Category: Android

Android 4.0 in VirtualBox

This information is a little hard to find on the Internet. This is how to install Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in VirtualBox, in a "do it yourself" way (installing from an ISO image). There are some people who have made pre-installed VirtualBox images, but one problem you may run into going that route is that the Android serial number will match everybody else who's using the same image as you, since Android generates this number on its first boot.

Screenshot of my Android VM. Click for bigger version.

Getting an Android ISO

The folks at Android-x86 have been making x86 builds of the Android OS for quite a while now, and none of this would be possible without them. They have ISO images for various versions of Android available, but most of them don't work very well in VirtualBox. For example, their "eeepc" image for Android 4.0 has issues with the audio drivers and the network (it has no Ethernet support built in, etc.)

So this means using one of the Android-x86 images from there won't get you too far because audio and networking won't work. Fortunately, somebody has put together an ISO image that's been custom tailored to VirtualBox. I don't remember where I found this ISO image; if it's yours, leave me a comment and I'll edit this post. I found the ISO here: android-x86 VirtualBox/VMWare support (thanks @jakimfett!)

I have a copy of this ISO hosted here: android-x86-vm-20120130.iso (244MB). This ISO works much better.

Create a Virtual Machine

In VirtualBox, create a new machine for Android.

• Machine Name: "Android ICS" (you can name it anything you want)
• Machine Type: "Linux 2.6"
• Memory: I gave my VM 1024MB of memory.
• Hard Disk: I created a new 16GB VDI image that dynamically expands.

All the default settings worked fine for me. Here's what the defaults were on my system:

• Networking:
  • Type: NAT
  • Adaptor: "Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM)"
• Audio: Intel AC'97
• Storage Layout:
  • IDE Controller:
    • CD Device
  • SATA Controller:
    • Hard Disk

Update: In the comments, @Ni mentions this:

Make sure you add the SATA Controller if it does not appear, when you setup the virtual box and then add the ISO image and virtual disk image to this.

If you try and add the ISO image and virtual disk image to the IDE Controller this will not work at.

This information maybe useful to someone making this mistake.

It worked for me as listed above (IDE CD drive, SATA hard disk), but this is something to keep in mind if you have any issues booting the CD or installing it to disk.

Installation

Make sure the VM boots from the ISO image.

1. On the boot screen, select "Installation - Install Android-x86 to harddisk"
2. Choose "Create/Modify Partitions". This takes you into cfdisk.
   1. Choose "[New]"
   2. Choose "[Primary]"
   3. Press enter to accept the default partition size (mine was 17174.38)
   4. Choose "[Bootable]"
   5. Choose "[Write]"
   6. Type "yes" to confirm writing.
   7. Choose "[Quit]"
3. Choose to install on the sda1 device (Linux VBOX HARDDISK)
4. Choose to format the drive "ext3"
5. Pick "Yes" to confirm formatting.
6. Pick "Yes" when it asks to install the GRUB bootloader.
7. Pick "Yes" when it asks to mount /system as read-write (this will be important later to install the Google apps).
8. Create a fake SD card when it prompts. I made mine 2047MB (the maximum allowed).
9. Choose "<Reboot>"

Make sure you detach the ISO image from the virtual machine so that it will boot into the installed OS. If you see the "Installation" option again, it means you're booting from the ISO still!

Tips for Running Android

You'll want to disable mouse integration to be able to interact with the GUI at all. This can be done from choosing the "Machine" menu in the VM window and clicking "Disable Mouse Integration" -- or pressing HostKey+I.

The Escape key on your keyboard corresponds to the Back key in Android. The context menu key on your keyboard corresponds to the Menu button in Android (the context menu key is usually next to the right Windows key).

To power off the VM, press HostKey+H. This will cause Android to pop up the shutdown dialog that you'd expect on a real phone. You can also use the "Machine->Send Shutdown Signal" to do the same.

Install the Google Apps

You may notice that this Android VM doesn't include the Android Market, GMail, or Google Maps. These are some of the Google Apps and due to some licensing restrictions Android-x86 doesn't include them "out of the box".

