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Is there a true Open Source Android phone? (drivers)

The current situation with the Dream and missing drivers have made me think about the importance of open drivers also for embedded devices like phones. Anyone using the combo Ati card + a distro that upgrades Xorg or kernel more often than Debian stable (whics is most of them) have felt the urge to curse closed source drivers to the deepest levels of hell. Now the same **** hits the fans for G1 owners.
Even though tis post is not about Ati, I must say in their defense that they have released specs, which is great.
Qualomm however, has not released anything whatsoever when it comes to source or specs, as far as I can understand. I have been stalking enough development efforts on embedded devices to know that this is common practise from hardware vendors - and extremely annoying for any geek wanting to do some heavy development for them.
And now i finally reach the question, which has already been mentioned in the title: Is there any device, released or upcoming, that features a SoC with opensourced drivers and firmware for all components? If not (and guess it is so, unfortunately), is anyone better than the others?

Of the many phones/MIDs/ARM gadgets I evaluated before I got my Vogue, the only ones I saw that had even remotely open OpenGL drivers were based on TI's OMAP3 SoC or had a PowerVR SGX GPU. Unfortunately, none of the OMAP3/PowerVR devices I saw were cheap (OpenPandora, AI Touchbook, BeagleBoard, Nokia N900, etc.) enough for me. That, and I saw what happened with the TouchBook's OpenGL ES library, which apparently wasn't allowed to be distributed outside of TI's SDK - but I haven't been following that. I also saw that the Samsung S3C6410, used in the cheap made-in-China SmartQ5 and Q7 MIDs, has open enough specs for writing a driver, but no one has stepped up to write one yet. Aside from OpenGL, though, an OMAP3/4 based phone would be perfectly open... except there aren't many consumer OMAP3 phones I really wish reverse-engineering or converting the Qualcomm/ATI libhgl.so for "real" Linux wasn't next to impossible/illegal - if doing it was easy, you'd have an OpenGL ES library for Debian on the Dream by now. I would reverse engineer it if I had the resources, unfortunately I'm unsure how legal it would be to do that.
EDIT: as far as phones (as opposed to the non-phones I was talking about), the most open right now seems to be Qualcomm - not counting Marvell PXA or other feature-poor (opposite of feature-rich ) SoCs - as contradictory as that may seem. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm basing everything on OpenGL drivers, since as far as other hardware goes, I don't have much expertise. Also, I haven't looked hard enough to find any Freescale- or other ARM SoC-based phones, and I don't know of any Android phones (shipped with android, not ported by third-party developers) that DON'T use Qualcomm chips. For the moment, it seems you must pay a premium for openness.

Well, thank for an insightfull reply anyway.
The N900 is definitely on my watch-list, but yeah, it sure is a bit expensive. Then again, it IS cheaper than the N1, So it isn't that bad.
As for the legality, it really shouldn't be legal NOT to give out open drivers for hardware when you sell it to consumers. They should have a legal right to have it!
But seriously, these outdated qualcomm chips in most HTC phones is no competitor to Snapdragon or Tegra, so who do they think they are fooling when they keep the drivers closed for "competitive reasons". Thats pretty much what they all us as an excuse.
Sad to hear about the "free" Touchbook fate though. I had high hopes for it, but if that is the stance they're taking now, I'm glad i didn't buy it myself.
Soooomewheeereee over the rainbooooow, coooode iiiiiiiiis freeeeeee (likeinfreespeechnotfreebeer) Soooomewheeeeree over...
In paradise there is no binary blobs in any code running on any of my devices.

Acer has just released the "Acer Liquid kernel source code". http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/service....tx1g.c2att92=122&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=2980211862 Liquid support under Document tab.
Hope that everything is there.

The GeeksPhone One is an open source Android device running on the MSM7225 processor, and worth checking out.
http://www.geeksphone.com/en/

The samsung moment uses the Samsung S3C6410 processor .... whitch is used in otehr windows mobile devices and i do belive samsung has a sdk advable but im not sure

I don´t know it exactly but shouldn´t be the OpenMoko a true opensource phone?

