Rockhip is probably best known for producing processors used in low-cost tablets, Chromebooks, and TV boxes. But the company also develops software optimized for those chips, including a new version of Android called Light Biz OS.
It’s designed to make Android work more like a desktop operating system. Apps run in resizable windows, allowing you to view multiple apps at once. And there’s also support for multi-screen viewing: hook up an external display and you can view a presentation or movie on the big screen while reading your email on the tablet itself.
Light Biz OS is based on Android 5.1 Lollipop and users can run pretty much any Android application. What’s unusual is that you can run those apps in full-screen mode, a half-sized window, or an even smaller window. This lets you do things like surf the web while a video is playing in one window and a chat application runs in a third.
The custom version of Android also includes a taskbar, a start menu-style app launcher, and support for keyboard shortcuts, pen input, and other features designed to make it easier to get work done on an Android device.
You can also go into the display settings and disable multi-window support at any time to use you device like a normal Android tablet.
Rockchip makes the software available to companies that use its RK3288 and RK3368Â chips in their tablets, TV boxes, and laptops, and Charbax from ARMdevices recently got an early look:
For those say Rockchip copy remix, that’s completely false. They been working on this since 2013. Just look at old liliputing post.
https://liliputing.com/2013/07/rockchip-makes-android-more-like-windows-with-multi-windows.html
The reason Android is a hilariously bad productivity OS isn’t just its lack of resizable and movable windows, which all these projects seem to think is the only thing that matters. It’s the horrible resolution and lack of multimonitor support. Even should you choose to use a single 24″ display, Android displays no more than a 7″ tablet will. You can mess with text size and stuff but it’s bandaid to bandaid and fail to fail.
All of this may become moot soon enough since Google seems to be seeing the light and combining Android and Chrome into a single OS. This may remove their bias that has kept Android from becoming a good desktop OS. Of course only time will tell what the product will end up looking and working like, but developer avoidance of the Chrome platform seems to have finally changed their minds. I think they want to get Chrome out of its appless, primarily surfing, netbook ghetto.
This is way better than that continuum crap from M$. At least this OS has dev support and the desktop mode is on the device screen as well as any widi/hdmi connected monitor.
I would not go that far, unless you have an anti-MS bias anyway! This looks promising, but its nothing like windows continuum as Continuum is a system across platforms. This is just tablets right now. I saw a PiPo Tablet and an unbranded tablet with a projector built in. We all know that in the past Chinese quality of tablets have left a lot to be desired for. I will say I have not seen Jide Remix do all I just saw in those videos, but I have not received my Jide mini yet and I am eager to see what it can do! I will try to link this to our Remix developer’s forum and see what they think and as I understand one of the moderators is also a co-creator of Remix, he might be interested in what is in the video and tell us whether we are looking at a Remix rip-off and if all of this is already possible in their 2.0 upgrade!
ok… Clearly you give a shit about this way more than I do… Hell, I just run WINDOWS 8.1 on my tablets. Just thought this was a good idea for the only GOOD phone operating system.
I made an observation. Clearly you don’t want anyone posting anything that may be in opposition to your point. Sorry you don’t appreciate discussion, you just give too much shit about your opinion, whether right or wrong.
I agree, I don’t see much need of android as a business tablet if u can get a dirty cheap x86 windows tablet from China. Price of Android Tablet and Windows tablet are now to be on par with each other, and the number of software of x86 is much larger than android. Don’t forget the downward compatibility effort spent by Microsoft. System update is an another important issue to consider for business computer. Android is notorious for getting the update, which on the other side Windows tablet get update for at least 10 years (I suppose, don’t you see you can run windows 10 on xp computers?).
I’ve been told by some on blogs that they have theirs on an XP. Don’t know if they upgraded their pc to accept it or they did it during development and before Win10 release!
Is it some leaked and rebranded version of the Remix OS?
I was thinking the same thing! Should know more soon since the Minis are shipping.
I got my shipping notice already for my minis from Jide. I’m thinking 3 to 4 weeks before they start arriving via HKpost. If no one has already posted something on it or if Brad has not gotten a sneak peak for us I will report back when I get mine.
Yeah it looks like they ripped off Remix. It even has the same problems Remix has: You can’t resize windows: you can only have “phone” or “tablet” window geometry (portrait or landscape); or fullscreen.
That was my impression. But Remix OS 2 has fully resizeable windows now I think (so maybe they used the 1.5 codebase here).
I wish Remix would get out of hardware.. I’d love to see their interface as either an app launcher or a zip that you could flash over cyanogenmod. This would be awesome for a switchable interface. I could have a full desktop when I screen cast and a phone interface when I am mobile. So far Andromium is doing something like this but it doesn’t work very well…
Well, they did say in an interview they plan to release the OS as a standalone product. I guess they need a market for that, they don’t do it out of goodwill, they have to get some revenue from it. Maybe some built-in custom ad-service or theme shop, like Xiaomi does in MIUI. Until then, they need the hardware so the OS can spread, and honestly the Mini was a genius move in this regard, most people would gladly pay the $20 for the OS alone, and now they get compatible hardware too.
They did not. Rockchip had been working on this since 2013. Just look at older lilputing post on rockchip adding support for multi-windows. I have a tablet with rk3188 with multi-windows support but it was too slow.
Sounds good. My main gripe about Android on the desktop is mouse support (right click, scroll wheel) and zooming in out (should be on mousewheel+modifyer). Are they doing anything about that ?