“Will the Google Android OS run on existing phones?” This is one of the most asked questions folks ask me about Android, next to “what is Android?” The short answer is yes Android OS can run on current hardware, but the user experience will not be too enjoyable. This is one of the many reasons why Android-powered phones won’t hit the open market until mid 2008 because big names like HTC are hard at work building the next generation of hardware suitable for Android.

Now configuring Android to run on current hardware is another story so I’ll leave it to Josh Guilfoyle to explain the process:

I started a project to “demonstrate” Android on existing handsets by way of a VNC server running inside the Android emulator. After further exploration I discovered that one already exists, apparently inside of /system/lib/libsurfaceflinger.so and actually does work. The performance of this implementation is terrible, and ultimately would not run well connected to my Moto Q running .NET VNC Viewer (http://dotnetvnc.sourceforge.net). So, I found an existing project implementing a frame buffer VNC server and adapted/rewrote it to work on Android. Performance is still bad, but it is workable and does let you “see” Android running on a 320×240 mobile LCD which is certainly very cool.

Android VNC Server [Android Internals]