New Digits

Google Android could give new life to old PDAs

by Brad Linder Mar 4th 2009

For years, people have been pointing out that you can Linux can give new life to old PC hardware. Just because your old Pentium 1 desktop doesn't run Windows Vista very well doesn't mean it's useless. Just throw a low profile Linux distribution like Xubuntu or Puppy Linux on there.

As PDA and cellphone software gets more capable, it's becoming clear that the same principle applies. Case in point, the Dell Axim X51v PDA was discontinued a few years ago. But it's capable of running the latest build of Google Android if you can shoehorn the operating system onto the PDA. The Axim has a 624MHz CPU and more storage space than many modern cellphones. As you can see in the video, it supports Android's touch features, and works with the on-screen keyboard.

The hacker who managed to load Android still hasn't gotten WiFi and power management feautres working. But it's still a pretty impressive example of updating old hardware with new software. Incidentally, you can also run Windows Mobile 6 on the Dell Axim line of PDAs, even though Dell and Microsoft never released the OS for this hardware.

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