Sunday 27 June 2010

Quick Axdroid Update

So, another days work led to this: axdroid_20100626.zip. The keyguard is now disabled so won't cause problems, the SD card is now accessible (eg. to the Music app) and I did a few things I think may have possibly sped it up slightly (including this being a user rather than eng build). I also reduced the size of the included swap file to 128MiB (from 256MiB). It will still take a fairly long time on the first boot whilst it creates the root filesystem image, so bear that in mind.

Also, for anyone interested, the source for the kernel is now at http://github.com/paulburton/axdroid_kernel

Saturday 26 June 2010

Axim Android (aka Axdroid) 2.2/Froyo First Test Image

So if you want to try this for yourself, here's how:
  • Download axdroid_20100625.zip
  • Unpack the files from there into the root of an SD card
  • Enable mirror mode on your Axim
  • Open file explorer on your Axim, navigate to the SD card and run haret
  • Click run
  • Wait - for quite a long time
I will reiterate that it runs pretty slowly, and that is especially true on the initial boot since the way I've set it up means that it creates a root filesystem image on the SD card the first time it's run (BTW, make sure the SD card has 200MiB free for that). So you'll see it taking a while to generate that image before Android is run. On further boots the existing image will be reused so it will run much faster. Also, once Android actually runs the Dalvik VM has lots to do, so it will be slow until everything's been compiled by that too. Essentially, run it then go away for half an hour by which time it might have progressed from ultra slow to just slow.

Things to do:
  • Power button
  • Keyguard won't unlock...
    • which makes the Axim a fairly pretty clock if you run Android after the initial boot
    • disable it? Axim has the lock switch anyway
  • SD card mountpoint
    • / is loopback to root.img on the SD card, possible to have the SD card under /mnt/sdcard despite that?
  • Audio
  • Suspend
  • WiFi
  • Bluetooth
  • Speed it up if possible
    • user rather than eng build may make a difference
Finally, if this is interesting to you and you happen to have the problem of just having too much cash I'd love to help you out:

Friday 25 June 2010

Google stole the past 2 days of my life

Axim X51v running Android 2.2 Froyo :) 



It's pretty slow, but it works! Minus sound, WiFi, suspend (and probably other stuff I've forgotten) that is.