Anbox on SFOS phones

Updating Xperia X to a newer AOSP is (might?) possible, however such task is not viable financially, that’s my understanding.

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Yes, thats also what i understood. But the question is, if by using Anbox, we could get a higher Android version without the newer kernel. For my understanding, Alien Dalvik or Anbox are a VMs, so as long as the VM is made for that OS version it should provide a certain Android version, and not stop at 4.1 or 4.4 or Android 8. Correct me if i am wrong :slight_smile:

We can get Anbox on free SFOS versions. That is the main argument.

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Older kernels have no support for VMs or have very limited features, that’s the main issue I think.

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As an owner of an Xperia X, I’d love to see a working Anbox implementation to breathe some life back into the device. While I prefer Sailfish native apps, sometimes I have no other options but to run an Android app - which is becoming increasingly impossible with 4.4x.

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Do not expect too much. Read the FAQ.

https://anbox.io/

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“If your application depends on particular hardware functionality like WiFi, Bluetooth or telephony, we need additional work to bridge those over from the host system”
sounds worse than AD…

I can confirm this for anbox on a Linux system.

If your application depends on particular hardware functionality like WiFi, Bluetooth or telephony, we need additional work to bridge those over from the host system

sounds worse than AD…

You can control those things in AD?

At least WiFi is available, telephony I don’t know, Bluetooth no

Wifi being available is different from controlling the hardware. Of course wifi connection is also available in Anbox.

Well, the community can port an install that if they want to. I don’t know how good those community ports are but I wouldn’t use one as long as I can use an official version. And the official OS has AD, therefore I don’t see any reason to port Anbox - further more Anbox is still in an early alpha stage.

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This is true, however, Jolla’s range of officially supported devices is limited, it should allow selling AD licenses (with limited support) at least for unofficial SFOS ports that meet basic criteria, e.g. AOSP, kernel version. Otherwise Antbox will grow and fill the gap.

@0312birdzhang what happened to your Anbox port for SFOS, couldn’t it be upgraded to 3.4.0.22? Is Purisms adaptation of Anbox open source? Couldn’t it be adapted to the Xperia series!? :slight_smile: Thanks!

@Firefox84, see https://anbox.io/#collapse1 (being a bit more specific than @4carlos).
So this seems to be a clear “No”, which is logical, because AlienDalvik and Anbox use the same design: A single kernel (“shared” with the host GNU/Linux-Installation), plus isolation per chroot-environment (AlienDalvik4.x) or LXC-container (AlienDalvik8.1 and Anbox).

Mind that Anbox currently lacks any kind of integration into the host GNU/Linux besides shared filesystem and being able to use a generic network interface, AFAIK. So no shared clipboard, cross-environment “intents” (apps calling apps) etc. or the new telephony / SMS integration for AD8 in SFOS3.4.0.

There is an Anbox crowdfunding campaign. It’s for UT but I imagine that SFOS Ports could profit from it as well.

http://gf.me/u/znh5j2

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I always use a web browser…

and its acually the volla phone (community) that started the campaign

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Related, I tried a Sailfish OS port but it did not work, I shared details in comments: https://together.jolla.com/question/162876/anbox-on-sailfish-os/

In addition to Purism, Anbox is supported on postmarketOS (https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Anbox) so it would be nice if we can use it on Sailfish OS / Nemo Mobile.

Here is a comment I added on the related thread:

Anbox has the advantage to be open source compared to Myriad’s Alien Dalvik and Anbox uses LXC, which would prevent an Android app from installing a spyware on SailfishOS.

Security note: to prevent an Android app using a spyware to track the host OS (keylogger, screenshots, clipboard), LXC should be used with X11 isolation: https://github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/714

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Just as an additional comment, on Sailfish the Android layer now runs under LXC as well. Here it runs on my XA2 with 4.0.1.48:

lxc-start -n aliendalvik -F

If I am correct, this was not the case in the older Android 4 compatibility layer as it is on Jolla 1, Jolla C and Xperia X.

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