Android apps on Maemo
 

Hi fellows,

since I heard about the upcoming N900 a couple of weeks ago I frequently stop at by at the maemo page to see what is new and to get even more excited: I love Linux, I love the N900 capabilities, so I love Maemo. And I never had a Nokia before ;)

I sent my question already to the Nokia support but did not get any reply:

Do you think that there is any chance to support Android apps on Maemo natively?

The idea is really basic: Itunes announced having 75000+ apps in their Iphone store (TV comercial), everybody is probably convinced that this is the biggest advantage of an Iphone, despite apples restricted policy and the Iphone OS which lacks lots of features. If I look at Maemo and the Maemo app store, the number is comparatively ridiculous small. Android announced not to long ago the first 10000+ apps.
But it is not difficult to see, that the Android OS is pushing very hard in the phone market and therefore it will hopefully soon outperform / challenge the Iphone and Itunes platform.

However, this won't work for Maemo, which runs on a few Nokia devices, so the impact wont be nearly as big. So would'nt it be worth the effort to integrate Android Apps / Android Apps store natively in Maemo? I am not a programmer, but I know enough to say that such a thing is not trivial. But taking into account the the android os is open source, based on linux like Maemo I somehow consider this as a serious possibility and definitely a absolute killer feature for Maemo.

Hopefully u guys can give me some input on that,

thanks, osfight

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

The best bet would be to take advantage of the work Cannonical is doing to make Android stuff run under Ubuntu. Once thats ready I would be curious about how well the apps would run on an n900

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

The basics of Android are opensource, but not the app store. Google doesn't allow the app store to run on non-Google phones, including non-Google Android phones.
Even those who rooted their phones have to copy the app store app from their non-rooted installation. And then, what you get to see in the app store seems to depend on your IMEI.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

I think Nokia's plan is to move Symbian dev to Qt.
Then symbian apps will migrate to Maemo easily and you then have the Squillions of Symbian devices as pull for devs.

Mike C

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Ok, I guess the Maemo developers are really busy these days with the upcoming N900 release. But with Canonicals support you guys should really look into that, the earlier the better and hopefully somebody can spread this idea to the Nokia guys...

High five for Android execution environment!

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Hm, the N900 is going to be released soon. I can hardly find a Symbian store via google, all I read is beta, whereas Androids apps are real. Don't get me wrong, but the only thing which keeps me from buying an Iphone is my love to open source, because I am convinced this is the future of development. But can i wait for giants like Nokia to turn, than I might be 50 and to old for mobile computers :)

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Tell us the Top10 apps from Android that you would like to see on Maemo.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

I cannot tell you my 10 favorite apps, because I dont have an Android phone or an Iphone. I see, that at the moment this is the only way for Maemo to satisfy the customers to some degree, asking which apps they wanna have ported, but you probably agree that this is far from choosing out of 75000+ apps unrestricted.

It is like buying a book and you ask me which book I wanna read in my language, but so I have to know it first. That requires me to know all books in the foreign language before I can read it in mine.

I don't have an easy solution to that problem, because nobody is able to clone the Iphone / Itunes store in a couple of days, else I would have happened already. But I feel that the Android store is making for the moment the biggest step into that direction compared to all competitors.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Hi there,

IMHO the N900 is a geek's stuff for now.
Giving it the ability to run android's apps would be a great argument for it: coupling the power of an opensource totally customizable maemo with the marketing power of google could turn it into the definite device!
As I first heard of android, I was hopping that it would be as flexible as maemo seems to be. But android devices are still smartphones whereas the n900 is more a pocket pc much more powerfull giving you more freedom. On the other hand, google is building a major actor of the mobile world because of thirds party apps just like the iPhone (without the app store, only fanatic fanboys would have bought an iphone, but even me, who don't like Apple, has an iPhone).
So I wish that the work from canonical would be integrated into maemo.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Couldnt have said it better. Google is a software / service provider whereas Nokia earns money with hardware / software bundled to hardware. For Nokia as a global player it should be no problem to talk to Google for an joint-venture or cooperation and get some insight which is necessary.

What do the Maemo guys think?

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

I doubt Maemo will hit the number of apps to compete with the iPhone or Android, however, like has been mentioned before, Quality over Quantity. The iPhone may have 75000 apps, but is an app that has no function other than eye candy really an app?

Bubble wrap popping? Pouring beer out of a pitcher? Those apps are good as a one-off application, but really serves no purpose. Sure, there are some excellent applications for the iPhone/Android, but you can't look at those numbers for comparison of a quality experience.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

They do serve a purpose. Milking cash from the strategically dumbed down ringtone generation. :D
Either through price or through ads.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

These apps are IMHO partially freeware. So it is entertainment, like youtube, facebook or porn, whereas the purpose is always questionable.

Having Android apps available does not exclude quality Maemo apps, it even adds qualtiy Android apps en total.
And yes, I wont even use more than ten apps regularly, but it must be my decision to choose if I wanna do something useful or pour beer from a pitcher.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

110% echo the replies here. Here is my background:

* Current iPhone 3G user who is hating the locked environments (even jailbroken it is a mess)

* User of the N770 and N800 pads since they came out, though not anymore.

* Android-envy

Nothing would scream "my perfect device" like a Maemo phone that had API-level Android capabilities (I don't care about having the Android desktop nor the dialer/etc ... I just want apps) AND a working J2ME compatibility story (no Swing == not working with a ton of J2ME apps ... I "get" why no Swing, and I prefer SWT, but it hamstrings the java story).

