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PostmarketOS: Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones

468 points by ollieparanoid 9y ago

nilved 9y ago
This is a pretty cool idea. I think we really need something like this.
wernercd 9y ago
How does "Project Treble" affect this "issue"? The extra layer of APIs that Android will be built on should solve the "Fork for Every Device and Every Build" problem, yes? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to-fix-android-updates-no-really-with-project-treble/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to-fix-...
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  As I see it, project treble will improve the update process, but not completely resolve the endless forking. You will still have the "vendor implementation", which is different for every device. It will contain at least the kernel and drivers (kernel/userspace), for which you, as a user, depend on the manufacturer to keep it updated, and which will probably not be mainlined. This means, that after two years or so, when the support runs out, you will still have a device, that does not get updates anymore. Only for a smaller component of the operating system. Also keep in mind, that this will work for newer Android O phones only. We already have more than a billion phones (the number could be much higher, I did not google it right now), which will never get that improvement. They can be saved from being electronic waste with projects like postmarketOS.
- fixmycode 9y ago
  I was thinking the same thing, Treble sound like the perfect solution for the kind of problem this project aims to fix, but I realised that the scope of this project is different. There's no way they can back-port Treble to older devices, and there's no pressure from consumers or manufacturers to do so. Project Treble aims to fix the fragmentation problem, but it does from this point on, older devices are not included. There's also the fact that Android will keep on rolling, new features will be added and manufacturers will keep on using them as they see fit, so Treble can help users with a security update or two while that version of Android is supported, even if the manufacturer stops supporting their "vendor layer", but what will happen when Google drops support of Android O?
evv 9y ago
This is fabulous! There are millions of old phones out there with decaying versions of iOS and Android. Google and Apple are ignoring them, so these devices are just plummeting in value. This is the perfect market for an actually-open-source mobile OS! If somebody can get React Native to run on PostmarketOS, then we could start building up an ecosystem of non-walled-garden apps that are compatible with iOS and Android!
- epoch1970 9y ago
  > If somebody can get React Native to run on PostmarketOS, then we could start building up an ecosystem of non-walled-garden apps that are compatible with iOS and Android! What leads you to believe this would actually happen? PhoneGap/Cordova have been around for ages, and they could have already enabled such an ecosystem to have formed, but we haven't seen that happen. Of course, there are other similar technologies out there, too. Even Firefox OS failed, and that was with the backing of Mozilla and its eager community. What's different about this case?
  - evv 9y ago
    Good question. I think there are two big reasons this is more feasible now than it has been in the past. 1) Proliferation of compatible devices. Firefox OS attempted to launch with zero compatible phones. (The dev device I bought would crash on boot, every time). Postmarket OS is launching with hundreds of thousands of compatible devices already in the wild, many of which are sitting unused in people’s drawers. If it gets much contributor momentum, there will be millions of devices ready to switch. 2) As a React Native contributor, I am totally biased, but I think it represents a big shift in mobile development. Personally I don’t think ionic/cordova apps feel very good, especially on older devices. RN is the first open-source xplat mobile app environment that allows you to produce high-quality apps. Or at least, by the standards of FB, Airbnb, and Microsoft.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Why would that require react? You can build apps for a phone running a Linux distro with just about any tool you want.
drcross 9y ago
I hope this takes off. I was happily using a note 4 for years, occasionally buying a new battery because it allowed you to change it by removing the back (remember all the phones that used to do that?). The only reason I had to retire it was because I needed security patches but each update made the phone progressively slower. My new phone has exactly the same features and if I factory restored the note 4 it would run as fast as my new one but phone manufacturers don't exactly like that, and it's something that should change.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  Totally random but you probably would like the LG V20.
  - frogperson 9y ago
    Yes, and its older brother the v10 is under $200 now. Very nice bang for your buck.
- ex3ndr 9y ago
  What's a problem with a battery and iPhone? Changing battery in iPhone in any iPhone repair shop costs 30$ at most.
  - mihular 9y ago
    But you can't use it as an extended battery when you need it.
    - ex3ndr 9y ago
