrangement will mean that future versions of Android, such as the currently version-numberless Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), will include x86 support and Intel-specific optimisations which would allow Intel to offer better low-power performance. Google’s Andy Rubin said: “Combining Android with Intel’s low power smartphone roadmap opens up more opportunity for innovation and choice. This collaboration will drive the Android ecosystem forward”.

At the announcement, Intel demonstrated a smartphone based on a 32 nm Medfeld SoC (System on a Chip) running Android 2.3 as a reference design. AnandTech were given a demonstration of the Medfeld smartphone, which is expected to arrive in the market to compete with the next generation of ARM-based SoC’s like the quad-core Kal-El from NVIDIA.

Timetables for other releases were not discussed by the new partners; a recentIntel presentation slide noted that Android 2.3, Gingerbread, would be available on the Atom E6xx in January 2012. It appears, from the announcement, that Android is now Intel’s preferred operating system, at least for smartphones – a position previously held by MeeGo until Nokia disengaged from the project. Whether this new partnership will have an effect on Intel’s commitment to MeeGo is unclear.

News via H-online http://h-online.com/-1342751

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