Isn't the Droid pretty decent? Doesn't Motorola even release the drivers for the hardware as open source here: https://opensource.motorola.com/sf/sfmain/do/home

The Moment has the same problem the SmartQ 5/7 have, unless Samsung released source code for the Android OpenGL drivers behind my back. That still wouldn't cover running Debian, sadly - I was hoping I could run Debian if I got one, but I know it won't be 3D-accelerated even if Debian does run. The Motorola Droid has pretty much the same SoC as the N900 and friends, hence the same PowerVR driver problems. IIRC, the SGX drivers are only partially open - I think most of the source code is available, but I remember hearing somewhere that there were redistribution problems. The infamous Intel GMA500 IGP (which was actually designed - and manufactured I think - by PowerVR) still suffers from poor-quality closed drivers, and Intel still hasn't done anything about it, pointing fingers at PowerVR for who knows what reason. I've come to a conclusion: hardware companies don't care about the consumer anymore

What's the status of this these days?
- how open are the n900 drivers?
The Nexus and i9000 both have a thing where the modem reads the CPU so that's as far as the reliant project goes.
Geeks phone is pretty cool but has binary blobs.
I remember reading about another project to make a phone like the Geeksphone but being prepared for compromise to achieve full openness. But I forget the name of the project. Anyone know what its called?
I'm really hoping there's a cheap Chinese phone out there that one can really own from driver level up now.

Dual core CPU devices coming?When?

Hi guys!
We've all been hearing all this stuff about dual-core CPUs like Qualcomm's QSD8672 @1,5GHz,or the single-core OMAP 4xxx @2GHz etc,right?The question is,will we see those devices soon enough?I mean,if they come out some time around christmas it's worth waiting(although they may cost something too much).However all the new devices that we see coming out,like HTC Ace or Schubert,have the well-known Snapdragon QSD8250/8650 @1GHz,with its crappy GPU and its not so powerful CPU(compared to Samsung's Hummingbird).Any clues yet on when we'll see those devices that will change what high-end means?

My guess (which is based solely on a hunch) is that that such devices would be announced together with Android 3.0, so that companies can advertise it as 'the next generation'.

Well,although not based on facts,your hunch gives a pretty possible image of how things will work...

no snapdragon...no netflix for you!!!

(at least for now anyway)
still love my captivate but this could be a major issue for some customers in determining what phone they use.
The article says android users with snapdragon 1ghz or faster processor will be able to stream netflix. No mention of hummingbird...which at least for now will mean no netflix streaming. The galaxy s 2 is using an orion processor so it looks like it will be waiting as well.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...streaming.html

I don't see how they would keep the community from just pulling the APK and installing it to other devices. How would they make the app itself discriminate based on your CPU? Is there an API for that? You can't reasonably write a Windows or Linux binary that will only run on Intel CPUs, for example.

Well i dont think it wont work with processors other than snapdragon, I mean, probably the may be refering to the speed of the processor itself

fraztto said:
Well i dont think it wont work with processors other than snapdragon, I mean, probably the may be refering to the speed of the processor itself
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Exactly what I was thinking.
Snapdragon 1GHZ = Hummingbird 1GHZ
Clockspeed doesn't differ simply based on a name or manufacturer.

fraztto said:
Well i dont think it wont work with processors other than snapdragon, I mean, probably the may be refering to the speed of the processor itself
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Click to collapse
Agreed. Qualcomm made this announcement, so obviously they are going to mention *their* processor and not a competitor's. Although it doesn't explicitly outline it in the article, it is clear that Android is getting a Netflix app and if your device is powerful enough to run it then you can use it. Qualcomm is working with Netflix to bring this to Android.
Unless I read otherwise, I'm going to assume that ALL Android devices are getting Netflix and they aren't going to go out of their way to exclude devices that do not have Qualcomm chips.
Bad link. This one should work: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-14/netflix-shares-jump-on-news-of-android-streaming.html
I would like to encourage OP to A) post in the right forum (props for catching it, though), B) post links that work, and C) don't write sensationalist titles with no explicit bearing of truth to them.
Sorry OP, but this kind of gets under my skin.

The OP is probably correct. The Snapdragon processor has "media protection features" aka DRM that Netflix is taking advantage of. The Hummingbird part may or may not have similar DRM mechanisms that may or may not be software compatible with the Snapdragon solution.
If the Netflix APK depends on a hardware feature that's not present, then it obviously would not work on all phones. This is going to be very confusing for end users.
The press release refers to the "media protection features".
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/14/netflix-on-android-confirmed-for-snapdragon-phones-first/

If that is truly the case, I'm sure one of the genius Devs here will find a way to bypass or emulate the protection scheme.