      There are plenty battery extenders, not that nice, but "when you need it" you can buy a suitcase with a battery in it.
jekkar 9y ago
This is awesome and I've been waiting for something like this to come along for a long time. It's crazy how easy it is to get Linux on an ARM based Chromebook, but nearly impossible to get it on a phone. Android is a security nightmare and most of us are aware of that at this point. On top of that, Android has been moving functionality off the device and into their services for years making their AOSP offering weaker and weaker. Keep up the good work! Edit: At some point it'd be nice to use a GuixSD or NixOS configuration file as your "one custom package" instead of an Alpine package. Any Linux on bare metal though would be welcome of course.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  No, real security nightmares are reserved for things like WannaCry and all of the compromised Linux based IoT devices. You know, things that actually do real world damage at massive scale. As for the state of Android security, unfortunately the analysis and numbers don't really back up your baseless claims. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_ytg6MUP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_ytg6MUP0
  - jekkar 9y ago
    OK, there are millions of Android users and most users put their personal information on their phone. I think any breach here would be considered gravely significant. Non-Google branded phones get updates far later than their Nexus/Pixel counterparts if at all. Google and carriers drop devices from updates eventually (2ish years) so if you continue to use your device after that, you're playing with fire. That's just covering the delivery mechanism, not the inability to set a encryption password separate from your pin, or the vauge permissions groups, or the fact that all apps can see your global clipboard, etc. If users can't get the newest version of their OS software, then you kind of fail at security 101. Any bug fix only fixes a small subset of your users. At least Windows XP device users knew how long they'd get security updates and had a clear upgrade path afterward. Linux IoT suffers a lot of the the same problems. No one updates embedded devices. You can draw the "nightmare" semantic line wherever you want, of course. IMHO it's not even remotely secure unless you only and always buy the newest Pixel phone directly from Google. Then we can talk about modern Android security issues.
jacquesm 9y ago
There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced. Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors. so while I hope this will take off I see some obstacles. Happy owner of a 10 year old Nokia here that serves me well, I've tried quite a few smartphones over the years but I never found anything that I really needed that would make me give up 5 day battery life and being 100% drop proof.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  Which Nokia model since you vouch for its ruggedness? And how reliable is it?
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  > There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced. Think about Apple's Macbooks, I'm pretty sure that they are status symbols as well. People who buy devices as status symbols, to show off how much money they have, are not the target audience of this project. They usually do not care about the benefits of open source and sustainability anyway. This project is about recycling old phones, which would be insecure/useless without an alternative operating system. > Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors. That is right, but it is theoretically possible to get the devices from a few years ago running for five more years, and the devices created today for the next ten years.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Macbooks will already run Linux, sometimes with some difficulty but usually not much more than a 'how-to' or a readme is required to get most stuff working. Brand new laptops of any brand find themselves stripped of their default install and turned into Linux machines.
IshKebab 9y ago
This seems stupid. Android is hard to update because of closed source drivers - especially really proprietary stuff like Bluetooth, the RIL and graphics. That combined with the lack of a stable Linux driver interface means that only the manufacturers can really update the kernel. I'm guessing this "fixes" that by just disabling everything.
- fixmycode 9y ago
  The Linux community is already past the problems of proprietary drivers. We are talking about people that reverse engineered a full network stack, graphic cards, audio devices, you name it. If you build it, they will work.
  - rubatuga 9y ago
    This statement is horribly wrong. The sad state of even wireless ac drivers in Linux today show that there is a severe lack of driver development. What makes you think that a more proprietary and more guarded cellular modem will have better driver support than the current state of driver support? Isn't this just wishful thinking?
  - ac29 9y ago
    This is true for a subset of desktop/laptop/server hardware, but is nowhere near correct for other Linux devices like smartphones, routers, or SBCs. And for the most part the mature Linux Desktop/Server ecosystem isnt full of reversed engineered drivers, its full of open source drivers contributed by manufacturers. My Linux Laptop works well without binary drivers (a firmware blob or two excepted) because Intel spends the time and money to employ people to write drivers for their GPUs, WiFi, etc.
