So my wife bought a really old android tablet (it's on gingerbread lol) so I've decided to bring it up to android pie, yes that means building a custom ROM, from scratch, for a 7 year old device. I will be documenting my progress and if I fail then at least it will be published research as the memory optimization in android pie is so much smoother now it should be good. If it fails I shall try to build android go to the device.

It's still got a 1.5ghz processor and 1gb of ram which should be fine so here's hoping.

Git it please, and post link, excited to see where this goes

Where will you document it?

@Chronyms git mostly for the code plus a write up, not sure where I'll write up, git for a while until I decide

Oh boy, 1GB of RAM isn't sufficient even for KitKat.

@gronostaj sure it is, with a 600x1024 resolution and a 32 bit abi, I only need 592MB for the kernel and userspace, I can easily get the radio, video and everything else in less than 400mb, that's for Android pie, for KitKat I only need 340 for kernel and userspace...

@gronostaj 1 GB has been fine for a tablet since kitkat.

@electrineer exactly, most tablets, if updated to a modern android would feel really fast - hence the project.

@seraphimsystems If you get this working, it sounds like the kind of thing you should put on XDA. A lot of people are already amazed at people like CarbonROM putting Android Pie on devices like the Xperia Z3 and Galaxy S5 (both 2014 phones). Also it might be a good starting point to see if the device has a forum space over at XDA, if anyone's made a ROM for it in the past they usually provide github links.

@gronostaj You can get Android Pie running (albeit slowly) on devices with as little as 768MB RAM. Android actually has a low-end device flag that you can toggle (if you're rooted) or set (as a developer) in build.prop. That, along with stripping down a few bits that won't work on older devices, would get it running.

@Riccorbypro yeah i looked over at XDA, used to be active in the forums there about... well i had a HTC Dream on android 1 at the time so...

Theres nothing since gingerbread, a few references to ICS but thats it.

I do kind of want to do it blind for the express purpose of having a documented process including a full git commit history of a device making a significant jump, ill definitely be looking into the work CarbonROM has done on the Z3 and S5 along with some of the work done on CyanogenMod (now Lineage OS)

I dont expect any major breakthroughs for a while though as I need to fully read up on the steps and do some digging first, the last thing i want to do is brick the device, so I may be looking into finding a Jtag port first

ok so there is a recoverable method via Jtag but it requires hardware and soldering directly to the motherboard, so fuck it, if it bricks it bricks

📌

there is an android go version as well... you could try that to save some memory!

@randomnumber another good suggestion, its basically oreo with some system apps swapped out for web apps, its mostly aimed at the 512 and 786mb devices, some 1gb devices with large hardware reserved sections...

always worth a look, but it can screw with long running processes like media players etc, which is one of the goals of this (its a tablet)

everyone said 1GB of RAM is good enough for Pie

bitch my phone has 3GB and struggles to run Oreo *and* a single app concurrently with an octo-core Snapdragon. MOAR RAM PLZ

@Parzi hmm are we talking just Oreo or Oreo plus some bullshit vendor stuff like sense UI or touchwizz? I'm talking plain aosp

@seraphimsystems Huawei Home, and that's about it. Eats all of like 10-12MB of RAM, so i'm assuming (most likely incorrectly) it's not taking up much CPU time either.

Man, I started a shitstorm :D

Years ago I had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus (2x1.2 GHz, 768 MB, 720p) and with Lollipop it was already unusable. I remember I tried the low-end flag, but for some reason I didn't like it, can't remember why.

@gronostaj lol, it's cool... Thing is android has got better over time, dalvik was a shit way to run things, optimisation was not really a thing, project butter hadn't occurred, big flashy interfaces (sense UI, touchwizz) were a thing... Widgets... Anyway it's all good.

@seraphimsystems Yeah, except that phone came with ICS and had an official JB upgrade. It was a Nexus, so no bloatware and pretty good user experience overall. Some custom KK ROMs were good too. But Lollipop... That was just a disaster. Returning to homescreen took a few seconds and OOM-killed all apps. Absolutely unusable.

@gronostaj which is why I'm skipping straight to pie with a maybe down to go

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