One or the other will probably sway me to stick with Maemo. Neither means I will seriously evaluate the phone but likely will return it. I'm no longer an embedded Linux professional (I worked on it professionally for a few years back when the 770 first came out) so I have very little -work- justification for spending that much time fiddling around with my phone. I want the -ability- but I also want the convenience of a large base of pre-made apps.

Again ... most of the folks I read about don't care that this isn't a true native Android phone ... we just want access to apps. Even if we can't get on the Google app store it would be a huge benefit to be able to run those apps. Unless I am mistaken, Google apps are not limited to -only- going through the Google store. Similarly we don't want a Java phone ... just a Linux phone that can run J2ME apps.

I almost hopped on the OpenMoko bandwagon a couple of years ago but in the end the iPhone's apps won out. The N900 is closer-enough that I'm considering a switch. But I'm also about 50/50 on going with a Droid phone instead for now.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

The problem I see here is that you think that Android is an any way like J2ME. Its not - what it is is a customized JRE with a VERY cutdown java base. There are some very good descriptions on this website of the problems with Android,

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

If you are interested in:

Java SE on Maemo 5
Java ME on Maemo 5
Dalvik on Maemo 5

See the thread Java on Maemo 5 where community has looked into the options.

The result of this is:

Current state of affairs written on Java entry on Maemo wiki.

The following 2 Brainstorm entries:

• Delivering Java SE to Fremantle
• Delivering Java ME to Fremantle.

Please feel free to contribute! Vote, provide proposals, update current state of affairs, etc.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Should be possible with linux.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Actually no, I don't :) I know I'm making 2 different requests. Both address a different segment of the "I want apps" need. I'm familiar with both markets ... either of which would be extremely valuable for different things.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

unfortunately, that project seems to be dead.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Too bad. What do you think about this Project: http://sandohq.com/index.php

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Nice website, but no content. I have no idea what it is.
About: "We are still writing this section. Please be patient as our priority is with the Sando Coding, not the website."

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Android execution environment on Maemo (or any Linux at all, for that matter) is hard - even if you get the Dalvik VM running you've still got a lot of libraries and frameworks that are pretty tightly bound to Android, all the way down to the bare metal (all the UI rendering stuff depends on the Android framebuffer, compositor, and EGL, which in turn depend on Android-only kernel features - not to mention all of the desktop monitoring features that are needed to open and manage windows etc. and are very tightly bound to monitoring and lowmem handling in the kernel).

As related in links earlier in the thread J2ME/J2SE is an interesting thought, and probably smarter to pursue - I think mixing Android and any other Linux is a lot more work than it's worth.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

I have been been thinking about the same thing, i.e., that it would be neat to be able to run Android applications on Maemo. From what I can see this could be a major argument for many people to purchase Maemo devices in the future since they can get the best from both worlds, i.e., they have the openness and features of Maemo and can still run their favorite Android applications.

There is some progress on creating a standalone Dalvik WM, see http://code.google.com/p/dvk/. However, as some others mentioned before, the WM is only one part of the Android stack; in order to be able to run Android applications, it is also necessary to modify the WM such that it uses the Maemo libraries instead of the Android stuff.

Does anyone know if someone is working on this?

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

The Ubuntu dev who was developing Android Execution Environment seems to be active Twittering here http://twitter.com/chickencutlass :P

The last post on the blog about Android didn't seem very hopeful though but at least they actually had some Android apps running already...

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

My favorite Android app for Maemo if that ever possible is the Google Map Nav.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

any updates on this??

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

That is so evil, it's almost Keynsian.

What is their excuse for this?

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

the way android is designed to be a mobile os most likely - maemo is not a whole lot better with its closed source parts

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

Not quite. Android was likely never intended to be open source originally, and was only opened after Google bought them. Easiest way to get around any licensing issues is to (properly) re-implement from the ground up.

Most closed mobile OSes being the insular things that they are, don't bother to implement any existing standards and will do all sorts of nasty, hacky things that the end user is never supposed to see. I suspect that Android's intended business model would have included a patched kernel ready to go, instead of Google finding themselves trying to integrate everything into the upstream kernel.

All of Maemo's closed components are in the upper-levels, and there's no reason they couldn't be replaced (and with luck, there won't be any closed components like them in the base distribution.) This is a licensing issue to be taken up with Nokia, Android's issue (as described in the post you quoted) is a technical fault as a result of (likely) closed-source design philosophies being suddenly made open.

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

ok...... so dj_steve keep up the good work, now i noticed what are the android apps you want on maemo5, well.. there is an app called espn3 online , wow!, you can watch the world cup live on it, and there is a couple of google apps, like google maps with voice sat nav, and google earth is cool, and what will be great to port on the n900 is the android games, wich is not hard at all, because these games are now going to run on symbian^3 like need for speed shift, sims 3, monopoly... these games can be easily ported to the n900 because i think they are written using qt on symbian^3, so come on guys, can't someone do something...
and today i saw my freinds 3gs running like android, apps that gives you the menu thingy on android where you swipe from left to right, and.... can that be ported on the n900 ??
but guys please try making these games running on the n900 ( nfs shift, sims 3, fifa 2010, pes 2010 ... )

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

I'm a new N900 user (well newish, had it a while but only just now looking at apps etc). I have seen some pretty funny android apps such as 'Boob Wobble' so I wondered if there's any progress on an app runner?

Re: Android apps on Maemo
 

I spent few mins today to compile dalvik for Maemo/arm. I've seen that make scripts need to be fixed to run in scratchbox. Compilation fails because of the script cannot recognize the platform and it doesn't set var HOST_OS.

I guess those issues are little things that can be fixed very easily.. I didn't go so far.. because I hadn't so much time..

Anyway I've seen some screenshots of dalvik running on a N800: http://justanapplication.wordpress.com/category/dalvik/