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  As it says in the article, the project is no-where complete in a sense where you can just use it as your day to day smartphone OS, so it does not "fix" this yet. The project has just started, but there is a solid base with "pmbootstrap" now. Replicant is working on reverse engineering the userspace drivers (they also found a backdoor in the closed-source drivers by doing that btw): https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Samsung-RIL https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Samsung... Other people are working on mainlining the kernel drivers for certain devices: https://lwn.net/Articles/680109/ https://lwn.net/Articles/680109/ So there is hope, and we need to start somewhere.
znpy 9y ago
12/10 would install on my aging Nexus 5. One thing though: it doesn't state if it's possible to make/receive calls/sms using a phone. You know, I'd appreciate my phone to be able to do such things.
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  Not yet, it is in a pretty early state: > Most drivers don't work so you can't make phone calls or use the WiFi. https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/#prototype https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/#prototype EDIT: SMS also do not work. In other words, what works is the touchscreen with Weston so far. But the underlying tooling (pmbootstrap) is pretty far, so that's why I have released it now.
  - znpy 9y ago
    Thanks. I still think tgis project has a huge potential.
- padraic7a 9y ago
  UBports has taken over Canonical's Ubuntu Touch. They have an image that works on the nexus 5 https://devices.ubports.com/#/hammerhead https://devices.ubports.com/#/hammerhead
kasbah 9y ago
> Alright, so there is the LineageOS community, which provides weekly updates for an impressive number of smartphones. They provide a practical solution today, and I am very grateful for that. However, such Android based projects will always run behind Google and the phone industry, fixing only symptoms but never the root-cause. I think it's very ambitious to not base this off of the work being done on Android but of course would love a proper GNU/Linux distro on my phone as well. Lineage OS (formerly CyanogenMod) will run on a Samsung S II which is 5 years old. It might support some older devices that I am not aware of. I could see it still being supported 5 years down the line. https://download.lineageos.org/ https://download.lineageos.org/
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Wow, they have up-to-date images for the previous version of LineageOS for the Google Nexus, even. Has anyone tried it on such an old phone? Is it dog-slow?
  - limeblack 9y ago
    Yes it is slow at least on the nexus I tried it on. It may have been improved since then.
  - kasbah 9y ago
    I don't know if you count it as an old phone but I use it on a Samsung SIII (Wikipedia says that launched 2012) and it's snappy as heck. The current images are nightlies so I have encountered a few bugs. Previously was running CyanogenMod 13 on a stable image and that was fine (but the CyanogenMod company folded so it wasn't going to get security updates). Looking forward to a stable release of Lineage.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Very interesting, thanks. Which Android version is LOS 13?
      - 9y ago
jdietrich 9y ago
The original iPhone launched almost exactly 10 years ago. It had a 412MHz single-core processor, 128MB of RAM, a 320x480 screen, 2G data and no GPS. Will anyone want to use an iPhone 7 or a Galaxy S8 in 2027?
- HeavenBanned 9y ago
  If there was a cost-effective way to quickly "tune-up" said original iPhone up to current specs, would such a method be profitable?
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  There are enough people around the world, who can not even afford a smartphone but would like to have one if they could. It had Wi-Fi already, you could write messages make phone calls, play some casual games, read e-books, listen to music. So they probably would be happy to have the original iPhone today, but with software and an open source software eco-system that allows it to still function like the day it came out. Assuming, we had reverse engineered all drivers, we could even improve it and give it state of the art cryptography for messaging and phone calls.
- JBReefer 9y ago
  I don't care about 10 years, I would love 6. This would be the first shot I have at 5 with security patches.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    IOS 10 runs in 4.5 year old hardware, and iOS 9 on 5.5 year old hardware and Apple is still issuing security patches.
- nradov 9y ago
  Expect the rate of improvement in smartphone hardware to gradually decline over time, just like it already has for desktop and laptop computers. At some point even low-end smartphones will be "good enough" for the vast majority of users, and then device vendors will shift most of their innovation efforts to whatever is the next new hot form factor like AR glasses or whatever.
jancsika 9y ago
Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"? I mean, if a project wanted to put a "10 year life-cycle" on an IoT blender by porting Gnu/Linux to it, you'd think the first order of business would be writing a Gnu/Linux program to, you know, blend things. Getting 10+ years of running performant Weston demos would be a very distant 2nd to that.
