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Rockbox for Android!

post #1 of 25
8/26/10 at 11:17am
Thread Starter 

Rockbox for Android was accepted as part of Google's summer of code project, so now we can put aside the abysmal stock android media player and finally work with true gapless and full file support. Audio playback is flawless at this point, but there are still several issues. The UI is abysmal in comparison to audio applications designed for touch screen devices, and playback has by no means been fully integrated with the phone yet. Still, if you need gapless support, there is nowhere better than the Rockbox app for android currently.

 

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/WebHome?topic=AndroidPort

 

Prebuilt applications are at the bottom of the page, and must be sideloaded to work, it is very much in the early stages of development and is NOT in the market, nor should you expect it there for quite a while.

 

Interface can be tricky at first... tap at the top and bottoms of the screen to scroll up and down, and left and right to go back and forward through the tree system of files and menus. Middle tap is analgous to the menu button, I believe.

 

I know this post is not about one particular source component, but it opens up competent music playback for every single android phone currently in development or yet to be released.

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post #2 of 25
8/26/10 at 7:49pm

Thank GAWD for the progress, great work DEVS!!! Now all I need is for the final app to be upped to the Android Market (I don't do sideloading), and almost all my issues w/Android are DOA (battery life is sux IMO).

 

Once again, thanks to all who are working on this - you rock people!!

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post #3 of 25
8/27/10 at 9:23pm

Is there any single android phone that comes close to Iphone 3gs sound quality though? And do any of them offer line out?

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post #4 of 25
8/28/10 at 2:09am

AFAIK the most complex problem in porting rockbox on android was turning rockbox from firmware into application. So it is quite likely that in the near futture there will be rockbox applications for iOS, Windows Phone/Zune etc.

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post #5 of 25
8/28/10 at 7:34am

That's fantastic news, Shaikoten. I have downloaded the .apk and I'm playing around with it on my Nexus One.

 

I can see what you said about it being an early version - weird to use, and the default font is tiny. But it certainly works - thanks to everyone involved in this!

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post #6 of 25
8/28/10 at 7:58am

I'm not sure about the relevance of the project, since Android is not that good for multimedia, it seems better having Rockbox support audio stuff, but it looks like running an emulator (Rockbox) in a system (Android) using a virtual machine (Dalvik) It's fine I guess, because audiotrack API is meant to send PCM stream directly to the hardware with a minimum lag from what I read.

 

Since Android is mostly open source it's easy to port Rockbox on it, I don't think Apple, Microsoft or Zune would give any information abouttheir devices.

 

@Zakalwe

You can get some more fonts here:http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/RockboxExtras


Edited by zest - 8/28/10 at 7:59am
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post #7 of 25
8/28/10 at 8:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by zest View Post

it looks like running an emulator (Rockbox) in a system (Android) using a virtual machine (Dalvik) It's fine I guess, because audiotrack API is meant to send PCM stream directly to the hardware with a minimum lag from what I read.

 

Since Android is mostly open source it's easy to port Rockbox on it, I don't think Apple, Microsoft or Zune would give any information abouttheir devices.


You are wrong. Rockbox runs on Android as a regular Android application.

It doesn't matter whether Android is open or closed source OS. The only thing that matters is that one could write applications for android.

One could write applications for Zune and iOS too; and the only thing left to port rockbox to Zune or iOS is to implement appropriate OS-specific things.

The following two things were done in order to run rockbox on Android:

1) (most complex) Turn rockbox into an application, so that it will use underlying OS, not the bare metal. From what i understand, this is nearly a rewrite of all rockbox.

2) Implement appropriate Android-specific things (android was chosen just because the developer had an android device and because android is more popular than iphone).

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post #8 of 25
8/28/10 at 8:54am

I hope this is a go soon, I'm about to jump ship w/the Mrs and get us 2 iPhone 4's,..........................

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post #9 of 25
8/28/10 at 9:44am

Well, you should not hold your breath, because it only happens where there would be some enthusiast who will be ready to spend its time porting rockbox to iOS and who is good C apps developer.


Edited by penartur - 8/28/10 at 10:18am
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post #10 of 25
8/28/10 at 10:04am
Thread Starter 

For those of you that are using this but are being driven absolutely bonkers by the need to press on the corners of the screen to control it instead of intuitively pressing on folders, files, and icons, there is a solution. Navigate to settings and change your touchscreen settings from 3x3 grid to absolute point. You will then find the control to be much more intuitive. Not on par with most android apps so far, but much, much better than the 3x3 grid.

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post #11 of 25
8/28/10 at 2:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by penartur View Post

You are wrong. Rockbox runs on Android as a regular Android application.

It doesn't matter whether Android is open or closed source OS. The only thing that matters is that one could write applications for android.

One could write applications for Zune and iOS too; and the only thing left to port rockbox to Zune or iOS is to implement appropriate OS-specific things.

 

I agree, it's an Android app, but reading this page, it seems they modified a simulator, used to test firmware on PC I guess, and compiled it with the Android SDK. Reading the thread on Rockbox forum, I'm not sure devs are really motivated to port to other OSes for the moment.

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post #12 of 25
8/28/10 at 3:23pm

No, they've planned to create an SDL application (running on VM), but created a normal application in the end:

 

 

Quote:
Compile and run the SDL application, unless it'd take too much time to make it work since it's not a primary objective to run it using SDL(ALERT! - abandoned since getting it running without SDL went faster than expected)

 

As for implementing it on other OSes, i agree with you. However, rockbox is now much closer to iphone than it was earlier, because the only thing left is to implement iOS-specific things.

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post #13 of 25
8/28/10 at 9:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bojamijams View Post

Is there any single android phone that comes close to Iphone 3gs sound quality though? And do any of them offer line out?


Wondering that too, some Android players are reputed to sound good but there are hardly that many if any comparisons out there.

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post #14 of 25
8/29/10 at 4:19am

There are rumors that sony's X successor (scheduled to announce on september) will be running on android.

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post #15 of 25
8/29/10 at 7:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedSky0 View Post




Wondering that too, some Android players are reputed to sound good but there are hardly that many if any comparisons out there.


Just wait until the Cowon D3 comes out. The D3 is supposedly running on Android, and Cowon makes some pretty good players.

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