In the previous post, I showed how Linux command line bioinformatics tools (such as minimap2) can be run on an Android mobile phone through Android Debug Bridge. That method required us to issue commands to the phone from the host PC via USB. In this post, I will show how we can make it a bit fancier, by issuing commands directly from the mobile phone. In summary, we will install a virtual terminal app to the phone and issue commands from there.

Once my laptop completely died and did not have much to do until the new laptop arrived. But I had my Android mobile phone and wondered how hard will it be to get some common ONT bioinformatics tools working there. On that day, I with my friend @danielltb realised that is not that hard (but in a very hacky way). Here are the steps, if anyone is crazy enough to attempt it. Interestingly, this method does NOT require a rooted phone¹.

Compiling software can sometimes be a nightmare due to numerous dependencies. This is specifically the case for bioinformatics tools that utilise signal level data from Oxford Nanopore (ONT) sequencers. According to my experience, the major cause behind compilation troubles in ONT tools is the Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) library¹. While a system admin may enjoy tedious compilations, it is not the case for users of bioinformatics tools. What if the tool developers release pre-compiled binaries? Some would object this as it is not a perfect solution. Nevertheless, I believe that it is far better than releasing an unusable tool due to users giving up at the compilation stage. Further, pre-compiled binaries are less bulky compared to docker images. Generating a “portable binary” that runs on numerous Linux distributions/version is tricky, but possible with some additional work from the developer’s side.