Developers Show Off Raspberry Pi Ice Cream Sandwich Port

The creators of the Raspberry Pi are working on porting version 4.0 of Google’s Android mobile operating system onto the mini-computer.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has posted a number of screenshots and video on its official blog showing Ice Cream Sandwich running on the computer.

Ice Cream Sandwich was released last year, adding a range of new features and security provisions to the Android platform.

Delicious… a Raspberry Pi Ice Cream Sandwich

According to the blog posting, the hardware accelerated graphics and video have been up and running smoothly for some time with support for Android’s native audio system AudioFlinger being the only major component lacking at the moment.

The team said the implementation uses a different kernel and VideoCore binary image from the one available on GitHub, which is the reason why it has been keeping quiet about the project until now.

“We’re investigating the feasibility of converging the two code lines to produce a single common platform as soon as we can, at which point we hope to release the sources for you to play with,” explained the developers.

The Raspberry Pi was first launched in February with the aim of encouraging a new generation of programmers. Six years in the making, the credit-card sized, single-board computer boasts a 700MHz ARM processor, 256MB of RAM, no hard disk, USB connectivity, a 3.5mm audio jack as well as other video ports.

The model A costs £15.70, while the slightly dearer Model B costs £21.60 and includes an additional USB port and an Ethernet connection. Demand has been high, with the first 10,000 being snapped up in a couple of hours. Some sold on eBay for more than £2,000.

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