Raspberry Pi to soon get a taste of Android Ice Cream Sandwich

The latest post on the Raspberry Pi website reveals that Android 4.0 is on the way. The team has put up a couple of pictures on the website showing that it’s indeed happening and it has managed to get ICS running on the miniature PC. According to the team, the hardware-accelerated graphics and video are running smoothly as of now. There’s even a short video that showcases the OS running on the hardware and given that it’s still in its initial stages, it’s not bad at all.

ICS coming for the Pi

For those who aren’t aware, Raspberry Pi is a miniature-sized computer made available for pre-order for Indian users through the Element14 website for just Rs. 2350. The pre-order went live in the beginning of March and the website has been flocked by visitors since. Soon after the announcement, the company was reported to be selling 700 units per second. This single-board computer has earlier faced several roadblocks in the form of shipping delays, production glitches etc. In a recent announcement, Chromium OS developer Hexxeh announced the beta version of the Chromium browser for Raspberry Pi. The makers of the miniature computer also took off the initial restriction on the purchase of a Raspberry Pi, which allowed just one per customer, owing to the high demand. An official post on the Raspberry Pi site revealed that both of the company's manufacturing partners have been working towards increasing capacities to be able to lift the limit. The post further said that about 4,000 Raspberry Pis are being made every day, and that one can now buy as many Raspberry Pis as one wants from both - RS Components and element14/ Premier Farnell. The move will be highly beneficial to those who had been considering using Raspberry Pis in schools and universities.

At the heart of it, the Raspberry Pi is incredibly compact and packs in a whole bunch of features. It’s powered by an ARM processor on a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC. It also has a 700 MHz processor, 256MB of RAM and Video 4 GPU that allows the device to handle full HD video playback and even 40Mbps Blu-ray streams with ease. One of the two models has an Ethernet port and two USB ports, which means you can connect external drives and get it on the web.

The company already has competition in the form of Gooseberry Board, which is supposed to have 3x more power in comparison to the Pi. It further comes with a newer ARM architecture, implying that it can run Ubuntu, which the Pi cannot. The future of computing is definitely getting miniature and this is just the beginning.