Myriad Alien Dalvik 2.0 Video Hands-on: Android Apps on iPad and Beyond

Myriad demonstrated that it could get Android apps to run on non-Android devices at last year’s Mobile World Congress. But it doesn’t get more non-Android than this. At CTIA in San Diego, the company showed us its ambitious Alien Dalvik 2.0 platform running on an iPad. We’re talking full-screen apps, as well as widgets, all streaming from the cloud.

It was a cool demo for sure, but there is a bigger point to all this. Myriad wants to help everyone from cable companies to car makers to get Android apps up and running on their wares without needing the OS.

Here’s how Alien Dalvik works on the iPad. You fire up the app, and then you connect to Myriad’s servers, which literally streams an Android desktop to the tablet via an H.264 video feed. Except you can interact with the desktop and widgets and run apps using your finger.

We noticed a bit of lag when playing Flight Control, but Myriad reminded us that they accomplished this feat without any hardware acceleration or exposure to iOS’ APIs. Plus, more of the code would likely be native on future devices, which would speed up performance even more.

The end game for Myriad is for someone like a Comcast or Time Warner to offer Android apps within their own environment. Car makers could also offer Android apps without having to throw out their existing systems, which are typically based on Linux. Maybe RIM should give Myriad a call. Based on what we saw today, this solution looks a lot more promising than the QNX’s emulation approach.

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