My First Android


My First Android

Thanks to the generosity of a friend (Thanks, Charley!) I'm now the proud owner of a Remix Mini.

It's a cute little hockey puck of a computer, that I'm mostly interested in using as a media center. I only recently came out of the Stone Age of CRTs to an LCD with HDMI, but no Smart TV functions. I still have an OTA antenna bolted to the chimney (gasp!).

I looked longingly at the AppleTV, but as I'm not at all locked into the Apple Video Store, I decided it would not suit.

I looked next at the various Raspberry Pi devices, but as with all Hacks, there are an almost endless list of possible variables, and I never finished my homework on it.

This gizmo is pretty nice. You have to bring your own HDMI monitor, and keyboard/mouse. It has some fixed memory on board, and a microSD slot for more. Two USB ports for input or storage. Draws 10W.

The clever thing about Remix OS is that it presents Android apps in a Windowed environment. Media apps like Kodi, Netflix, and Hulu, can run fullscreen. Productivity apps like Google Docs, can run as individual windows.

The gizmo was pretty easy to set up, and looks great. Built in graphics acceleration makes for pretty x264 video.

I've been able to get it to do most of the things I want, despite an unfamiliarity with Android. Some of the clunkiness is a function of bugs in the Remix OS (they recently released a patch which allowed the Netflix app to function correctly). Other clunkiness is inherent with apps that have not been designed to be run in a desktop environment.

The only hardware flakiness I've noted is that the onboard BT does not play well with Apple wireless mice and keyboards, but the solution for that is probably to buy a cheapo wireless keyboard/trackpad.

It remains to be seen how active Jide will be with development, and whether this device will ever be upgradeable to future versions of Android.

But it is a clever idea, with a lot of potential, and a lot of it works just fine, straight out of the box.


http://www.jide.com/en/mini

Comments

  1. Drew McCarthyNovember 22, 2015 at 8:00 AM

    Hmmm.  So apparently Android does not support Mac file systems (not surprising) but also does not support exFAT.  So I need to format the microSD card in NTFS (which the Mac does not support, natively).
    Eesh.  File format wars, how I hate you.

    ReplyDelete

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