The Nexus Q is one heck of a weird gadget. The "social streaming" thingamajig has the heart of a Android smartphone with it’s dual core processor, powerful graphics 16GB flash storage and 1GB RAM, but the features of a severely crippled Apple TV.
It is somewhat similar to the Apple TV in that it can stream content using an Android smartphone or tablet as a remote (Apple TV does this with mobile iOS device or a Mountain Lion based Mac), but the problem is that it costs nearly thrice as much, streams content only from Google Play’s limited library and YouTube and can’t even be used without an Android device. The gadget has received mixed reviews so far.
Considering the Galaxy Nexus-like hardware, the Nexus Q does have a lot of potential. Potential that is being slowly realized by the ever vibrant Android development community, which has successfully achieved root access and is actively working on getting Android apps to work on it.
The news comes straight from the popular modding and development forums XDA Developers in the form of a post on their official blog in which the root method and the general status of the Nexus Q’s developer community is discussed.
The root method is similar to what we’ve seen with other Nexus devices so far. You have to unlock the boot loader with a simple "fastboot oem unlock" command, download ClockworkMod recovery and su binaries, and then push them via ADB after installing the Android Software Development Kit. Pretty simple if you some experience with ADB and fastboot. We’re waiting for the one click root tool to come out that will make rooting a breeze. Keep in mind though: there are currently no benefits of rooting the Nexus Q.
As the Nexus Q has the hardware of a high end Android smartphone and is based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the ability to run Android apps is definitely built-in (but disabled because of the obvious lack of a touch screen). This is what shodutta92 is working on. He has discussed the so far incomplete and complicated method in his thread here. You can check out if you want to, but we suggest you don’t try it out for yourself unless and until the whole process becomes easier and safer.
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