The possibility of running Android on a Nintendo Switch has always been a source of discussion in the scene since its early days. Some are favourable to the idea, pointing to the Tegra X1 SoC at the heart of the console which is already found in other Android devices (not taking into account the customizations commissioned by Nintendo) and how such a port would both expand the console's capabilities and its software library. Others reject it, citing how many other devices would be able to do the same job in a better way without requiring any software modifications. Nevertheless, so far all those arguments have been the product of speculation, however it seems things may change soon as the developer Max Keller, also known as "langer hans", has shown a video of an unofficial Android port running on a Switch.

While we've already been teased with small details of such a port in the past, for example see this tweet made by @natinusala not too long ago, it's indeed the first time we're able to see a sneak peek of it in action. The video is linked down below and it showcases the OS's home screen, a couple applications including a WebKit browser test, switching between portrait and landscape mode and working WiFi & Bluetooth. Still, the GPU drivers don't behave properly at the moment which causes stuttering during operation.

Failed to fetch tweet https://twitter.com/langer_hans/status/1099436381791752192​

The poster is already known for other projects, mainly for modding other Android ROMs, however it underlines that most of the work has been done by another developer known as Billy Laws (ByLaws) who has already posted a device tree for the Switch on his GitLab account (link in the sources below). There is currently no public release nor ETA but this should come as no surprise as it's evident the port needs some work before it can be called usable.

What do you think? Are you excited about an Android port for the Switch or do you dismiss it as being just a gimmick?

Source

 

[Medveitsi]

Why should I use android on my switch? I can't think to a reason, except for media center

games, emulators web browser etc etc

 

[pedro702]

You do realise that Retroarch is just a front end, right? You still have to port the entire libretro library to do anything with it on a desired platform. It doesn't work any "slower" than a comparable emulator running without the front end, it's just more convenient. It's also completely untrue that Linux was not useful on older consoles - it was extremely useful, particularly on the Xbox. There is a much more obvious reason as to why nobody cared to develop anything substantial for the Wii U - it's a weak system with outdated internals and relatively low overall sales, the console wasn't popular enough to make the homebrew accessible to the masses. The Switch is a much more promising platform.

liberetro emulators are ported but they are general use emulators without any optimization for anything so they dont run well on lower end devices that is why wiiu and switch will never have decent emulators becuase people wont take the time to optimize emulators for a single device becuase you can kinda of run then some other way so people wont work on them.

retroarch versions of emulators are always by far slower than standalone versions optimized for each hardware.

 

[Foxi4]

liberetro emulators are ported but they are general use emulators without any optimization for anything so they dont run well on lower end devices that is why wiiu and switch will never have decent emulators becuase people wont take the time to optimize emulators for a single device becuase you can kinda of run then some other way so people wont work on them.

retroarch versions of emulators are always by far slower than standalone versions optimized for each hardware.

That's obviously the case on all platforms when you have an overarching library and fronted, native emulators always have some edge, but the benefits are minor compared to the benefits of an all in one solution. I corrected the post to specify that though since, obviously, the front end doesn't "weigh nothing" and the library does restrict some optimisation, so you have a point.

 

[Sakitoshi]

I was mainly thinking about android overhead -- I have never been fond of the multiple emulator frontends like this and the libretro people have not acquitted themselves well in conversations and actions I have seen about the place (to say nothing of their awful licensing).
Still if the overhead is going to be comparable then that could be fun.

your os of choice will always impact performance, the game os of any console is well optimized to take away as little resources as posible and make the games able to use the resources, some go as far as dedicating a cpu core the the os so the remaining cores can handle the game without interfering. android, on the other hand, is an os that isn't suited to that task and has many background tasks that can (and will) take resources away, sure, things like priorities exist but lets say a relatively heavy background task wants to do something and takes away 20% of the resources, the other 80% is still available for the game to use, it looks good on paper but maybe the game needs 90% to run fluidly and is dropping frames because it only has 80% available right now.
older consoles ran everything on baremetal and that's why it could achieve such amazing things, because devs could use 100% of the resources without restrictions and assign specific parts of the hardware to do certain tasks, something that you can't do when running on top of an os.

