Linux on the iPhone: Nothing much new

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Nothing much new

As you guys can probably tell, I've been mostly busy with other real life stuff and I haven't been working on Android much. That will be changing pretty soon however.

I was able to have a lot of fun doing an interview on This Week in Android. Hopefully I wasn't too geeky for them!

There's nothing else new, I think. I'll try to integrate in the backlight stuff first and some of the cleanup that Bluerise did on the layout for the Android tree. That will be very important moving forward.

After that, there's a possibility that before moving onto the power management (which might be a fairly lengthy battle), I can whip up an installer and updater for current and future revisions that works through Cydia. Do you guys think I should work on that first or dive straight into the power management stuff?

Comments (306)

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+8 Vote up Vote down

@Deaf__Mute · 775 weeks ago

the power management would be good I don't think the installation process is that difficult but you are the man doing all the work so you should do what you want :)

p.s. thanks for all the work you have put into this you are one in a million!

8 replies · active 771 weeks ago

+20 Vote up Vote down

johnfjohnf 1p · 775 weeks ago

I'd go for power management. Right a quick wiki doc on how you think the cydia app should work. I'm sure someone else has the skills to write it. While not many people have the skills to do serious hardware hacking!

+14 Vote up Vote down

Ed Marshall · 775 weeks ago

Please, for the love of ${DEITY}, focus on power management before making installation any easier for the masses.

Without battery life longer than an hour and a half, Android on the iPhone isn't much more than a tech demo, which means it's really only interesting to the geeks. Once you have reasonable power management (or at least, uptimes of a few hours), then there's quite a bit more for your average person to be interested in.

(Regarding a Cydia-based install: are you concerned at all about legal ramifications of automating the firmware extraction from a downloaded IPSW? Or are you thinking of a method of extracting firmware "live" from the running phone, which would be very slick? :))

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

-6 Vote up Vote down

MAC · 775 weeks ago

I have a question? Can you compile all of this into one easy setup in linux? It would be great to just hit setup and go.. I found it a little confusing but your work from yourself and your team was great stuff. Please let me know..
Thanks :-)

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

JohnF · 775 weeks ago

Do 'Power Management' as Ed Marshall put it, it is a kind of a demo more than an usesable OS. I donated and I like all your work, thanks. Someone hopefully will step forward and work on that an installation package, someone more knowledgeable than I.
Thanks again.

-12 Vote up Vote down

Valdrox · 775 weeks ago

Power management would only serve the people who have already installed idroid (which is i'm sure a small number). This project is still in its early stages and so you should make it known to as many people as possible as quickly as possible .

I highly recommend you make an easy installer (through cydia would be great). What this will do is convince people that this is mainstream enough and worth giving a try thus generating interest. And if you do that, you will get more donations and more collaborators.

The easier the installation procedure, the more people will flock to your project. Nobody wants to give their time or money on something that no one uses.

Hope that helps!
Valdrox

5 replies · active 774 weeks ago

+20 Vote up Vote down

devzie 25p · 775 weeks ago

3G sim unrecognized bug
Power Management
...
Installer

Reason: Installer will grow user count quickly, better to iron out things with reports/testing from users who take the time to install, rather then _alot_ of complaining and disappointment why every little thing doesn't work.

Careful with your packaging, apple is gonna react - thanks for your & the teams hard work, appreciated.

2 replies · active 771 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

step21 · 775 weeks ago

I'd say power management first but an updater through cydia would of course also be nice especially if there are more updates in the future.

+1 Vote up Vote down

SiLo · 775 weeks ago

Awesome news, if I wasn't getting the Evo 4G in a few weeks I'd totally be coding for this project (sorry if it's a lame excuse!).

The installer would only be a patcher of sorts, which would be helpful, but not really a high priority. It will never be a one-click/tap install because the firmware files cannot be distributed (Marvell + Zephyr), though correct me if I am wrong.

The real thing is to get this working as a viable OS as much as possible. While it's an amazing proof of concept, that's all it is at this point. Power management should be first. Regardless if performance and compatibility is perfect, if it lasts an hour at best, that's no good.

Once it is stable and can run for long periods of time, compatibility is next. I'd say that performance is last because that's more like optimizations and such.

I see it as a "program bug report". Crashes are the most important (power management is a 'timed' crash). Compatibility is the next (if things don't work, what good are they?). Performance is dead last, as you know "get it working, then get it working well." A slow, accurately working program is better than a fast one that crashes/bugs out a lot.

