Test Drive Android-x86 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich Build 20120101

The Android-x86 project recently released a new Android-x86 4.0.3 ICS test build. In this test release, they have made it running much smoother on x86 platforms and other key features like:

• Kernel 3.0.8 with KMS enabled. Most tablets/netbooks can run Android-x86 in the native resolution.
• OpenGL hardware acceleration for AMD Radeon and Intel chipsets. However, if you have trouble with it, you can disable it by adding HWACCEL=0 to the cmdline.
• Support Wifi, multitouch and audio.
• Experimental support of Renderscript.
• Hybrid mode of iso images.
• A new text based GUI installer which supports ext3/ext2/ntfs/fat32 filesystems.
• External usb drive and sdcard are auto mounted on plugging.
• Compressed filesystem (squashfs).

I downloaded the ISO for Asus laptops hoping it has fixed the issues I had with their previous Android-x86 ICS release. I ran it on VirtualBox but get stuck at the setup wizard and couldn't go through it (If you want to run it on Virtual Machine, the VMLite build Android 4 is still a better choice). So I boot it with USB flash drive on Asus N53SV.

After playing around with this test build, it is noticeably running real smooth on my laptop. I can now install new Android apps via Android Market which causing crash in previous Android-x86 ICS release. However, it is not perfect yet as there is no camera, Ethernet, suspend and resume support in this build. Some apps still crashes and Android Browser shows black screen even I was able to run WiFi.