It's a RPi3, I'm not sure what you're expecting here. It's a miracle that it runs DC and N64 emulation at all. We're talking about an orders of magnitude more powerful machine, shrink that "20%" to "imperceptible". I am also leaning towards "bad optimisation" as opposed to "overhead" here since you're libretro-dependant here.

even if is just a raspi 3, if it can run dreamcast 100% speed with the standalone emulator it should be able to do the same with the libretro version right??
and if you are going to play the "bad optimisation" card then do your homework, libretro reicast is well optimized, more than the standalone version at least, so if is a case of bad optimisation the libretro version should run better.

the explanation I have for that is that libretro is an api, and using api's, on top of the os api's just adds overhead for how api's work.
of course the switch is more powerful than a raspi, but if you are careless and start adding layers of overhead because "lol, it doesn't matter, it's powerful" you are gonna be disappointed by the result.

 

[Foxi4]

your os of choice will always impact performance, the game os of any console is well optimized to take away as little resources as posible and make the games able to use the resources, some go as far as dedicating a cpu core the the os so the remaining cores can handle the game without interfering. android, on the other hand, is an os that isn't suited to that task and has many background tasks that can (and will) take resources away, sure, things like priorities exist but lets say a relatively heavy background task wants to do something and takes away 20% of the resources, the other 80% is still available for the game to use, it looks good on paper but maybe the game needs 90% to run fluidly and is dropping frames because it only has 80% available right now.
older consoles ran everything on baremetal and that's why it could achieve such amazing things, because devs could use 100% of the resources without restrictions and assign specific parts of the hardware to do certain tasks, something that you can't do when running on top of an os.


even if is just a raspi 3, if it can run dreamcast 100% speed with the standalone emulator it should be able to do the same with the libretro version right??
and if you are going to play the "bad optimisation" card then do your homework, libretro reicast is well optimized, more than the standalone version at least, so if is a case of bad optimisation the libretro version should run better.

the explanation I have for that is that libretro is an api, and using api's, on top of the os api's just adds overhead for how api's work.
of course the switch is more powerful than a raspi, but if you are careless and start adding layers of overhead because "lol, it doesn't matter, it's powerful" you are gonna be disappointed by the result.

You have to consider the pros and cons. Nothing is stopping you from coding an application that runs natively on the hardware itself with no API's whatsoever - many old PC games used to launch natively from a floppy because running them through the OS would've caused hardware issues, most notably memory issues, memory being precious at that time. If using an API or a fronted accelerates development to such an extent that not using it would just hinder you with no appreciable benefits, I think the choice is clear.

As for the prospect of using Android on the Switch, dual booting the OS opens the doors to many new applications that would never show up on the Switch otherwise. Many android users will be happy with a new gaming device with proper controls and relatively good specs compared to the usual "android console", I definitely see this as an opportunity.

 

[Sakitoshi]

You have to consider the pros and cons. Nothing is stopping you from coding an application that runs natively on the hardware itself with no API's whatsoever - many old PC games used to launch natively from a floppy because running them through the OS would've caused hardware issues, most notably memory issues, memory being precious at that time. If using an API or a fronted accelerates development to such an extent that not using it would just hinder you with no appreciable benefits, I think the choice is clear.

As for the prospect of using Android on the Switch, dual booting the OS opens the doors to many new applications that would never show up on the Switch otherwise. Many android users will be happy with a new gaming device with proper controls and relatively good specs compared to the usual "android console", I definitely see this as an opportunity.

oh yeah, of course you can do that and get rid of all those pesky api's.
but that's kind of moving the goalpost since the discussion was about devs losing interest for developing standalone emulators thanks to retroarch.
I'm not saying that retroarch is bad or anything like that, it's great and use it all the time. but devs don't bother anymore even if certain machines would benefit from standalone emulators.

and I feel that the same will happen with android, devs will say "nah, it's already on android, why bother?" when lets say a ps2 emulator could be developed for switch os that could run 2 times better and allow for higher resolutions.

 

[Foxi4]

oh yeah, of course you can do that and get rid of all those pesky api's.
but that's kind of moving the goalpost since the discussion was about devs losing interest for developing standalone emulators thanks to retroarch.
I'm not saying that retroarch is bad or anything like that, it's great and use it all the time. but devs don't bother anymore even if certain machines would benefit from standalone emulators.

and I fell that the same will happen with android, devs will say "nah, it's already on android, why bother?" when lets say a ps2 emulator could be developed for switch os that could run 2 times better and allow for higher resolutions.