The article says Snapdragons will get it first, not exclusively.

miztaken1312 said:
If that is truly the case, I'm sure one of the genius Devs here will find a way to bypass or emulate the protection scheme.
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If the DRM can be bypassed or emulated, that means no one will get any Netflix in the end. That's why iOS and even the new WP7 have Netflix already and Android doesn't.

I dont think they can keep it from everybody either. This is the ONLY thing i miss from my iphlone

I assume the Qualcom chips come with DRM built into the processor similar to hardware accelerated graphics. If that's the case it should be possible to write an application that will only work on that processor. This I'd especially true if they don't publicly release the drm spec so it can be replicated in software. Even if they did that the processing visa software would be slower and prone to more problems.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

I havent seen anything that can bypass drm at all

I don't think the processor will actually enable or disable by brand in think it just won't work on slower processors and snapdragon is the houshold name of fast processors
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

foxbat121 said:
If the DRM can be bypassed or emulated, that means no one will get any Netflix in the end. That's why iOS and even the new WP7 have Netflix already and Android doesn't.
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I doubt it. We're in the minority - the vast majority of users don't want to modify their phones and probably wouldn't be bothered with trying to find a way to get netflix to work on their hardware incompatible devices. If someone does manage to find a way to emulate the drm hardware, or NOP out the bits in software that deal with it or something to get the software to run, I doubt netflix would really care as long as you're still paying for the content.

I don't see the problem. You have to have a Netflix account to access the streaming content, so all they have to do is prevent the device from being able to record it. They already do that now on my Western Digital Live Hub.

Netflix has to show its content providers that the streamed content will not be compromised. Otherwise, content providers will not allow Netflix to stream the content at all. DRM is a necessary evil to live with in this case.
Netflix already publically said that they will selectively release player for certain Android phones, not all. That means Android phones with hardware DRM protection. They are not happy with the general DRM support in Android OS (or the total lack there of).
It is not about processor speed. If iOS can have it and WP7 can have it, processor speed is not the issue.
If Netflix see any sign of its DRM being compromised, it will simply ban all the Android phones or re-write the player. It is one battle you don't want to engage in. Nothing good come out it.
I believe a few content provider already pull its content out of Netflix streaming due to this concern. If any Netflix players prove to be unsafe, more will do so. Soon we will end up with a Netflix player with nothing to watch.

The write mentions snapdragon because thats all his limited intellect on the subject knows about. Hummingbird or any other 1GHZ PLUS cpu will work.

How does Blockbuster do it?
All I hear is how Netflix needs to have such and such for DMR. What I don't get, how is Blockbuster streaming content with Android devices? Verizon version of the Galaxy S includes Blockbuster.
I am really enjoying my Captivate and Android, but not having Netflix, Zumocast or airVideo has been a big disappointment for me. I wish I did a littel more research as i still can't beleive that Android base devices really don't have a true video streaming apps.

From what I gather, BB is not the same streaming as Netflix. It is basically a on-demand download. You need download to the phone before you watch. The content will auto-expire after certain priod.

upNsmokeAllDay said:
The write mentions snapdragon because thats all his limited intellect on the subject knows about. Hummingbird or any other 1GHZ PLUS cpu will work.
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Technically i don't think your assertion is correct.
I have read multiple articles on this and stating snapdragon processors "First" or "only" at this time is the line in all of them (and further specificy that Android 3.0 adds a pluggable DRM framework to OS). Some speculate that they will continue to work on ways to provide the app to smartphones who have processors that don't have the built in security like the snapdragon while you could just as easily suggest that the way they will do this is via OS updates and assume anyone that netflix matters to will just get a phone with a future android OS that have the drm framework already incorporated. (Before you say 3.0 is for tablets there is plenty of info suggesting that it will reach the smartphone level & if it doesn't future versions of the smartphone os like the rumored ice cream could bring similar security features).
All that aside i wouldn't put anything past the abilities of the talented developers here so even if that official app won't play nice with our hummingbird i wouldn't be surprised by a some kind of unofficial tweak that allows us to still get netflix streaming content.
There is even some speculation that some of the older phones using 1st gen snapdragon's that do not have the secureMSM may not be able to utilize the official app.
However Peters already admitted in his blog post that some Android handsets will never see the Netflix service. "This clearly is not the preferred solution, and we regret the confusion it might create for consumers," he said. "However, we believe that providing the service for some Android device owners is better than denying it to everyone."
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http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Snapdragon-Netflix-video-streaming-greg-peters-Qualcomm,news-9893.html

