We are pretty big XBMC fans here at Xperia Blog, ever since the media centre software first appeared on the original Xbox all those years back. These days XBMC is available on a wide variety of platforms spanning Windows, Linux, OSX and iOS. It was about time that Android got some love and the XBMC team has obliged, they announced XBMC for Android earlier today.
Given the convergence that we continue to see with smartphones, it’s great to see such software appear on Android. Apparently, the software is no different to the desktop. On the downside, this also means that at this stage there is no proper UI for smartphones, but it shouldn’t take too long for the XBMC community to come up with some slick front-end skins by the time the apps launches.
There are many Sony Xperia devices that sport HDMI connections and can be controlled via a TV remote, so XBMC on these handsets are a perfect fit. Whilst beta testing is yet to start, an apk has already been compiled by the team at Miniand targeted at the MK802 and Mini X, but we tested it and it works fine on the Xperia S and Xperia P. It is designed for the larger screen so the text is tiny, but it does work. Performance was fine on the video content we tried, but it’s worth noting that there is no hardware acceleration support right now. You can download the 39MB apk here.