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  > Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"? Well, right now there is no phone interface available yet, and that is why it is a future goal (which does not necessarily mean, that it is in distant future). > I mean, if a project wanted to put a "10 year life-cycle" on an IoT blender by porting Gnu/Linux to it, you'd think the first order of business would be writing a Gnu/Linux program to, you know, blend things. Getting 10+ years of running performant Weston demos would be a very distant 2nd to that. I'm not selling you a blender here. I wanted to create a solid base to run GNU/Linux natively on smartphones, and now there is this pmbootstrap component, which works quite well and seems worthy of a release. This enables other people to jump in and contribute, if they want to, and accelerate development even more, because multiple persons can work in parallel on the project. This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS. So, imagine sharing a video that shows the fruits of your labor in order to drum up some interest in your project. Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is playing in the background. The video shows you booting the phone into Gnu/Linux. As the music builds, you touch the screen of the phone to make it start to do a task. As you enter data into the phone to complete this task, the music builds toward a climax. Finally, at the climax of the music the task on the phone is complete, and the phone reacts in the most dramatic way a phone possibly can. What do you imagine the phone doing in such a video?
salem 9y ago
It would be great if phone makers commit to something like this as part of their environmental plans
anigbrowl 9y ago
That'd be nice. I bought a MOTO X last year, don't do much on it besides using the camera and FB (hence my choosing a lower end model) and I can't use it for more than a couple of minutes without hiccups and app restarts.
505 9y ago
Great idea for a wicked problem. Phone manufacturers will be against it, telcos, retailers, and many consumers. Maybe we could get Green movement groups on board?
ghostly_s 9y ago
> postmarketOS is a GNU/Linux distribution, so there's no problem in having multiple phone interfaces (just like KDE/Gnome/XFCE/...) and let the user choose. IMO, there is a big problem with that. The WHOLE reason the smartphone space finally took off was because Apple came in and rationalized the interaction model and implemented a robust, responsive UI. Android is successful largely to the extent it faithfully aped that model. Treating this as a secondary thing your project doesn't need to be opinionated on is a recipe for failure.
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  The ability to choose between multiple desktops does not mean, that each desktop itself is inconsistent. For example, you have the consistent Apple interface. And you have the consistent Android interface. If the user could choose between both on the same device, why would that be a problem?
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    Focus. Apple and Google have hundreds or thousands of engineers working on these operating systems, full time, for years. To get this project to even 1/10th of the quality would be a massive undertaking. Open source mobile OSes do not have a great track record right now. It'd be amazing to have a real option with a solid development and user base behind it.
    - ollieparanoid 9y ago
      Yep. I have not fully decided yet on which part I will work next (that sort of depends on the feedback by the community). But I definitely want a solid base.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Not every project has to appeal to the mass market. It's okay to make stuff that only a hacker would find cool!
  - 9y ago
joemccall86 9y ago
I like the ambition. I've had a tinfoil-hat theory for a while that phone hardware is only built to last roughly 1.5 - 2 years gnerally before they physically begin to degrade. I've flashed new roms to a Galaxy S3 but it tended to reboot (i.e. hard crash) a lot still.
ollieparanoid 9y ago
In reaction to people who are confused, that this is not a finished product, I have added a note saying "(Not usable for most people yet!)" at the beginning. The summary at the beginning did not make that clear before. https://github.com/ollieparanoid/ollieparanoid.github.io/commit/6a86986780e9001155ca3f07a6d43ca54c88a1cc https://github.com/ollieparanoid/ollieparanoid.github.io/com...
aidenn0 9y ago
I've never had my phone hardware last for 5 years, much less 10.
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  I'm still using an iPhone 4S 64GB from 2011, which my dad bought for me as a graduation present. Partly because I'm too poor to upgrade, and partly because it still meets most of my needs. The biggest problem I face is software rot in iOS 6. That would be the same regardless of OS. I can't use WhatsApp any more, or Kakaotalk. Facebook used to forward my messages to email, but now they demand that I use a Messenger app. Instead, I just check Facebook's website using the browser. There haven't been any really significant apps that I needed that have been released in the last 5 years. I've made a list in case I ever update my OS. I don't need BBM or Pokémon Go. The messenger apps are the worst for forcing software updates, but I hope that people will eventually move back to email and SMS, which just work.