Games on Android [ARM Mali-400 MP, Nvidia ULP Geforce, PowerVR SGX 543MP2]

The title should actually be GAMING ON ANDROID - mistyped.
There's gonna be a fierce competition in Android Gaming (or hopefully so).
Mobile Manufacturers are chipping in powerful GPUs on their SoCs, which is a very good sign.
It's definitely going to be hard to choose the best gaming mobile from a lot of great mobiles.
Hope this thread will help people to choose their right gaming device.
First of all lets start with the hardware.
As of now, the following hardwares are available for graphics hungry gaming
--> Galaxy S [PowerVR SGX 540]
--> Atrix [Geforce ULP GPU]
--> Optimus 2X [Geforce ULP GPU]
--> Optimus 3D [SGX 540 @300MHZ]
--> Galaxy S II [ ARM Mali 400-MP / Geforce ULP GPU]
Among the above mobiles, the rating is as follows
1 - Optimusx 2x
2 - Galaxy S
3 - Atrix
4 - ARM Mali
* as per anandtech's test with GL Benchmark 2.0 - Egypt
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And there is weird thing with Geforce ULP GPU, it seems it doesn't support AA/FSAA. Dunno whether it is a problem with GLBencmark application or Driver problem with Geforce ULP... Gotta dig more on this...
The ARM Mali - 400MP is supposed to have 5 times greater performance than SGX540, which it clearly failed. Of course, it has a lot to do with the proper drivers, and this is too early to judge the benchmark scores of SGS II, but still, don't think samsung is gonna do anything on this matter.
A bit off topic, Apple has gone miles ahead with its latest ipad2.
Already it has got great games, and added with this PowerVR SGX 543MP2, it's gonna rock! Guess, again, it'll take years/months to catch up with ipad2's preformance... Hope Adreno 220 or Kal-El will do the magic for android...
Of course, we need to talk about processors too, but i guess the amount of physics involved in current games can be easily handled by the present single ghz processors...
--> Rest of the talk on next post... [Regarding various games available / coming soon]

..................

The Exynos is doing 35fps on Egypt at 1366x768 w/AA in the Odroid-A over at glbenchmark.com. That's much closer to Samsungs promise it seems.

Here's another test: http://androidandme.com/2011/03/new...s-omap4-and-snapdragon-match-up-with-tegra-2/

But they use the same Anandtech numbers as source.
"Scores for the Optimus 3D and Galaxy S II were taken from Anandtech."

landing said:
The Exynos is doing 35fps on Egypt at 1366x768 w/AA in the Odroid-A over at glbenchmark.com. That's much closer to Samsungs promise it seems.
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Click to collapse
"ODROID-A" - that's new... can you put up the link for the benchmark result here...
Edit: ok got it.
http://www.glbenchmark.com/phonedetails.jsp?D=Hardkernel+ODROID-A&benchmark=glpro20

emmarbee said:
"ODROID-A" - that's new... can you put up the link for the benchmark result here...
Edit: ok got it.
http://www.glbenchmark.com/phonedetails.jsp?D=Hardkernel+ODROID-A&benchmark=glpro20
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so does it mean Mali-400 has similar performance as SGX543 given that the benchmark for odroid-a is comparable to that of i-pad?

^ no way!
SGX543MP2 is way better than Mali-400MP and Geforce ULP (or atleast this is the present scenario/good efficient usage by ios drivers).
I thought Mali-400MP2 was inferior to SGX540 (which shouldn't be supposedly), but it isn't so after all. Most probably by the time SGS II is released, it'll have the drivers that O-DROID has and it'll be on par with the tegra devices in the benchmark...

That is a strange conclusion from looking at the benchmark results. I would say the SGX543 is suppose to be the dominant GPU based on specs but the Mali-400 in Exynos 4210 is really impressing on the games tests and could quite possibly kick SGX543's butt if the resolutions where the same. More results please!

i9100 said:
That is a strange conclusion from looking at the benchmark results. I would say the SGX543 is suppose to be the dominant GPU based on specs but the Mali-400 in Exynos 4210 is really impressing on the games tests and could quite possibly kick SGX543's butt if the resolutions where the same. More results please!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
after all the original SGS was packed with a superior GPU compare to A4 and i hope Mali-400 will at least be competitive against SGX543 if not on par.

