Late yesterday, the developers responsible for the long-awaited Android ROM for the Nintendo Switch (a group known as switchroot) pushed up a thread to the XDA forums describing most of its upcoming features, limitations, and even the installation process. All that's missing at this point is download links, but the page says the developers expect to have them posted soon — on the order of days.

The Android builds for the switch will be based on LineageOS 15.1, which itself is based on Android 8.1 Oreo — no Android Q, sorry. That's not too surprising, plenty of devices have yet to be ported to Lineage OS 16/ Android 9 Pie. The Shield TV is also still on 15.1, and these images are explicitly based on the tree for that device.

The installation process itself has been pared down to an astoundingly simple and accessible series of steps. Folks looking to familiarize themselves before images land later can read the full process here, but in short, it just requires writing an image to your microSD card together with other files like GApps zips, booting to Hekate (a custom bootloader presumably included with the images), using it to boot TWRP (pre-installed on the images), flashing your files, and then rebooting into Android. Subsequent updates will be released as flashable zips.

There's will also be a "shield-ifier" image you can install that tricks Nvidia's apps into thinking the Switch is the Nvidia Shield TV, giving it access to things like the company's game streaming system and some games with device-locked compatibility.

When it comes to actually using Android on the switch, the developers note that audio is working, and the device will work in both handheld and docked mode with joycon support over Bluetooth. There are also different performance profiles you can switch between as required. There are drawbacks, though: Battery life will be on the poor side, as deep sleep isn't working yet. Auto-rotate is also broken, the screen won't turn off in the dock, the charging state isn't detected (though the Switch will charge), and input via the touchscreen and joycons can be a bit janky. You have to start somewhere, though.

Schedules are always subject to change when it comes to projects like these, but the developers think they should have it out "within the next 5 days" as of yesterday. That means we can likely expect it by next Monday, June 29th — assuming there aren't any delays. Even if there are, it will certainly be worth the wait.

Source: XDA Forums