Power management is now a lot nicer as well. This lack of hours and hours of fiddling and debugging is, if you'd excuse the pun, a game changer. Every single game with controller input we tried, including emulators and odd setups, like GeForce Now and Steam Link just worked automatically. In the new Android 10 ROM controllers just work. And even then some apps and games refused to play ball. Plus, in order for them to operate as a single controller, rather than two separate ones, a complicated per-app fix was required. They could still be docked for charging, but that was it.
In the old ROM, Joy-Cons only worked in Bluetooth mode and had to be re-connected on every boot. That includes proper analogue stick operation, as well as wired operation for the Joy-Cons.
Though they still occur from time to time.Īdditionally, the Android 10 ROM has full built-in support for Nintendo's Joy-Cons and the Pro Controller. Stutters and crashes are far less frequent. Menus look and feel smoother and more responsive. Boot time is literally cut in half, compared to the older Android 8.1 build. Performance and general experienceįirst and foremost, the new ROM is much smoother and quicker all around. In no particular order, here are some of our impressions of the new Android 10 ROM on the Nintendo Switch. Some apps don't like the Joy-Con D-Pad.Default keyboard can't be used with a controller.You might need to reboot for Bluetooth to work on a small proportion of devices.BT audio might stutter on some headphones.Sleep may not work on a small proportion of devices, you can flash the alarm disable zip to try and mitigate this.Shield games are broken, DO NOT BUY THEM.Shield TV remote app support for easy docked control.
Easier install via hekate partition tool.A rewritten charger driver supporting USB-PD and third party docks.Optimised dock support with resolution scaling.Reworked fan profiles for quieter operation.Full Joy-Con and Pro Controller support with analog sticks and rails.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. No Switch Lite and no new battery-refreshed Switch units.
Just to save you some time, we will note that for now only older, original Nintendo Switch units are easily exploitable. As for general Nintendo Switch exploits and hacking, here and here are great places to start.
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. We decided to do a quick review of what it's like running it on a Nintendo Switch. Recently, the switchroot team put out an Android 10 ROM, based on LineageOS 17.1 which massively improves the experience. 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.Īs 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. 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. Running LineageOS on Nintendo's amazingly popular handheld/home console is actually nothing new. 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. Less surprising still is the fact that we love Android. It will hardly come as a surprise that us geek folk over at GSMArena love the Nintendo Switch.