  - madez 9y ago
    Your experience is such a compelling argument for libre software and hardware, that I'd stop using Facebook and Google right away, if I still were using them.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    I got my first smartphone in June 2009. Here's the list of what's happened (in no particular order): * 2 phones had their 2.4GHz radio die (no bluetooth, no wifi) * 2 phones were damaged by water * 1 phone had screen cracked * 1 phone was lost I'm now on my 7th phone in 8 years. Ironically it was my first phone that lasted the longest (about 2.5 years before the 2.4GHz radio died). Since then I've gone through about 1 phone per year. Phones have gotten much more fragile as they've gotten thinner, though water-resistance is now more common so that could solve at least some of my problems. I do get what you're saying though because my wife's smart phone lineup is: Palm Centro iPhone 4S iPhone SE Each upgraded because software that had previously worked stopped working.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jacob019 9y ago
Smartphones only seem to last for two years before the hardware starts to fail.
bit-crazy-ivan 9y ago
Is the source a credible github project?
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  What do you mean with credible? The source is all here: https://github.com/postmarketOS/ https://github.com/postmarketOS/ But from reading through the comments, no one has analyzed it yet, if you mean that. It has less than 2000 lines of code, and it is Python, so it shouldn't be hard to read through. Oh and there is room for improvement. Automatic Travis CI builds and what not. Alpine Linux already does this for every package, so with some effort postmarketOS could also do that.
super-io 9y ago
Like NetBSD but for mobile. Easy to port. Is it true the "Android" project rose from the ashes of an earlier company "Danger" who produced a NetBSD based mobile OS for the T-mobile Sidekick? If true, why did founder of Android use NetBSD for the Sidekick, not Linux? Microsoft acquired Danger. "You know if you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me." - Being John Malkovich (1999) Maybe easier just to collect on Android sales via threatened patent assertion. IDK.
bArray 9y ago
Disclaimer: I'm fully behind this idea, but I think there are some issues to be ironed out. I don't think the OS is really the bottleneck here. I think getting a mobile device's hardware to run for this long is. There are a few things that make this difficult: * Batteries - These currently only have so many cycles. A 10 year phone would need to provide a largish battery holding area allowing for two wires of varying voltages to be supplied. It would then in turn need to be able to charge at these various voltages through those two wires. I think voltages ranging from 1V to 24V would be a reasonable guess at where future battery tech would stay. Any person could then feasibly change their battery for some future tech. * Connectivity - In just a few years, we've gone from only really having 2G to having just 3G/4G. In 10 years time, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that maybe 4G will be switched off. I think it's unlikely that WiFi will remain for the next 10 years too. You need some robust connectivity module that hackers could connect to an arbitrary home-brew hacker's module. Something like UART/Serial/I2C/SPI. Other things could burn out over time, but replacing those things becomes way too difficult. The processor, GPU, RAM, case, buttons and screen are just things I think that need to be the core phone. Another place that could be interesting to explore is converting old, arbitrary phones into useful everyday devices. For example, I'm looking at converting my old HTC wild fire phone (the screen is small) into a permanent low-power alarm clock. It'll sit on the WiFi and if it sees my laptop/phone on the WiFi it will schedule the alarm, otherwise not. I have another slightly newer phone with a larger display, so I was thinking or either making some notification board for my office or some very cheap VR headset for watching YouTube videos in bed without holding my phone up. That said, there's no reason why all of these new "smart" devices couldn't reuse old technology. I think a small technology company that recycled old mobile devices into new smart devices would be pretty awesome. People pay loads for a recycled pencil for example, why not a recycled electronics device? On the far end of the scale I've seen some awesome coasters made from old motherboards. I would love to see offices and schools buying more second hand kit too. There's no reason why thin client software can't run on an old mini-intel board, or even a semi-old smart phone. Kids don't need this year's laptops to write a report in Word. I think there's a big space for reuse here.