@i9100 & sckc23 - even i was hoping that MALI 400MP is a kickass GPU and samsung was so clever in choosing it (instead of choosing tegra). Cause when all were choosing snapdragon+'lame' adreno, Galaxy S landed with hummingbird and PowerVR SGX540 which could kick ip4's butt....
But the results prove that I'm wrong.
And there's also another reason why Galaxy S won't be a great piece of hardware like IP4 and other android smartphones, because though it has powerful GPU it's lonely in its category. If SAMSUNG funded game developers to code efficiently for GALAXY S and SGS II mobiles, then i'm pretty sure it'll be the best. But that's not the case.
On the other hand, Sony Ericsson and Qualcomm (2 giantshots) are working along with game devlopers for the advancement of their adreno series of GPUs.
So in the end, they'll definitely become the winners.
I guess the game developers should themselves realize the need to code effectively for different mobiles, at least for Galaxy S (the most popular/ Sold mobile) and the SGS II (the gonna be most popular mobile).

emmarbee said:
But the results prove that I'm wrong.
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Click to collapse
Isn't the only result to support your conclusion the single test Anandtech performed? The same result that has been pulled from the GLBenchmark result listing?
But I do agree with you that Samsung needs to step up their developer engagement game if they want to be a leader.

Ya, those results are enough to know that MALI is underpowered. Unlike games these benchmarks will run efficiently on all GPUs. But the reason why MALI is under performed in SGS II and not in ODROID, might be because of the driver factors.
->Anandtech says the drivers play a significant role in making the hardware much better.
->And its upto the developer to fully utilize the hardware and its drivers.
I don't think neither of them is going to better with MALI.
And Apple should've focused on developing an efficient driver for 543mp2 by themselves or should've insisted more on Intrinsity to make it better for iOS.

So you are determined to stick to a conclusion based on likely invalid benchmark data and at the same time dismiss the benchmark itself? I'm sorry, I'm not able to help you then.
Let's try again when there are new SII data available

emmarbee said:
Ya, those results are enough to know that MALI is underpowered. Unlike games these benchmarks will run efficiently on all GPUs. But the reason why MALI is under performed in SGS II and not in ODROID, might be because of the driver factors.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It underperfomed on a test version of the phone Anandtech got to play with at MWC - I would take nothing from such a test as an absolute. The ODROID-a test shows the potential for SGSII.
Unlike games these benchmarks will run efficiently on all GPUs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you mean that the benchmarks are too synthetic or that game developers are sloppy?
->Anandtech says the drivers play a significant role in making the hardware much better.
->And its upto the developer to fully utilize the hardware and its drivers.
I don't think neither of them is going to better with MALI.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems the drivers for ODROID-A works better, and Samsung would probably get the same drivers. If they are using the same drivers, the score would probably be higher than the ODROID-A, since the glbenchmark tests are very resolution dependent.
And Apple should've focused on developing an efficient driver for 543mp2 by themselves or should've insisted more on Intrinsity to make it better for iOS.
Click to expand...
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Haven't they done that? The benchmarks for the 543MP2 seems quite good to me. And as far as I know, Apple IS developing the OpenGL driver themselves (but probably with help from IMG).

I will say that sometimes its about what you can get out of it not just the specs. The droid and milestone run alot less hardware then most phones these days but with the right rom they run close to on par.
I think the dev community for android is really pushing the hardware to its limits and the phone manu's are just pumping out specs.

duandroid said:
I will say that sometimes its about what you can get out of it not just the specs. The droid and milestone run alot less hardware then most phones these days but with the right rom they run close to on par.
I think the dev community for android is really pushing the hardware to its limits and the phone manu's are just pumping out specs.
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I do agree with you to a certain extent. I think the HTC Desire offers one of the best user experience in android and I am grateful to the dev community who keep improving it and try to get the best out of the phone. Nonetheless it does lag a lot when multitasking or running games with heavy graphics and as someone who often play games on the phone, i would surely look for one with a much more capable GPU. hopefully be the SGS II=)

how about xperia PLAY ?

ekimaureza said:
how about xperia PLAY ?
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Xperia play comes with Adreno 205 which is really last-gen so i doubt it can handle heavy graphics. The only advantage is the sliding control pad and SE will probably pay game dev to try optimising their game for the device.

