Sometime ago there was a discussion on this list about the feasibility of running gretl on Android. I have been looking at some of the recent developments on the Google play store.  In particular the app GNURoot provides a method to install and run Linux applications on an Android  device without needing to root the device. One then installs a Linux rootfs. I installed the Debian Wheezy rootfs app from the play store. Using this I have installed R, emacs, ess and gretl using standard apt-get. The R inferior process works with emacs. As regards gretl gretlcli works as expected but gretl_x11 can not start the display.

This was done on a Kobo Arc  running Android 4.1.1.   The author of these apps has a good version of Octave and various octave packages available on the play store. There is also a version of Maxima for Octave available.

Proof of what can be done? Personally I will not be selling my laptop or desktop and moving to Android in the short run.