Would somebody be able to explain in slightly less technical words what the issues are to doing something like this? In general, what needs to be done before any computer literate person (A+ knowledge level) can buy hardware like N810, throw android or ubuntu mobile on the device, and use it seemlessly. I've just started to toy with linux and have no knowledge of kernel/driver tweaking or coding, but have wished for something like this, but user friendly, for the last 6 years. Is something like this not far off?
Would somebody be able to explain in slightly less technical words what the issues are to doing something like this?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: the trend is for people to start thinking of cell-phone hardware just as a regular personal-computer, but with a different form factor. However, the architecture of the hardware is not yet standardized like the IBM-PC is/was.
Think of Android as being DOS. What we need now is to have more manufacturers developing devices that are "DOS compatible". That will mean that they are producing hardware and have the drivers for the system.
Once you get that critical mass, you'll see "distributions" of Android much like we see distributions of Linux. These distributions will contain a compilation of drivers for the most common hardware, and will load what's appropriate on boot time.
This is a major feat and all, and I think it's absolutely wonderful, but this is what Android was designed to do--be portable across devices. It just so happens that Android is new and the main focus was getting it to run on the G1 (or whatever the devices real name was). But porting it to run on another linux compatible device? I'm sure this isn't news at Google HQ.
On the other hand, the brief sentence at the bottom, and the news from the weekend? that Android is running on the iPhone--that's news. Very interesting news.
This will probably be a good test for Android as a platform.
If all the existing Android apps breaks horribly on the Nokia, we can pretty much declare Android the new J2ME, just in OS form.
This sure as hell don't sound promising:
"McDermott cautions that his Android port is only the beginning. To get Android applications running on the N810, they plan to add support for the Android Debug Bridge, fix an intermittent system crash, and try to enable battery charging when the power supply is plugged in."
The applications likely run just fine, and 'porting' them should not really be necessary.
The problems you list are kernel/system level issues. For instance, the battery charging stuff is probably a driver they didn't get working/integrated 100%.
Getting an OS up and running on new hardware in 18 days isn't that bad, really.
