Turning the Nintendo Switch into Android’s best gaming hardware

The Nintendo Switch is, basically, a game console made out of smartphone parts. The quad-core Nvidia Tegra X1 ARM SoC would be right at home in a smartphone or tablet, along with the 4GB of RAM, a 720p touchscreen, and a 4310mAh battery. Really, the only things that make the Switch a game console are the sweet slide-on controllers and the fact that it is blessed by Nintendo, with actually good AAA games, ecosystem support, and developer outreach.

With such a close relation to smartphone hardware, it only makes sense that people would eventually load some smartphone software onto the Nintendo Switch—and around Ars, we've recently made everyone's favorite handheld run Android. Such a thing might sound like a hardware hacker's pipe dream, but thanks to work from a group called "Switchroot," you can now get a pretty good build of Android up and running on Nintendo's console.

A project like this is only possible thanks to two of the Internet's biggest hacking communities joining forces—you've got the best of the Nintendo Homebrew scene combining with the best of the Android custom ROM community. And as we recently discovered, getting Android running on the Switch is a whirlwind tour of huge community projects and discoveries all in the name of doing whatever you want with hardware you own.