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The Android operating system is a step closer to being embedded in consumer electronics, after the company behind the Mips processor architecture open sourced the code for its Android port. Mips Technologies released the source code on Monday, two months after it first said it had ported Android to the 32-bit version of the Mips architecture. This architecture is used in set-top boxes, digital TV sets, home media players, internet telephony systems and mobile internet devices (MIDs), and is a rival to the Arm technology on which Android already runs.
This is really good news, IMHO. I've been looking at some MIPS based machines (new nettops and netbooks/notebooks made in China) for a development project I'm part of. Right now on the mipsel platform the choices are Debian, a few Debian derivatives like Ubuntu and GNewSense, and Gentoo. That's all that's available and in current development for mipsel, both 32- and 64- bit. Having more distros in the mix can only spur development. Competition is a good thing and this nice thing about Open Source development is if someone comes up with a really good idea it can be borrowed by other distros.
MIPS products seem to be way ahead of ARM based products in anything bigger than a UMPC. MIPS and ARM seem to be both competing for mobile space. Again, competition is a very good thing. It almost always leads to better products.
In theory the MIPS machines require less current and that should translate into longer battery life. In practice most of the ones I've seen decided to go with tiny one or two cell batteries to reduce weight and size and ended up with 2-3 hour battery life as a result. The Lemote machines are the only exception I know about.
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MIPS products seem to be way ahead of ARM based products in anything bigger than a UMPC. MIPS and ARM seem to be both competing for mobile space. Again, competition is a very good thing. It almost always leads to better products.