This might happen with certain smaller applications, sure, but emulators are particularly taxing, especially in the case of the resource hungry ones. I don't think the desire to port them will diminish - people do it for fun and eFame, those aspects aren't affected by Android running on the platform. The way I see it, more is better - you could run a slew of games that would never be ported to the Switch otherwise, especially ones with a closed source from major developers.

 

[pedro702]

oh yeah, of course you can do that and get rid of all those pesky api's.
but that's kind of moving the goalpost since the discussion was about devs losing interest for developing standalone emulators thanks to retroarch.
I'm not saying that retroarch is bad or anything like that, it's great and use it all the time. but devs don't bother anymore even if certain machines would benefit from standalone emulators.

and I fell that the same will happen with android, devs will say "nah, it's already on android, why bother?" when lets say a ps2 emulator could be developed for switch os that could run 2 times better and allow for higher resolutions.

yeah devs are like why make a year of work when retroarch can be ported in a week and you get alot of emulators even so if they dont run fullspeed.

 

[Foxi4]

yeah devs are like why make a year of work when retroarch can be ported in a week and you get alot of emulators even so if they dont run fullspeed.

If you're looking for a reason "why", it's the performance ceiling. People always want their software to run well, or we'll enough. If it's not viable on retroarch, they will inevitably optimise and branch out. It didn't happen on the Wii U because the system was dead, not because of retroarch.

 

[Sonansune]

can we run the android version switch emulator on switch android port?

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Maybe this could be an alternative method to loading up emulators. If so, I'd be excited to use it.

But hopefully with all of the features that us users take for granted like wireless controller support, dock support, built-in speaker support, etc..

 

[Foxi4]

can we run the android version switch emulator on switch android port?

Switchception!

 

[the_randomizer]

But hopefully with all of the features that us users take for granted like wireless controller support, dock support, built-in speaker support, etc..

Given the Switch uses Bluetooth, that shouldn't be an issue. I'm more worried about having to use some dongle BS and then have to enter RCM every damn time I want to use it.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Given the Switch uses Bluetooth, that shouldn't be an issue. I'm more worried about having to use some dongle BS and then have to enter RCM every damn time I want to use it.

I was referring to the state that Lakka is still in last I checked out to see where it was at. As for the dongle part, there must have been some big update or something to Atmosphere or Kosmos or Hekate or one of these CFW solutions that, if your Switch crashes, all you have to do is hit the volume up button and it'll put your Switch into RCM mode so you don't have to keep using the jig and a laptop or phone with an OTG adapter to keep using CFW. It's made me more willing to try things on my hacked Switch than before, that's for sure!

 

[barnhilltrckn]

I'm excited to use Moonlight for properly being able to stream my pc if he is able to get gpu drivers working. I for one am very excited to see what comes from this, it opens alot of doors.

 

[the_randomizer]

I was referring to the state that Lakka is still in last I checked out to see where it was at. As for the dongle part, there must have been some big update or something to Atmosphere or Kosmos or Hekate or one of these CFW solutions that, if your Switch crashes, all you have to do is hit the volume up button and it'll put your Switch into RCM mode so you don't have to keep using the jig and a laptop or phone with an OTG adapter to keep using CFW. It's made me more willing to try things on my hacked Switch than before, that's for sure!

I'm just waiting for the day where there will be a complete softmod method, no dongle or pin altering needed. Sadly, IDK if that'll ever happen.

 

[fst312]

I would definitely consider this if it can be loaded from switch menu and load back to switch home menu without out rebooting my switch.

 

[eyeliner]

I'd totally loose my grip if it runs at least VLC decently.

 

[Kioku]

I would definitely consider this if it can be loaded from switch menu and load back to switch home menu without out rebooting my switch.

Can't do it with Linux.. Why would this be feasible?

 

[landysmods]

I'm excited to use Moonlight for properly being able to stream my pc if he is able to get gpu drivers working. I for one am very excited to see what comes from this, it opens alot of doors.

Yes that was my thought immediately after seeing this post. Moonlight works very well on Android. Ps4 remoteplay would be awesome too!