The badasses over at Unwired View have figured out how to install the Android OS dev image on the Nokia N810 running the Diablo (latest) firmware; effectively replacing the operating system with Android and allowing you to play around with it long before real Android phones and devices will hit the street.
The best part, it’s a 2-step process to be done from the 810N directly that will probably take no more than a few minutes, more specifically:
- Download android.img.bz2
- Install android-installer.deb
- Reboot the Nokia 810N
Now you’ll have a new entry under the Extras Menu that you can fire up to do the install. If you get stuck, have questions or want more information about the process, check out the Internet Table Talk Forums here for a slew of folks that have done this and can help.
Thanks Laurence Hartje and Unwired View!



5. July 2008 at 11:13 am
just 3 steps !!
oh me God, what ever happened to the 24 hour marathon of hacking and tweaking ??!
sadly i don’t have a nokia tablet (yet) to try it
7. July 2008 at 2:11 am
Wow… my penis could install this himself on his Nokia.
7. July 2008 at 2:30 pm
anyone know who these ‘badasses’ are? Their names..
any idea if this Android image can go onto OpenMoko’s NeoRunner?
http://www.openmoko.com
7. July 2008 at 3:50 pm
OML,
I would check the original ITT Forums post (link) and look for the maintainer of the thread to find more information about the actual folks that discovered it.
Also is the Moko hardware compatible with the N810?
24. July 2008 at 5:24 am
Thanks. Have to try this on my 800.
24. July 2008 at 10:06 am
Leetel,
If you do let us know how it goes and what Android is like… would be cool to see it in action.
If you wanted to do a writeup of your time with it, let us know!
27. February 2009 at 11:41 pm
What are some of the advantages to Android at this stage other than bragging rights? If that came out the wrong way I apologize. I would really like to know.
1. March 2009 at 9:57 am
Randy,
The Android platform itself (about 6 months ago) represented a totally open platform for both hackers and vendors to shape and mold anyway they wanted and deploy on Phones, devices, computers, etc. that would *all* support running the same apps… from a commercial sense, it was like a free Windows OS — run everywhere, available to everyone (users and developers).
As the platform has matured it’s gotten pretty nice — there are little enhancements to it as it gets more polished that make it a very nice user experience. The apps aren’t there quite yet, but all the infrastructure (SDKs and market place) are all there to support it as it’s slowly growing.
So in a way, “what’s so cool about Android?” is basically “completely unlimited potential” — that is what has everyone so excited.
I got a chance to play with the Cupcake pre-build of the next release of Android (they are calling it code-name “Cupcake”) and it has a lot of polish in it — I imagine my next year the Android environment will be rediculously fertile.
30. April 2009 at 4:41 am
This is a pretty old code base. Is there a later release (maybe cupcake) that I can use on the N810? The other sites I tried like NitDroid are too complicated. Something simple like this is more up my alley.
2. June 2009 at 12:52 pm
I have to agree with Milind, after installing this on my n810 the wow factor was pretty much extenguished. What you get is essentially five items to toy around with but the web browser works and renders pages crisp – yah… I would like to see an more recent image with cupcake. This install is greta for serving the purpose of showing it can be installed on the n810 but thats all it does. Android could certainly breathe new life into the n810 should a full on flash be available in the future to replace Maemo, or perhaps to dual boot on it from memory card.