On a real Android device that's been rooted and flashed with a custom ROM, you'd install the Google apps by flashing them in recovery mode. But you can't get into recovery mode on VirtualBox. Thus, the method for installing the Google Apps is kinda sketchy, but it works (and if you know of a better way, feel free to tell me).

You'll need a file with a name like "gapps-ics-20120304-signed.zip". These are the Google apps (the date part might be different). You can Google them, but I have a copy of them here to download too.

You don't really need the entire Google Apps file, actually. Just the "system" folder inside the zip file. Create a new tar file of the "system" folder so that it will be easy to get it into your Android device. I have a prepared "system.tar.gz" for you if you just want to use mine.

• GApps Download Links:
  • gapps-ics-20120304-signed.zip (52MB)
  • system.tar.gz (just the /system folder; 28MB)

The steps to install the Google Apps are as follows:

1. Download system.tar.gz to your Android VM somehow. I used the Web Browser app and downloaded it there. You could probably also use the Email app, or if you're really Android savvy, push it with the Android Debugger.
   • If Android tells you that there is no SD card so it can't download the Google Apps, that's because you skipped that step while first installing your Android system. The very last step of the installer asks if you'd like to create a virtual SD card partition, and you should've had it do that. If you didn't, the only easy solution I know of is to reinstall the OS.
2. Open the "Terminal Emulator" app in Android.
3. Enter these commands (note: don't type the $ or # symbols at the beginning of these lines. These symbols indicate the prompt.)

   $ cd /sdcard/Download
   $ tar -xzvf system.tar.gz
   $ su
   # cd /sdcard/Download
   # cp -rf system/* /system/

   Pay special attention to the cp -rf command. Make sure the slashes and *'s are in the right places.
4. Reboot the phone.

You should now see the Market app, GMail and the others in your app menu.

Note: in my experience, the Market app will be somewhat unstable. When you start the app, it will Force Quit after 10 or 15 seconds. However, if you're fast enough you should be able to quickly search for a specific app you'd like and begin the download process before Market crashes, and the app will continue to download and install regardless.

I imagine that the unorthodox way of installing the Google Apps might be partly to blame for the Market being unstable. The other Google apps seem to work fine though.

Custom Screen Resolutions

This is a tip I discovered somewhere a while back for getting custom resolutions to work in your Android VM (for example, to mimic the screen dimensions of the Galaxy Nexus phone, or just to run the VM at a higher resolution like 1024x768). I've found that you can use just about any arbitrary resolution you want, but when the resolution isn't a standard 4:3 one (like 1024x768), the VM seems to get somewhat laggy.

The general steps are as follows. Substitute 1024x768 with whatever resolution you want. You can add multiple video modes by changing "CustomVideoMode1" to be "CustomVideoMode2", etc.

1. In your Terminal or Command Prompt window on the host system, run this command:
   VBoxManage setextradata "Android ICS" "CustomVideoMode1" "1024x768x32"
   Substitute "Android ICS" with the name of your VM (but keep the quotes).
2. Start your Android VM, and when you see the bootloader screen:
   1. Press the "e" key to edit the boot arguments
   2. Press "e" again to edit the kernel boot line
   3. Add UVESA_MODE=1024x768 to the end of the boot arguments (make sure to hit Space first), and press Enter.
   4. Press "b" to boot.

There should theoretically be a way to edit the GRUB config file and add more boot options that have the custom resolutions already configured, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

No Warranty

Android is primarily an ARM architecture operating system and the x86 version isn't supported by Google. While a lot of apps will work in Android-x86, some may crash in weird ways. If you're an Android developer though, this can be pretty useful because Android-x86 will run a lot faster on your hardware than the standard emulator from the SDK does, so you can test your apps much more rapidly (the Android-x86 site has some documentation on how to connect ADB to your virtual machine).

Your mileage may vary.

Updates

To answer common questions that come up in the comments...

