Android

The point that kev was trying to make....which may be very hard for those of you not familiar with a good carPC design is on the UI's usability when moving. No one is arguing that android doesn't have a great looking UI, we are arguing that it is designed to be used by a user who can afford to keep their eyes and a hand on the screen.

The completely separate application framework of android will make it impossible for a fully integrated solution (you would need to design a single carPC application containing everything). Things like changing songs, dealing with SMS notifications, making/taking calls while navigating, etc. require your full attention when using the android platform.

I have a droid eris as my personal phone and a moto droid for dev work and its an incredible platform. That said its important to remember what the platform was designed to do and how those design goals limit its functionality for other applications.

Android may work for some, but it's not a very good solution for everyone. How is it in terms of startup/shutdown? It can't run all the time like a phone does. How is it's USB support? I don't want to run out and buy bluetooth versions of all the neat USB hardware I already have. What about media support? FLAC, AAC, MP3, M4A, WMA... I can't even get a standard MPEG file to play on my Moto Droid... What about video? MKV sucks on the android platform, alot of my AVIs won't play either. Will it support my USB backup camera? Can I plug a thumb drive into it that's NTFS formatted and transfer to my CarPC running android? What about my iPod? Can it allow me to use my carPC as a bluetooth gateway to my phone? Last I checked those neat BT profiles weren't implemented yet. What all hardware does it support? The Android-x86 team are using eeePCs to dev on, which means that most atom hardware based on intel chipsets will maybe work. What about us Ion platform users? What about us nForce users? Via CPU users? I mean, talk about reinventing the wheel... again.

Also, the market takes a bit of tweaking to get working properly in the x86 version, and afaik it's against the terms of service. The Android-x86 team isn't allowed to include it in their distro anymore.

Bottom line, to reiterate, is it may be the perfect solution for some, but won't be for the masses.

Just like Kev and his crappy LinuxICE. :lol:
Only kidding...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tidder

Just like Kev and his crappy LinuxICE. :lol:
Only kidding...

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The answer to all your above questions as applied to LinuxICE: yes, awesome, perfectly, lots more support, faster, stabler, less hassle, great hardware support, saves dolphins, solves world hunger, and costs nothing.

cheers.

Well, I'll be. ;)