I am curious though, why is the power management so terrible? I assume it involves integrating iPhone OS's ACPI to Android. Judging from how many Hackintosh power management kexts have been created, there's lots of information on how it works so integrating it shouldn't be too hard? Then again, I admit I'm not much of an Apple dev so I could off quite a bit.

As for performance, I can understand why this might be more difficult. I'm also curious on how you'd integrate the VDP and get really good OpenGL performance under Android. I'm not sure how much of this is already "there" and how much you have to "do." I'm sure the Apple hardware makes all of this a bit more quirky.

TLDR: Power Management -> Compatibility -> Performance, going from left to right in order of priority.

1 reply · active 774 weeks ago

-4 Vote up Vote down

stldirty · 775 weeks ago

hey could you help some of us out on the forum who can't get the touchscreen working. there's a fix for it but not all of us know how to compile the kernel.
http://www.idroidproject.org/forum/viewtopic.php?...

2 replies · active 774 weeks ago

+3 Vote up Vote down

Ryber · 775 weeks ago

David, I really think you're doing an awesome job!
My personal opinion is you should work on power management first and perhaps let the community handle an installer/updater app for cydia ( like bootlace ).

+3 Vote up Vote down

paul · 775 weeks ago

As much as I'd like a Cydia installer right away, it's not worth it for me to even use at all until the power management features are added.

-3 Vote up Vote down

@dadeb · 775 weeks ago

I think there is no point working on packaging for public releases throught cydia while there are still big problems to solve and poor usability

We need a solutions for 3g sim not recognized bug, power management, android app store (or something like that), speed, boot times, and so on

1 reply · active 774 weeks ago

+8 Vote up Vote down

Tommy · 775 weeks ago

My vote is for power management. No use in bringing Android on iPhone to the "masses" until they can actually use it for any length of time.

Thanks for all of your work on this awesome project, and best of luck moving forward!

-7 Vote up Vote down

pilotgav 1p · 775 weeks ago

Any idea what the the timeframe might be for a 3Gs version?

3 replies · active 770 weeks ago

-3 Vote up Vote down

SquareWheel · 775 weeks ago

I've always been a fan of doing optimization after finishing the features. Get the polish out after you've finished the core. Code refactoring is a lot easier when everything is where it should be. I'm not sure if that applies to this project, but that's my point of view.

0 Vote up Vote down

srikanth · 775 weeks ago

power management plz

+1 Vote up Vote down

Andrew · 775 weeks ago

I'd go for Power management

also, do you have any plans for the
2nd Generation iPod touch?

+1 Vote up Vote down

Pablo Caviglia · 775 weeks ago

1) 3G sim unrecognized bug
2) Power Management

-4 Vote up Vote down

GereBear · 775 weeks ago

Power Managment First, The people who desperately want a version to show off to there friends that overheats and wastes battery will find a way to install it... it's the people who want a finished version that may have trouble with installing it...

+3 Vote up Vote down

SkuddSteens · 775 weeks ago

Definitely Power Management. Making a Cydia installer makes it look like everything is ready for the general public jailbreak crowd. It's really the last thing you should work on.

That being said, are there any plans to make the Android interface itself more iPhone friendly? For example, maybe adding software buttons instead of shoehorning in the usual Android button functions on the iPhone's limited button setup.

Either way, I can't wait to see this evolve and eventually hit the 3GS, as I plan on getting one hopefully soon.

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

-8 Vote up Vote down

paul · 775 weeks ago

please work on the updater for cydia please!

+15 Vote up Vote down

MunirZM 8p · 775 weeks ago

I vote for power management first, then FroYo 2.2 (hehehe), then all the missing features like 3g, android market, syncing, email, etc.

Just got the current version working... its great but kinda useless at the moment. Another donation comin your way once its actually usable!

1 reply · active 771 weeks ago

+4 Vote up Vote down

Dylan Farnum. · 775 weeks ago

Please don't make an easy installer yet. You'll be bombarded with newbies complaining about how everything does work yet and that they're not able to download android apps.

4 replies · active 774 weeks ago

+3 Vote up Vote down

Stuart Scott · 775 weeks ago

I would get it out on cydia first as beta or alpha for not so tech people and get a lot of testing out there, then move to power management.

Great work, thank you!

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