Who Installs Android onto non-Android devices?

[Windroid]

Who here has installed Android onto non-Android computers (including smartphones/tablets)? Me: I've installed Android onto a Surface Go 3, a Windows tablet made by Microsoft, and a Nook Simple Touch, an e-reader made by Barnes & Noble. Although the Nook is on Android 2; it's hard to make use of such an old Android version even for e-reading.

 

[ocnbrze]

i really do not see a need to do so. just curious, is it to play android games? i have a couple of laptops, a desktop, kindle fire, and a pixlebook. but i never saw a need to add android to it.

 

[Dannydet]

Never tried it.

 

[Windroid]

really do not see a need to do so. just curious, is it to play android games?

Same reason you'd buy a computer that comes with Android, so the question becomes: Why use Android?

i have a couple of laptops, a desktop, kindle fire, and a pixlebook. but i never saw a need to add android to it.

The Kindle Fire already has Android, albeit, without the Google Play Store and Play services (but you can install those yourself). The Pixlebook runs Chrome OS, which is becoming Android. Assuming the Android subsystem is available on your Pixlebook: Activate it, change a few settings, and you'll have yourself an Android tablet, with the following caveat which you gave in the linked thread:

the problem i find when i use my pixelbook is that some android games will not work on the chrome os. i used to play boom beach a lot, but they stopped support for chrome os, so i stopped playing boom beach.

 

[ocnbrze]

android is great for when you go mobile. but i think there are better os's than android. chrome os is slightly better than android. shoot my steam deck, that runs linux is more robust than android......but android was not meant to be a beefy os.

so again i do not see a reason, for me, to install android on any of my devices that do not already run android.

 

[Windroid]

android is great for when you go mobile.

That's the reason: Android is good for tablet computers. My Surface Go is a tablet computer. My Nook Simple touch was (theoretically) transformed from just an e-reader to an e-ink tablet computer, by installing Android onto it.

 

[Davdi]

I put Android on an old Dell laptop just because I could (dual booting with Linux Mint)

 

[nickdalzell]

FYI the Nook Simple Touch (2011) actually had Android behind its UI (Android 2.1, Eclair) but you had to root it with an SD card hack to "see" Android. It's otherwise well covered up with the proprietary UI that comes on the device. I have mine and used to use it as an e-ink web browser because it was the only way I could use a tablet like that for a week between charges! It was sort of a shame it had no speakers or headphone jack as MP3s on an e-ink device would've been cool.

Still not sure why the E-Ink smartphone never happened.

 

[Windroid]

FYI the Nook Simple Touch (2011) actually had Android behind its UI (Android 2.1, Eclair) but you had to root it with an SD card hack to "see" Android.

Yep, hence why the programmers of the XDA forum were able to make an Android for the Nook Simple Touch. Most of the work was done for them. Aside from rooting, they just needed to add a proper launcher and app store and all.

 

[nickdalzell]

But it already ran Android. It was just a severely gimped version of it.

The PoS registers at Kmart used Windows without explorer.exe and any icons/desktop, and auto-launched their PoS frontend via some startup script. They still ran Windows, and copying explorer.exe and editing config.sys and autoexec.bat doesn't mean one had 'installed Windows' onto it.

 

[Windroid]

But it already ran Android. It was just a severely gimped version of it.

From a technical perspective: Yes, it already ran Android. From the user's perspective: No, it did not.

An analogy: My Amazon Echo smart speaker runs Android. But it's just a speaker and microphone. All you can do with it, aside from using it as a speaker for your computer, is talk to Alexa (Amazon's voice assistant). You can't run Android apps on it, you can't do Android stuff on it. From the user's perspective: It doesn't matter that it already runs Android. You can't run Android apps on it, you can't do Android stuff on it. It's a smart speaker, not an Android computer.

Same with the Nook Simple Touch: As far as the user is concerned, it's not an Android computer (you can't do Android stuff on it). It's an e-reader. It only becomes an Android computer, when you put an Android installation disk into its SD card reader.

 

[nickdalzell]

By that argument I could easily fool someone to believe a heavily customized Linux is Windows, or that a heavily customized Android build is iOS, but people aren't yet that stupid.


Firefox doesn't become IE by changing the Firefox icon to IE. Believe me I wish it could have!

 

[Windroid]

By that argument I could easily fool someone to believe a heavily customized Linux is Windows, or that a heavily customized Android build is iOS, but people aren't yet that stupid.

Actually, Chromium/Chrome OS did "fool" me into thinking that it was Android. More to the point: It's a simple matter of practicality. I won't count something as an Android device, unless the user can use Android on it. On both the Echo smart speaker and the Nook Simple Touch: The Android is under-the-hood, and inaccessible to the user.