Download VLC For Android… Sort Of

What’s great about Android is the talented devs who use the platform. Case in point: CVPCS, an Android dev, wanted to use VLC on his Android phone as he used VLC all the time on his desktop. So he built a pre-alpha version for everyone to use.

It’s a really early build so he won’t be providing support for the app. However, he is letting you download the VLC app he built. And here comes the downside of Android… as there are so many devices out there, there isn’t a universal VLC app that will work on all of them. Instead, CVPCS has effectively developed two VLC versions, a NEON and a NO-NEON (the differences are in the processor types).

How do you find out which version you need? It’s sort-of simple, you’ll need a file manager to locate the file “/proc/cpuinfo”. Open that file and you’ll see something like this:

Processor : ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)

processor : 0

BogoMIPS : 1597.74

Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3

CPU implementer : 0×41

CPU architecture: 7

CPU variant : 0×1

CPU part : 0xc09

CPU revision : 2

Hardware : mapphone_CDMA

Revision : 0000

Serial : 0000000000000000

As CVPCS says, “If you see the word ‘neon’ on the Features line, then your device supports NEON extensions. If it’s not there, then you’ll have to use the NO-NEON variant of VLC.” Download VLC here and be sure to check out the full instructions over at CVPCS. [CVPCS via Phandroid]

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(2 Comments)
  • [–]

    Steve

    Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 8:15 AM

    This is precisely the reason I don’t use Android. I gave up on Linux for the same reason, after many years.

    sure its fun and you can do anything, but why?! sometimes I like to leave work at work and just have a phone that does phoney things.

    • [–]

      David

      Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 12:00 AM

      You don’t use Android because there are two versions of VLC for it (as opposed to zero for iOS). Strange man.

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