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  >>In just a few years, we've gone from only really having 2G to having just 3G/4G. In 10 years time, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that maybe 4G will be switched off. I think it's unlikely that WiFi will remain for the next 10 years too. I'm using a Nexus 5, which was launched almost 4 years ago, that uses 4G. A reliable, widespread 5G network is at least 2 years distant, probably more. Barring breakage, and changing the battery, the Nexus 5 could almost certainly be used 6 years after launch, and still work well. The barrier for that sort of lifetime is software, not hardware. I think you're right that 10 years is pushing it. But, firstly, bear in mind the range of smartphone users there are. Really large percentages of people have never installed an app for instance. There are grades of users on their technology demands, and just as there will be a percentage that always want a brand new phone, there will be a percentage that just want something that is stable. There are a substantial percentage of people that are more worried about the UI changing underneath them than whether or not they're using 3G or 4G. Secondly, even if 10 years is unlikely, the prospect of being able to run a functioning device indefinite ly allows the lifetimes to increase by more realistic but still significant amounts, 10 years is niche but 4 or 5 isn't.
746F7475 9y ago
10 years is pretty long time. Like think about still using first generation iPhone
yeukhon 9y ago
I don't like Android. I prefer iOS because there is a single vendor for managing the sales and the development of both the hardware snd the software. This pro does come at a premium cost but I don't want my phone to stay on Android 2.X because AT&T does not want to release upgrade, then the only option is only going to be flashing and installing a new version on my own. That wipes my data and I probably will break my warranty worh ATT by flashing (I never checked). iOS has bugs and performance issues too. But overall it is quite solid. The app store experience as a consumer is nice too. If this project is aimed to bring freedom software to users on mobile with thr goal of running on phones for 10-years, great. But for mass adoption I am going to be bold: it won't happen. Firefox OS failed because (1) device spec is poor (Mozilla wanted to market it in countries where smartphone was not common), (2) not enough apps, (3) the influence and trending look of Android and iPhone.
- rovr138 9y ago
  > then the only option is only going to be flashing and installing a new version on my own. That wipes my data Make a backup. When you restore your phone, you also loose the data. > and I probably will break my warranty worh ATT by flashing (I never checked). You don't. First of all, you don't have any warranty in regards to your phone with AT&T. Second of all, you can always flash back your original firmware. Third, there are exceptions to allow these kinds of things. > (3) the influence and trending look of Android and iPhone Are you talking physical or on the software side? If it's the software side, it's just software and it can improve. iOS and android both have.
- delecti 9y ago
  > I prefer iOS because there is a single vendor for managing the sales and the development of both the hardware snd the software If that's really your only reason for preferring iOS, Google has been making phones for over 7 years. There are obviously valid reasons for that preference, but the single one you've mentioned isn't.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    I am aware of Google phone. But is it Google who's also rolling out the upgrades to users directly? iphone does not care carrier's upgrade schedule.
kungito 9y ago
All the new versions of Android are very much similar to an average user and my gf is always surprised when I'm so happy one of my devices is getting an update because getting "more fine grained permissions" or "customizable quick settings" are things about which an average user doesn't ever think about anyways. It's mostly for us power users and people who just want to show off how they got something only cool/rich/smart people have. There were big differences between older versions of Android but apart from split screen which I used 3 times so far I don't see a reason to update. I'm pretty sure the reason they don't port back the features to older androids is either because the old devices are lacking the specs or because they only want to have something to show as "new". I know my friends avoided updating their iPhones for years because the new OSs only slowed the devices down.
acd 9y ago
Thanks supporting phone devices longest is good for the environment instead of buy and throw.
deleted_soon 9y ago
Could anyone explain what a "chroot zap" is (from the 'effective caching' feature)? Googling it just brings me to the same page.
- ollieparanoid 9y ago
  It means: remove the chroot folder (safely, with umounting everything first). You can do it with "pmbootstrap zap", it will ask interactively, which chroots you want to delete.
  - deleted_soon 9y ago
    Ahh I see, thanks!
butz 9y ago
Good idea, I hope it gets developed much further. To cover the lack of apps you should concentrate on providing native internet browser with good PWA (progressive web apps) support. That way only a few native apps will be needed by user, e.g. dialer, SMS messenger.
wtracy 9y ago
I would very much like to find a way to use something like this on old devices that have locked bootloaders that prevent third-party kernels from booting. Is anyone looking at a way to bootstrap a system like this underneath the manufacturer's Android kernel?
LostWanderer 9y ago
Will it be possible to revive the old Symbian button phones through this or some similar project?
olivier1664 9y ago
Great project! It will be cool to use our old smart phones as Raspberry pi.

