Android, Everywhere and Nowhere

How Android on MIPS Helps Tomorrow's Devices, But Perhaps Not Yesterday's

Michael Tan of CNET Asia argues that with Android shortly being available for MIPS, that there will be little green robots everywhere. After all, the MIPS CPU is ubiquitous in consumer electronics gear, from set-top boxes to classic PDAs to game consoles. However, having an Android-capable CPU is only part of the story -- an important part, but still far from everything one needs, particularly if you are looking backwards for hardware as much as forwards.

Looking forward means looking for future MIPS devices to have integrated Android environments. And in this area, I believe Mr. Tan may be correct. Many MIPS devices already have RAM and storage capacity adequate for Android. If simple Android modules can be dropped into such consumer electronics gear, the biggest remaining challenge would be drivers for displays and such.

And looking forward, we can see part of the genius of the Android model. The Android Market steers developers towards thinking that users are licensing application “lifestreams”, not individual versions for individual devices. Generally-available Internet connections and limited on-board storage steers developers towards putting their data “in the cloud”. Now, if households have multiple Android devices, they can all have the same apps with the same data -- you choose which device you want to use based on where you are and what you want to do, not based upon what's installed and what data is loaded.

At the same time, though, Mr. Tan hints at retrofitting older hardware, such as game consoles, to run Android. For some devices, the technical requirements of Android, in terms of RAM and storage, may preclude such ports. The bigger problem is the predilection in the consumer electronics industry to keep devices locked down, unable to adopt new operating systems. If you cannot flash-upgrade a device with unsigned code, you will have great difficulty getting Android to run on that device.

It is this area of openness that I was hoping Android would help deliver: the ability to repurpose hardware as needed over time. Alas, HTC locked down the T-Mobile G1, setting a precedent that may steer device manufacturers towards “business as usual”. I am still holding out hope that some manufacturer, perhaps one with an eye towards openness (Neuros Technology?) will release some Android-powered devices that are designed to be hacked, and that innovative developers create compelling hacks upon those platforms.

Android-on-MIPS is a big step forward. It is not quite as big a step backward.

• Wireless / Mobile
• Android
• android development
• Android devices
• android programming
• mips