• Adobe Flash, Netflix, others... -- these apps won't work in Android-x86, because they aren't pure Java. They include C code that's compiled for the ARM processor found in most Android devices. They won't run on x86 processors.
• Apps that rotate your screen... -- apps that force the orientation into portrait mode (thus turning your screen sideways) can be dealt with by changing your VM's screen resolution to be taller than it is wide (i.e. 800x1280). The app will recognize the portrait resolution and not rotate. However, your VM may be laggy when it's not in a standard 4:3 resolution. Alternatively, find an app that forces/locks your orientation to one direction or another -- however, some apps misbehave when forced to use the wrong resolution and may not be usable.
• Don't expect a lot of apps to work -- for various reasons, apps that work on real Android devices may not function properly on Android-x86.
• Text messaging and phone calls won't work -- Your virtual machine is not a phone. It doesn't have a cellular connection to AT&T or Verizon or anybody. The standard texting apps like Messaging and Handcent SMS are useless on an Android VM (this also goes for most Android tablets that don't have cell connections). If you want to text from your VM, you might try using the Tablet Talk app, connect it with your actual cell phone, and text through that app. If you want to make phone calls, you might have luck with a Voice over IP app -- however, I can't guarantee your microphone and such will work with the VM, as I haven't tested it.

I'll update the list above as more common questions come in from the comments below.

Android - MMS Without Data

Today I finally decided to break up with T-Mobile and take my number and Nexus One phone to AT&T, as a prepaid phone (tl;dr - I'm tired of cell phone ISPs locking people in to contracts and then they can't do anything about it when the ISP changes their plans around).

My Nexus One was originally for T-Mobile's network, so it doesn't work with the 3G on AT&T's... but that's fine because my AT&T plan doesn't include data. But, my phone can still use AT&T's Edge network.

I don't want any random background apps using the Edge network and costing me usage fees when I'm out and about. But, if I disable Mobile Data altogether, picture messaging (MMS) stops working too. So after a lot of searching around I seem to have found a way to disable the mobile network for all apps, but still allow MMS to be sent/received using it.

On my Nexus One, from the home screen:

1. Push the menu button and pick Settings
2. Pick "Wireless & networks"
3. Pick "Mobile networks"
4. Make sure "Data enabled" is checked (MMS won't work either if you disable it here!)
5. Go to "Access Point Names"
   • On my phone, the only APN here was named "ATT (wap.cingular)"
6. Scroll down to the "APN type" setting.
   • On my phone, the original value for this setting was "default,supl,mms"
7. Change its value to be only "mms".
8. Push the menu button and pick "Save."

After this, I tested it. I was able to send and receive MMS messages (which turned on the Edge network notification), but apps like Facebook, Google+, and the mobile web browser all complained that I didn't have an Internet connection.

YMMV.

Azulian Tag

Several years ago I used to make short RPG games using RPG Maker 2003, and among the many little games I made three of them that followed a story I was writing about my Azulians (seen here battling some other creatures I made up).

I've sufficiently lost all those games and all the files that went with them at some point since then, and now all I have left are the front-facing sprites for all the Azulians:

A recurring element in the games, though, was a mini-game called "Azulian Tag", which is sorta the opposite of regular tag: the player who is "it" is hunted down by all the other players. In the games, there would be blue Azulians that travel the same speed as the player (and thus are easy to run from as long as you keep on moving), red ones that move a little bit faster than the player, and white ones that move even faster. The game would start you out surrounded by about 6 blue Azulians, then 4 red ones further out and 2 white ones much further away, to give you time to run. The goal of the game was just to survive as long as possible.