468 points by ollieparanoid 9y ago

This is a pretty cool idea. I think we really need something like this.

How does "Project Treble" affect this "issue"? The extra layer of APIs that Android will be built on should solve the "Fork for Every Device and Every Build" problem, yes? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to-fix-android-updates-no-really-with-project-treble/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to-fix-...

ollieparanoid 9y ago
As I see it, project treble will improve the update process, but not completely resolve the endless forking. You will still have the "vendor implementation", which is different for every device. It will contain at least the kernel and drivers (kernel/userspace), for which you, as a user, depend on the manufacturer to keep it updated, and which will probably not be mainlined. This means, that after two years or so, when the support runs out, you will still have a device, that does not get updates anymore. Only for a smaller component of the operating system. Also keep in mind, that this will work for newer Android O phones only. We already have more than a billion phones (the number could be much higher, I did not google it right now), which will never get that improvement. They can be saved from being electronic waste with projects like postmarketOS.
fixmycode 9y ago
I was thinking the same thing, Treble sound like the perfect solution for the kind of problem this project aims to fix, but I realised that the scope of this project is different. There's no way they can back-port Treble to older devices, and there's no pressure from consumers or manufacturers to do so. Project Treble aims to fix the fragmentation problem, but it does from this point on, older devices are not included. There's also the fact that Android will keep on rolling, new features will be added and manufacturers will keep on using them as they see fit, so Treble can help users with a security update or two while that version of Android is supported, even if the manufacturer stops supporting their "vendor layer", but what will happen when Google drops support of Android O?

evv 9y ago

This is fabulous! There are millions of old phones out there with decaying versions of iOS and Android. Google and Apple are ignoring them, so these devices are just plummeting in value. This is the perfect market for an actually-open-source mobile OS! If somebody can get React Native to run on PostmarketOS, then we could start building up an ecosystem of non-walled-garden apps that are compatible with iOS and Android!

epoch1970 9y ago
> If somebody can get React Native to run on PostmarketOS, then we could start building up an ecosystem of non-walled-garden apps that are compatible with iOS and Android! What leads you to believe this would actually happen? PhoneGap/Cordova have been around for ages, and they could have already enabled such an ecosystem to have formed, but we haven't seen that happen. Of course, there are other similar technologies out there, too. Even Firefox OS failed, and that was with the backing of Mozilla and its eager community. What's different about this case?
- evv 9y ago
  Good question. I think there are two big reasons this is more feasible now than it has been in the past. 1) Proliferation of compatible devices. Firefox OS attempted to launch with zero compatible phones. (The dev device I bought would crash on boot, every time). Postmarket OS is launching with hundreds of thousands of compatible devices already in the wild, many of which are sitting unused in people’s drawers. If it gets much contributor momentum, there will be millions of devices ready to switch. 2) As a React Native contributor, I am totally biased, but I think it represents a big shift in mobile development. Personally I don’t think ionic/cordova apps feel very good, especially on older devices. RN is the first open-source xplat mobile app environment that allows you to produce high-quality apps. Or at least, by the standards of FB, Airbnb, and Microsoft.
jacquesm 9y ago
Why would that require react? You can build apps for a phone running a Linux distro with just about any tool you want.

