Ubiquitous’s QuickBoot solution has been implemented for the Android OS, giving it a boot time of just one second. No, really, a second. Hard to believe at first but once you see the video below, it’s pretty amazing. What we have here is essentially an instant-on Android OS.
While very nice to see in action, it’s not actually ‘booting’ the OS, it’s just a faster “restoration of a running OS image.” In other words, it’s like waking up your computer from its hibernation, but only takes a second to do with QuickBoot and Android. An image of the system is stored into the RAM of the device, and that is what is booted immediately upon waking. Android itself usually takes about 30 seconds to fully boot.
The devices that are shown in the video below are a Freescale-based tablet reference design, and the Sharp Netwalker. Both achieved the very impressive boot times using Quickboot, and it’ really something to admire. But this isn’t just limited to tablets and smartbooks, it’ll be implemented in many other places as well.
Matt Kawauchi, President of Ubiquitous on how QuickBoot can bring instant-on boot tech to other devices:
The Ubiquitous QuickBoot enables various devices such as TVs, STBs, automotive infotainments, smartbooks and smartphones to boot up in about one second from complete power off, and will change the user experience dramatically.
Kevin Smith, VP Segment Marketing on QuickBoot:
QuickBoot support for ARM enables consumer applications to run instantaneously from power on, enhancing the Android consumer experience across a wide range of devices from Mobile phones to DTVs.
So, we know that this will eventually be implemented into Android handsets at some point, but when is the real question. It’ll be great to be able to turn your phone on, and immediately be able to start using it. Quickboot will enable greater energy savings, which will be helpful with the already energy-efficient ARM processors it runs on.
What are your thoughts on this? Cool, or ehh?
Video below.
[Via: chris.pirillo.com, linux.sys-con.com]