Anyway, I decided recently that this mini-game might be a good idea to turn into a game on its own, for Android. I discovered PhoneGap, a toolkit for using web technologies to create mobile apps for iPhone and Android among other devices, and therefore decided that HTML (5) and JavaScript should be sufficient for creating such a game. In addition to just running away from the other Azulians, some new "powerups" could be added in, like being able to teleport the player to a random point on the map to buy back a few seconds of time before the other Azulians discover where you've teleported to. I'm working on some sprites now; I've already revamped the blue Azulian sprites from the RPG Maker 16x16 size to a higher quality 32x32 size:

Android Mini PC

The device of my dreams: a no strings attached, open Android-powered device, which is like a smartphone (touch screen etc.), but which is not a phone, but can get a data plan from any cell carrier in the same way that laptops can use 3G cards and get internet anywhere from a cell phone carrier.

It would basically be a miniature PC that resembles an Android phone, but which isn't a phone, but which you can just install Skype on if you really need to make a phone call, since it could still get cellular data service.

And, being like a miniature PC, it would be as open to operating systems as a real PC; it would be just as easy to install and reinstall Android firmwares (or any compatible OS) to it as it would reinstalling your operating system on your laptop.

I imagine Dell would be a good manufacturer for such a device; they would market it just like they market netbooks, as being just a mini PC that happens to run Android (preferably the stock vanilla Android as Google intended it, but being open you could flash any version of Android you want).

If such a device existed I would buy it as soon as it came out. I'm quite sick of the way phone carriers abuse the Android OS and wish there could just be a seriously open device.

Standing on the Shoulders of Android

I saw on Digg today that Google discontinued sales of their Nexus One phone, following "disappointing sales."

What it really means from what I've read is that Google is just not selling the phone themselves directly but it can still be obtained via other means (developers can still buy them and they're still being sold in other countries), but that Google still intends to support the phone for the foreseeable future -- it will still be the first in line to get Android updates, for example.

I have a Nexus One and I like it and this news is a bit worrisome to me, but not in the way you might expect. Rather, because the Nexus One is one of the few Android phones that is truly open.

Apparently, the very first Android phone (the G1), the first Droid, and the Nexus One are pretty much the only Android phones that ship with the stock, vanilla, Android firmware. All the other HTC phones out there for example run the "HTC Sense" UI on top of Android, and the Motorola phones run the "Motoblur" UI; some people don't like these add-ons on top of Android and would rather run Android the way Google intended, using the stock vanilla release of the ROM. Or, some people just like to hack their phones and have root access on them.

The Nexus One phone made it really easy to unlock your bootloader and install custom/unsigned Android ROMs onto the phone if you wanted to (it would even provide a nice screen warning you that you're about to void your warranty). The Nexus One allows you to install whatever you want on it, and both Google and the phone itself fully supports this. But, other phones, notably the Motorola phones that come with an eFuse that will practically "brick" your phone if you try to modify its firmware, aren't so open.

There seems to be a trend in Android phones in which companies are trying to play Apple; Apple's iPhone devices are super locked down, and Apple tries to patch all the security holes to stop people from jailbreaking their devices - with each firmware release Apple tries to make it harder and harder to hack the iPhones. In Apple's ideal world, their hardware would be completely 100% impenetrable from hackers and nobody could modify their devices. It seems Android vendors want to copy this business model, which I for one do not like.

It seems Android vendors are "standing on the shoulders of giants," they look at Android and all they see is a free open source Linux-based mobile operating system, and they wanna just take all that hard work, add a few things to make their devices a major pain in the ass to hack (in their ideal world, absolutely impossible to hack) and then jerk their customers around in exactly the same way that Apple does. Is this really what Android was supposed to be all about? Just giving greedy megacorporations the cheap tools they need to strongarm part of the cell phone monopoly in their favor?

Hopefully the Nexus One won't be the last developer phone that can be bought by non-developers. I got mine specifically because it ran the stock unmodified Android firmware and because it was completely open to customization. As I ranted about before, I don't like how Apple is able to just slow down your old phones and force you to upgrade; at least I have the comfort of knowing I can easily flash any Android ROM onto my Nexus One and nobody can force me to upgrade by slowing my phone down or doing anything else malicious to it.

God help us if this is the future and we're stuck with many Apple-like companies all forcing us to use their locked-down devices that we're not allowed to touch at all for fear of permanently bricking our devices.