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Fancy an Ice Cream Sandwich with your Raspberry Pi?

by Alistair Lowe on 2 August 2012, 11:00

Tags: Raspberry Pi Foundation, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)

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Since its launch back in February, production of the RaspberryPi mini-computer, which aims to bring programming knowledge into the British curriculum, has ramped up to 4,000 units per day, with over 20,000 units currently shipped.

It's not just sales that are going strong for the £30 device, software development is still progressing at an impressive speed and, earlier this week, it was announced that Android 4.0.3 will be heading to the little piece of kit, featuring full video acceleration, in the near future.

Android 4.0 ICS is a perfect pairing for the RaspberryPi, as, whilst the Pi is a little light on CPU power, featuring a 700MHz ARM 11, it has excellent graphical prowess - in-line with the performance of an iPad 2 and so, with Android 4.0, the device should be able to maintain a fairly responsive interface, in fact, take a look for yourselves.

Work is still ongoing to bring support for AudioFlinger, Android's native audio system, however, all the other major pieces of the puzzle are now in place. If decent APIs providing access to I/O, interfaces and the camera port can be exposed, expect to see some interesting hobbyist projects crop-up in the near future.



HEXUS Forums :: 22 Comments

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Still just a toy..
As opposed to what?

It's intended as an educational tool first and foremost, which it does very well.
The devices capabilities are looking very good! If it can happily run tvcatchup on android I'd be made up with one.

Our freeview signal shown some wind or rain turns to zilch!
With the right OS on it I imagine it would make for a pretty versatile ‘smart tv’ add on. There is some nice more powerful alternatives appearing but you can't really argue with the price of this thing.
watercooled
It's intended as an educational tool first and foremost, which it does very well.
Exactly, it was intended to be a cheap-as-chips throw-away device kids could mess around with, and it didn't really matter if they broke it, or just lost interest in it.

Any expectation of high performance completely misses the point.