MATLAB Mobile for Android
MATLAB Mobile has been around for Apple devices for a while now but Android users have had to make do with third party alternatives such as MATLAB Commander and MLConnect. All that has now changed with the release of MATLAB Mobile for Android.
MATLAB Mobile is NOT MATLAB running on your phone
While MATLAB Mobile is a very nice and interesting product, there is one thing you should get clear in your mind– this is not a full version of MATLAB on your phone or Tablet. MATLAB Mobile is essentially a thin client that connects to an instance of MATLAB running on your desktop or The Mathworks Cloud. In other words, it doesn’t work at all if you don’t have a network connection or a licensed copy of MATLAB.
What if you do want to run MATLAB code directly on your phone?
While it is unlikely that we’ll see a full version of MATLAB compiled for Android devices any time soon, Android toting MATLABers have a couple of other options available to them in addition to MATLAB Mobile.
- Octave for Android Octave is a free, open source alternative to MATLAB that can run many .m file scripts and functions. Corbin Champion has ported it to Android and although it is still a work in progress, it works very well.
- Mathmatiz – Small and light, this free app understands a subset of the MATLAB language and can do basic plotting.
- Addi – Much smaller and less capable than Octave for Android, this is Corbin Champion’s earlier attempt at bringing a free MATLAB clone to Android. It is based on the Java library, JMathLib.
It’s always fun to type square brackets on Android keyboard :)
On the standard software keyboards you are absolutely right. The keyboard on the Transformer Prime, however, will do nicely :) (I don’t have one, have only admired from afar)
Martin, try hackers keyboard for square bracket fun http://code.google.com/p/hackerskeyboard/
Works nice
Mike,
Thanks for the shout out again! Addi has a custom keyboard with auto complete, but it has some bugs and doesn’t have a different/better layout for larger screens. I am planning on making this a separate app, fixing the bugs and making it look nice on tablets, so both Addi and Octave can use it. That is fairly high up on my list right now, so it is not far off. Addi development hasn’t stopped, but it has taken a back seat to Octave and will for a little longer. Too bad that kickstarter campaign didn’t work out, but I am still going.
Corbin Champion
Just a heads up, there are some GUI improvements needed still, but things are pretty ironed out now with regards to Octave on Android. Various bugs in early builds have been solved and things should work on all devices and all version of Android now. Plotting 3-D and color work nicely with droidplot app (build of gnuplot for Android). Also now supports Octave Forge add-on packages distributed through the Play Store. I think I have around 8 of them built and released so far.
Corbin Champion