Android 10 on the Nintendo Switch is just as messy and awesome as it sounds

[khtannnnnnnnnn]

It will hardly come as a surprise that us geek folk over at GSMArena love the Nintendo Switch. Less surprising still is the fact that we love Android. Put the two together, sprinkle-in a hefty dose of tinkering and you get a janky "fusion" recipe that is just hard to pass by. Running LineageOS on Nintendo's amazingly popular handheld/home console is actually nothing new. A bunch of amazing people who refer to themselves as the switchroot group have been working hard on getting alternative platforms running on exploitable Nintendo Switch units, including Ubuntu, forks of LineageOS, originating from the Nvidia Shield TV branches of Android. I have personally been running their older Android 8.1 Oreo, LineageOS 15.1 build for a good few months now on my personal Switch, as a secondary OS and was delighted with the results.

As you can imagine, it's a janky experience through and through, but one that against all odds works and has given me access to a whole world of excellent Android games, multimedia and even productivity packages, as well as trendy cloud and remote gaming platforms like GeForce Now and Steam Link on my favorite carry-on device. Recently, the switchroot team put out an Android 10 ROM, based on LineageOS 17.1 which massively improves the experience. We decided to do a quick review of what it's like running it on a Nintendo Switch. We won't be offering a guide for how to install Android on your Switch, since the switchroot group already has an excellent one over at XDA's forums. As for general Nintendo Switch exploits and hacking, here and here are great places to start. Just to save you some time, we will note that for now only older, original Nintendo Switch units are easily exploitable. No Switch Lite and no new battery-refreshed Switch units.

Let's kick things off with the official changelog, since it gives you a good idea of the major improvements and bug-fixes, as well as clues for the problems you might face.

Performance and general experience

First and foremost, the new ROM is much smoother and quicker all around. Boot time is literally cut in half, compared to the older Android 8.1 build. Menus look and feel smoother and more responsive. Stutters and crashes are far less frequent. Though they still occur from time to time.

Additionally, the Android 10 ROM has full built-in support for Nintendo's Joy-Cons and the Pro Controller. That includes proper analogue stick operation, as well as wired operation for the Joy-Cons. In the old ROM, Joy-Cons only worked in Bluetooth mode and had to be re-connected on every boot. They could still be docked for charging, but that was it. Plus, in order for them to operate as a single controller, rather than two separate ones, a complicated per-app fix was required. And even then some apps and games refused to play ball.

In the new Android 10 ROM controllers just work. Every single game with controller input we tried, including emulators and odd setups, like GeForce Now and Steam Link just worked automatically. This lack of hours and hours of fiddling and debugging is, if you'd excuse the pun, a game changer.

Power management is now a lot nicer as well. With the previous Android build, the Switch did charge when plugged-in, it was only at 5W basic USB charging, while now proper PD is supported. It's still not as fast as charging in the default Nintendo OS, but it's miles better. Also, Android deep sleep actually works now, so you can just single press the power button and leave your console with Android booted for days upon days, whereas previously the battery would drain in a few hours of just idling.

Wi-Fi is more stable and faster and so are various third party Bluetooth devices. Nintendo still doesn't offer official Bluetooth audio support, so it's kind of amazing to finally be able to achieve that with this Android port.

Docked mode is another greatly improved part. Previously, only the official Nintendo dock was properly supported. With the Android 10 ROM we had a fluent experience with three different random Type-C dongles. All of them worked with HDMI output and USB input. Plus, there is now built-in resolution scaling, fine display rotation controls and you can even force Android 10 desktop mode from the developer menu for a pretty competent desktop experience. All of this was just vaguely possible with the previous ROM and all through third-party apps.

[MangoTango]

thanks for sharing!