tadjiik said:
It underperfomed on a test version of the phone Anandtech got to play with at MWC - I would take nothing from such a test as an absolute. The ODROID-a test shows the potential for SGSII.
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Click to collapse
Ya, even i was saying that. Samsung should make much better drivers. But will they be doing it? I doubt that. And is SGX540 being utilized to its full potential?
tadjiik said:
Do you mean that the benchmarks are too synthetic or that game developers are sloppy?
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Click to collapse
Usually I don't give a f about benchmark(may be that's because of my assumption that it uses only specs statistics), But GLBenchmark is very very close to real time gaming. Cause i've run the test in my phone and i've found it very real. So i ll definitely consider the score anytime.
And what i meant in that line was, games unlike benchmark are not optimized for all hardware. But the purpose of benchmark is to run efficiently on all hardware and so i said it'll run efficiently on all devices. But hey, thats just my IMHO. (I'm very sorry for not adding it, its all based on some calculations that i've made)
tadjiik said:
It seems the drivers for ODROID-A works better, and Samsung would probably get the same drivers. If they are using the same drivers, the score would probably be higher than the ODROID-A, since the glbenchmark tests are very resolution dependent.
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Click to collapse
Jeez, i totally forgot about the resolution... wow! so i think, if SGS II uses ODROID's drivers, it'll definitely kick MP2 ass? I REALLY WANT THE EXYNOS SGSII TO BE THE ANDROID FLAGSHIP, cause only it has the S-AMOLED-PLUS screen. I don't want to compromise S-A-P for tegra.
tadjiik said:
Haven't they done that? The benchmarks for the 543MP2 seems quite good to me. And as far as I know, Apple IS developing the OpenGL driver themselves (but probably with help from IMG).
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Click to collapse
This is the one, which I TOTALLY miscommunicated. I'm very sorry for my bad English. I was about to say "Apple WOULD HAVE focused on Drivers or WOULD HAVE insisted more on Intrinsity to make it compatible with iOS, thats why they were able to get such good results." S***!, a small change in grammar totally changes the meaning of the sentence.
@i9100 - i don't get you. Will conclude the with the benchmark, if the benchmark was made with final product. Won't mind the benchmark if the product was not tested with final drivers.
@duandroid & @sckc23 - +1
@ekimaureza - xperia PLAY is totally s*** for its price 32,000 INR (while you can get a much better SGS (GT-i9000) for 25,000 INR.
@sckc23 - SE will pay the devs not only to optimize it for those keypads, but also for the phone's hardware itself. Not only SE. It seems Qualcomm is very keen on marketing Adreno GPU after acquiring it. So, even IF the Snapdragon and other Qualcomm (dual cores) with Adreno GPUs are made inferior to PowerVR and ARM Mali, they'll make sure that all games are coded efficiently to run on their hardware.
THE DEVs will think of only one thing - whichever hardware is sold more, they'll code efficiently for it. Cause that'll naturally make their game good on most of the devices.
So though the PowerVR SGX540 (SGS) is better than Adreno 205 (nexus one, desire and a whole lot of other mobiles), developers would've kept adreno 205 while coding as those products have been sold more units than SGS.
The above statments include some real facts, based on logical calculations and some "IMHO"s. So please don't bother to scold me if i'm wrong.

[Q] crazy idea about porting halo

ive just realised something. halo ce's minimum requirements are 800mhz processor and geforce 2 gtx and 256mb of ram. a lot of phones have more processing power than that (im mainly thinking about tegra 2 phones like the atrix)
So aside from the direct x issue would it be possible to port halo ce onto android?

thre3aces said:
ive just realised something. halo ce's minimum requirements are 800mhz processor and geforce 2 gtx and 256mb of ram. a lot of phones have more processing power than that (im mainly thinking about tegra 2 phones like the atrix)
So aside from the direct x issue would it be possible to port halo ce onto android?
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...
thre3aces said:
...aside from the direct x issue...
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That is kind of a big issue, but maybe. It would have to run as a native application, and it would need to be ported to run on openglES, It would also involve a lot of refactoring to make a java-based interface to the game.
Possible... maybe with the source code, and some talented devs.
Not likely to be coming soon, and then there is the whole IP issue on top of the difficulty of the porting... I know I value my sanity too much to work on such a project.

Not likely. You may think that our current processors are more powerful, but that's not necessarily true. Watt for watt they are, but those non mobile x86 processors run many more instructions than these mobile chips. Also porting a game in x86 to ARM is a massive undertaking, not really worth it.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA App

ive recently started a thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1195712
wouldnt this help if the interface is java-based?

