I am going to develop a handheld device which has an Atom processor. I am thinking of using Android embedded OS for running telecom applications on this device. I have heard from my friends that Android is good for wireless applications. But my device does not need any wireless application. I will need only data (ping, traceroute...), IPTV and VoIP applications to run on this device. So is it advisable to use Android for my device?
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Craig McQueen
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Surjya Narayana Padhi
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3Let me know when that device launches! – moritz Jan 04 '10 at 06:25
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May be around end of this year.... – Surjya Narayana Padhi Jan 04 '10 at 07:06
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Why do you want such a device...? Application...? – Sumit M Asok Jan 04 '10 at 17:48
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Did you give a search for Debian and OpenMoko...? – Sumit M Asok Jan 04 '10 at 17:49
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In my opinion the biggest benefit you get from running a OS like Android as opposed to a tailored Linux distribution are:
- An application ecosystem, that integrates well
- A UI environment suitable for small screens
- An Application SDK that makes developing new apps pretty straightforward
Drawbacks of using Android IMHO:
- No standard libc. That means you will have to do some porting, to get mplayer or something similar to play your media content
- Way less libraries than you have, when you use a "regular" Linux distribution
- You can only create apps with UIs using Java (well there are other possibilities but you probably wouldn't do it)
It comes down to choosing what hurts less. My estimate if you have powerful hardware and a big screen (the combination of Atom and IPTV sounds like that) than using a LFS (Linux From Scratch), Ubuntu or something similar and create a flashy UI on top of that (using QT, OpenGL, GTK, Swing, ...) is less pain than porting your libs & apps to Android.
Of course you loose the sexy Android label which decreases probability of making it to Engadget :-)
Have fun tinkering!
Valentin
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Thanks for a really nice answer..... Presently I am planning to buy a netbook with atom processor and want to port linux to that.. For GUI, I am planning to use QT4. But I am not sure just by porting the QT4 libraries is enought for VLC player to run on an linux machine? I wonder if I need any other libraries to run VLC player on that? – Surjya Narayana Padhi Jan 12 '10 at 06:51
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Android uses a Linux kernel, and is designed to support Java applications. So perhaps you need to consider whether Linux and Java are suited to your application. You may be better off with a straight Linux kernel.
Clifford
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I am planning to use a cross-compiled linux kernel for atom platform and QT4 for GUI. Besides this I am in search of a good VOIP call monitor and analysis tool for performance testing..... If anybody aware of it please let me know.... Besides this I am thinking is QT is sufficient for running a VLC player on my embedded linux platform... Do I need any other platform like KDE or GNOME for running the VLC? I am going in the right way? Please suggest.... – Surjya Narayana Padhi Jan 12 '10 at 06:54