Switch News: SciresM gets Atmosphère CFW booting on FW 8.1.0 and XDA-Developers opens forum for Nintendo Switch Android Hacking amidst recent progress!
While smartphones and tablets have taken over the portable gaming industry, interest in dedicated portable consoles has not faded away and this is evidenced by the high amount of interest in the Nintendo Switch hacking scene (and the PSVita one before it). This time, we have SciresM already being able to boot Atmosphère on FW 8.1.0 and XDA Developers opening a forum for Android on the Switch!
Atmosphère already booting on FW 8.1.0
UPDATE: Atmosphere 0.9.1 with FW 8.1.0 support has been released! Download here.
Like many other updates, Switch FW 8.1.0 (released Sunday) broke Atmosphère’s compatibility but the folks behind are already hard at work fixing it up.
This is because the entry-point used on hackable Switch models (fusee-gelee vulnerable) is hardware-based which means that software updates can’t patch it. Thanks to this, retrieving firmware keys didn’t take too long and hexkyz managed to extract FW 8.1.0’s master key in just a few hours!
Following that, SciresM identified the differences in the TrustZone between FW 8.0.0, a firmware that Atmosphère supports, and FW 8.1.0 and got to work on fixing compatibility with the latter firmware version. Some hours ago, he managed to make enough progress that he was able to boot up Atmosphère 0.9.0 on Switch FW 8.1.0 which means that support for it will probably be coming in the near future (probably in a few days/weeks) and the latest version of Switch FW will have a working CFW.
In the tweet in which SciresM demonstrated his progress, he mentioned that some more work needs to be done before Atmosphère is fully working on FW 8.1.0 so make sure you wait patiently until then. For the latest updates, make sure you follow his Twitter account and wait for another ‘Happy June 15th’ tweet 🙂
XDA Developers opens up Nintendo Switch Android Hacking forum amidst recent progress
If you’ve been keeping up on Switch news recently, you know that efforts to port Android to the Nintendo Switch have stepped up considerably and with GPU acceleration, WiFi, touchscreen and many other features working, it’ll probably only be a matter of time before a publicly available build is dropped for us to enjoy!
Recently, it seems that development has taken a more structured form as the Switchroot group, members of which are behind L4T Ubuntu (a version of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for the Switch), has posted some photos on Twitter demonstrating:
- GeForce Now for Android working on the console
- TWRP recovery which can be accessed by pressing Volume Down after booting with Hekate
- AnTuTu Benchmark with a pretty good score
- Furthermore, it seems that the Android port is based on Lineage OS 15.1 as mentioned in the forum thread below
Now, XDA Developers, which is probably the go-to website for many when it comes to Android hacking, has opened up a forum specifically for Nintendo Switch Hacking and Android ROMs thanks to the aforementioned progress. Currently, there’s only one noteworthy forum thread which is for general discussion/updates to the port and this was done by Max Keller (username: langer hans) who was the developer that brought Android to the Switch in February together with Billy Laws (ByLaws).
Conclusion
On a concluding note, it’s important to state that there is no ETA for both FW 8.1.0 support in Atmosphère and a release of the Android port so patience is key here. If you want to try out another OS on the Switch, you can always use L4T Lakka or L4T Ubuntu to satisfy your curiosity or use case 🙂
SX OS already did the 8.1.0 support right now!
And we should care, because?
Atmos 0.9.1 already out.
Why didn’t you report on SX OS being able to boot 8.1.0 first? Bias is a sign of poor journalism…
I don’t report about SX OS because I’ve read that it’s primarily used for piracy (which this website doesn’t support), is not completely free (as far as I know) and I believe they’ve even broken GPL.
Furthermore, SX OS 2.8 Beta (which added FW 8.1.0 support) was released after this article was published…
right.
jailbreaking the switch means = being able to play any switch game for free?
thanks