Install Android Natively On Your PC/Tablet

If you’re a geek and think “hackintosh” is cool, just wait, you should checkout the Androidx86 project if you haven’t. It’s the same concept compare to the hackintosh community, the main goal is to bring Android to the x86 architecture CPUs running natively. Unlike hackintosh, the challenge is to convert the entire code base from ARM support to x86.

Just few days ago, they have released the Android Honeycomb 3.2 RC2 for PC. There are different distributions of this release you can download that targeted specific for different models (a windows tablets or PCs).

If you have one of the following device around consider yourself lucky. Some of the device seems to play nicely with their ported version of Android, including working wifi, audio and video play properly as well.

• ASUS Eee PCs/Laptops
• Viewsonic Viewpad 10
• Dell Inspiron Mini Duo
• Samsung Q1U
• Viliv S5
• Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet

Since I don’t have any of the device listed above, I will show you how you can install it on a virtual machine. VirtualBox or VMware Player/Workstation should all work. If you are confident enough with what you are doing, this Android Honeycomb is just another OS, which means you can install it on your PC and make your system multi boot into Windows 7 and other OS.

Install on VMware Workstation

Pick IDE

SCSI Controller set to LSI Logic

Here you want to attach the ISO that you have downloaded from the androidx86 before starting the VM

Choose Installation

Here you want to create a new partition

It’s a little bit tricky here, you want to make sure to create a “New” partition with bootable flags.

Type: “yes” to write to the partition. Then quit

Now you can pick and choose to install the android on the new partition that you have just created.

Make sure the format is set to “ext3”

Yes to install the boot loader GRUB

The installation should be very quick.

And now you get yourself a working Android Honeycomb running natively in x86 on your Virtual Machine. Note, you can also run an emulator version of the android via android SDK if you are a developer. This project’s primary goal is to port over to the real working PC.

Any how, give it a try ! If you are interested in finding more info regarding this project checkout their wiki page.