Yay I have a atrix
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

This is relevant to my interests. I was wondering why a Diablo 2 style game couldn't be tried. I know my phone far overpowers my old pc. Lol

There are two main technological hurdles to overcomes when porting games from consoles/PC to a mobile platform are:
1. CPU Performance
Just because a ARM CPU has a higher clock-rate than a non-low-power CPU doesn't mean that it is more powerful. ARM is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) CPU which means that it is ideal for low-power limited memory devices. However some operations that could be completed in one clock-cycle on an X86 CPU may take two or more clock-cycles an ARM CPU.
Even when comparing ARM CPUs to RISC PPC CPUs included in game consoles, the PPC CPUs tend to implement optimisations that aren't available in mobile ARM CPUs.
2. Graphics
As previously mentioned the main problem is that console and PC games are all developed with OpenGL (or possibly DirectX) not OpenGL ES. Whilst OpenGL ES 2.0 does have support for programmable shaders it's still very limiting compared to what can be achieved with OpenGL (even old versions).
Other Issues
There are also other issues due to the limited (or different) input mechanisms available to mobile device. The smaller physically sized screens are also potentially a issue even if resolutions are similar.

yea ive taken that into account and i know that arm CPUs are slower than an intel/amd counterpart despite higher clock speed. but surely a 1ghz dual core arm cortex a8 is faster than a 800mhz intel cpu.
the open gl thing was something i completely forgot about and know that you mention it i think the whole idea may not be possible. BUT i found this on wiki "PowerVR's Series5 SGX series features pixel, vertex, and geometry shader hardware, supporting OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1".
maybe it is still possible.
the screen size is another big issue. but maybe it will be ok on a tablet like the zoom.

We need to start looking into this again
Qualcomm will be releasing the snapdragon 810 soon it supports direct X, is x64, and has 2.7+ghz I think porting pc games is becoming much more of a reality and I would love for someone to give me a reason ditch my pc for gaming

I'd hate to re revive but since android practically is Linux, couldn't we focus on wine for android? That would not only allow people to install direct x in the first place on android phones and tabs but also open up many many possibilities such as a PC version of steam for android. A fun way of this could be taking advantage of Samsung's multi window support. But yes there is no halo for android before wine. Once wine is existant there will be PC on android. And Gabe's 3 will be comfirmed.

I have DREAMED of Halo in my pocket, and this is why I started developing. I thought I could put in the hours to at least get it off to a good start and get people involved. Here are the main issues, and the reasons that I (and I bet any others who have tried) eventually gave up.
It's been pointed out the difference in processing and graphics. X86 processors just run many more instructions than mobile processors. Mobile processors are catching up, and have been more powerful for a long time, but even if one runs a comparitively adequate number of instructions it still communicates differently with graphics processors and ram etc. This alone is intimidating because means that the entire game would have to be redone from scratch and the assets either stolen (yikes) or a partnership arranged with Microsoft.
Enter Microsoft. I love ole Mikey Soft I do, but they are defensive about their Halo. They recently made it almost impossible to install a fan project rework of Halo 1 CE. Any attempts to port to Android would be met with similar treatment. *Cough* they don't trust fans, but they gave Master Chief to 343, killed Cortana, and then made her evil.* That was a long cough. In their defense they have probably not pursued this because of the last point here: porr end product = poor user experience.
So processor, graphics, Mike, and finally porting itself. Borderlands 2 was recently ported onto an arm (mobile) processor. I bought a PS Vita+BL2 bundle specifically to see if I could learn anything about porting other pc games, like Halo. If you've played it you know that it is AWESOME, but has a great deal of glitches, frame rate drops, and even later loading textures than the PC/console version. To be fair I'm SHOCKED that BL2 and all its dlc run as well as it does on Vita. Bravo yo!
My conclusion was that it would have to be completely remade which would require using assets from a zealously guarded IP, and if a partnership was struck the final product would likely be extremely hard to optimize leaving all of us nostalgic fans with dissapointment as we are trying to launch each other to the top of blood gulch but run into such low fps that we can't coordinate the required wart hoggery. This is also why there are several Halo-ish games on Android. It's tough to Port, but much easier to imitate. Sad pandasaurus.

sorry to revive an older thread but heres an apk. i found however its in Spanish if someone can change the language it would be great.