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Android Nougat: Google's latest OS ported to the Raspberry Pi

It may have been out for less than a month, but a build of Android Nougat is already available for the $35 credit card-sized board.
Written by Nick Heath, Contributor
raspberry-pi-3-case.jpg

Nougat has been seen running on the Raspberry Pi 3, albeit briefly.

Image: Raspberry Pi Foundation

Android 7.0 Nougat may have only just landed on smartphones, but it's already been ported to the Raspberry Pi.

A build of Google's latest mobile OS is shown up and running on the $35 credit card-sized computer in this YouTube video.

The release only works on the Raspberry Pi 3, the newest version of the board, and in the video is only shown for running for a few minutes, as the user tinkers with the app launcher, notification panel, and system settings. The system settings seem to be displaying the correct information about the Pi but the OS does crash when the 'About tablet' button is clicked.

The port was created by Peter Yoon, a developer who has got previous releases of Android running on the Pi. The source code and instructions on how to get it running are available on his GitHub repository.

The Pi shares the same ARM-based hardware as Android phones and tablets and there have been various ports of the Android OS over the years, including this recent build of Android Marshmallow for the Raspberry Pi 3.

Earlier in the year, there were reports that Google may be preparing to throw its weight behind getting Android onto the Pi, after the firm registered the Raspberry Pi 3 as a new device 'tree' in its Android Open Source Project repository. To date, however, this repository remains empty.

Despite starting off as a board for hobbyist developers and a device to teach kids about coding, the Pi is supported by an increasingly wide range of operating systems, in addition to the many Linux-based systems that run on the board.

Microsoft recently released the Anniversary Update for Windows 10 IoT Core on the Pi and Google will release its upcoming operating system Fuchsia on the computer.

The co-creator of the Raspberry Pi Eben Upton has also said that it should become easier to port more operating systems to the Pi, as not only is the Pi 3 more powerful than its predecessors, but an open-source video driver is being developed for the Pi that should make it easier to support hardware-accelerated graphics.

Following the recent release of Android Nougat, Google has begun releasing images of the OS for some Nexus handsets, so that owners who can't wait for the over-the-air update set to arrive in the coming weeks can upgrade manually.

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