Android for the Nintendo Switch was originally teased back in February by Max Keller in a video showing a development build of Android Q (10.0) running on the device.
This build had some issues such as no GPU acceleration and until June, nothing else was said. However, in June, ByLaws managed to get GPU acceleration working and from there onwards, work accelerated considerably. Now, a release has finally descended upon us and it can be downloaded from this XDA thread.
This release is a ROM of Lineage OS 15.1 (ex-Cyanogen Mod) which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo.
The vast majority of the Switch’s features such as WiFi, Bluetooth, GPU acceleration, the touchscreen, joycons and docking work although there are a few minor issues with the port namely:
When you plug in the charging cable, Android doesn’t detect the fact that device is charging but it’s still chargingBorderlands on the Switch is finally a reality thanks to Android!
WiFi may occasionally decide not to work; when this happens, a reboot is the way to go
Deep sleep doesn’t work so don’t expect amazing battery life
Docking may not work properly on first try so connect/disconnect the Switch a few times till you get a proper picture
Auto-rotation doesn’t work, joycons may not work properly in some apps and the FAT32 partition of the SD Card isn’t readable on macOS among other smaller issues
With this ROM, you’ll not only be able to use your Nintendo Switch as an actual tablet (Horizon OS doesn’t do too well in this regard although homebrew has improved the situation) but you’ll also be able to play Android games that require Nvidia Tegra hardware such as Half-Life 2 and Borderlands so the Switch’s game library has just been expanded by quite a bit!