There are many reasons why you might want to mount your own Android PC , but it is surely out of curiosity or to take advantage of old hardware, since there are many emulators that allow Android to run on Windows. In this article we are going to tell you what you will need if you want to make your own Android PC with cheap hardware or even with old components that you do not use.
Unfortunately, and since Android is designed for mobiles and tablets and not for a conventional PC, not all pieces of hardware are compatible. In this article we are going to cover the operating systems and hardware that you will need to manufacture two types of Android PC: in mini PC version, and in custom PC version.
How to make your own Android Mini PC
Without a doubt, the simplest and cheapest way to mount an Android PC is to use a development board and turn it into a mini PC, and in fact in some cases you can even add a separate battery and screen and make it in portable mode.
Surely you are thinking that you can use a Raspberry Pi for it, and indeed it is so since Android is compatible with most development boards, although not in all its versions. Below we will describe which development boards and with which versions of the operating system you can mount your own Android mini PC:
- Raspberry Pi 4 : surely the best support has to be the most widespread. It is therefore compatible with virtually all versions of Android and also provides very decent performance.
- Orange Pi 4B : It is cheap and fast, although officially it is only compatible with Android 8.1 (which does not mean that you cannot try to install other versions, of course).
- Banana Pi M4 : It is the cheapest development board of all, although like the previous one it only has official support for Android 8.1.
- Rock 64 : This development board has pretty solid performance, it’s cheap, and it’s compatible with Android 9.
- Atomic Pi : This is the only board compatible with PC since it is the only one that uses x86 architecture. It uses an Intel processor and has a pretty good compatibility with the Android operating system and, in fact, you could mount a dual-boot with Android and Windows without problem.
Create an Android PC with cheap pieces of hardware
If you have some old PC parts that you don’t use, one of the things you can use them for is to mount a functional Android PC. If you decide to take this path, the greatest difficulty you will encounter is in the compatibility of the operating system, since as we indicated at the beginning Android is designed for other architectures. Sometimes your old PC will work the first time, and sometimes it won’t, and you’ll need to look for other versions of the operating system.
Operating systems running on PC hardware
As we said, the most complicated part to have an x86 architecture PC with Android is the compatibility of the parts with the operating system. There are some fundamental differences in terms of compatibility between the different versions, and below we will list the main ones that are based on Android and work on PC:
- Bliss OS : This operating system is open-source and therefore free. It usually works well with most relatively modern pieces of hardware, but not with older pieces.
- Android-x86 Project : This was the original version of Android for PC, and in fact its source code is what allows versions of other operating systems to work on a PC.
- OpenThOS : Another open-source version of the operating system.
- PrimeOS : This version has been privately designed for your devices, and also has a PC version.
- Phoenix OS : be careful with this version because it is a Chinese development.
- Android for ARM : This version of the operating system comes with some development boards, like Raspberry Pi.
- Chromium OS: Currently, Chromium OS (which is the installable version of Chrome OS) cannot run Android apps. There are two main distributions, CloudReady that does not plan to implement them, and Arnold the Bat that does have plans to implement the Play Store in the future.
About using x86 motherboards on Android
We already tell you not to buy a new motherboard to mount an Android PC, since it is a very risky investment since, as we have explained, compatibility depends on many factors and there are no guarantees that it will work.
If you have the need and security of having to buy one, the recommendation is that you use an Intel Atom system with the integrated processor since they are the ones that work best and are more likely not to cause problems. And is that although most PC motherboards will be able to start the operating system, most will also have problems with many of its features, such as USB, audio or network.
Some older processors designed for the mobile market, such as the aforementioned Intel Atom, perform significantly better than other more modern processors. For example, an ASRock Q1900-ITX motherboard boots and has no audio issues, and this is so because its Realtek ALC662 audio chipset is supported on Android x86, but Realtek ALC792 or ALC892 chipsets tend to give quite a bit of trouble instead.
Which pieces of hardware matter and which don’t
Finally one last nuance. If you intend to mount an Android PC with pieces of PC hardware, keep in mind that there are many that do not influence compatibility at all or, at least, usually do not. These pieces are obviously the box, the power supply, the storage units, the RAM, or the heatsink.
In fact, the two components that can bring you upside down to make it work are the processor and, above all, the motherboard.