drcross 9y ago

I hope this takes off. I was happily using a note 4 for years, occasionally buying a new battery because it allowed you to change it by removing the back (remember all the phones that used to do that?). The only reason I had to retire it was because I needed security patches but each update made the phone progressively slower. My new phone has exactly the same features and if I factory restored the note 4 it would run as fast as my new one but phone manufacturers don't exactly like that, and it's something that should change.

tzakrajs 9y ago
Totally random but you probably would like the LG V20.
- frogperson 9y ago
  Yes, and its older brother the v10 is under $200 now. Very nice bang for your buck.
ex3ndr 9y ago
What's a problem with a battery and iPhone? Changing battery in iPhone in any iPhone repair shop costs 30$ at most.
- mihular 9y ago
  But you can't use it as an extended battery when you need it.
  - ex3ndr 9y ago
    There are plenty battery extenders, not that nice, but "when you need it" you can buy a suitcase with a battery in it.

jekkar 9y ago

This is awesome and I've been waiting for something like this to come along for a long time. It's crazy how easy it is to get Linux on an ARM based Chromebook, but nearly impossible to get it on a phone. Android is a security nightmare and most of us are aware of that at this point. On top of that, Android has been moving functionality off the device and into their services for years making their AOSP offering weaker and weaker. Keep up the good work! Edit: At some point it'd be nice to use a GuixSD or NixOS configuration file as your "one custom package" instead of an Alpine package. Any Linux on bare metal though would be welcome of course.

bitmapbrother 9y ago
No, real security nightmares are reserved for things like WannaCry and all of the compromised Linux based IoT devices. You know, things that actually do real world damage at massive scale. As for the state of Android security, unfortunately the analysis and numbers don't really back up your baseless claims. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_ytg6MUP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_ytg6MUP0
- jekkar 9y ago
  OK, there are millions of Android users and most users put their personal information on their phone. I think any breach here would be considered gravely significant. Non-Google branded phones get updates far later than their Nexus/Pixel counterparts if at all. Google and carriers drop devices from updates eventually (2ish years) so if you continue to use your device after that, you're playing with fire. That's just covering the delivery mechanism, not the inability to set a encryption password separate from your pin, or the vauge permissions groups, or the fact that all apps can see your global clipboard, etc. If users can't get the newest version of their OS software, then you kind of fail at security 101. Any bug fix only fixes a small subset of your users. At least Windows XP device users knew how long they'd get security updates and had a clear upgrade path afterward. Linux IoT suffers a lot of the the same problems. No one updates embedded devices. You can draw the "nightmare" semantic line wherever you want, of course. IMHO it's not even remotely secure unless you only and always buy the newest Pixel phone directly from Google. Then we can talk about modern Android security issues.

jacquesm 9y ago

There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced. Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors. so while I hope this will take off I see some obstacles. Happy owner of a 10 year old Nokia here that serves me well, I've tried quite a few smartphones over the years but I never found anything that I really needed that would make me give up 5 day battery life and being 100% drop proof.

nickpsecurity 9y ago
Which Nokia model since you vouch for its ruggedness? And how reliable is it?
ollieparanoid 9y ago
> There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced. Think about Apple's Macbooks, I'm pretty sure that they are status symbols as well. People who buy devices as status symbols, to show off how much money they have, are not the target audience of this project. They usually do not care about the benefits of open source and sustainability anyway. This project is about recycling old phones, which would be insecure/useless without an alternative operating system. > Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors. That is right, but it is theoretically possible to get the devices from a few years ago running for five more years, and the devices created today for the next ten years.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Macbooks will already run Linux, sometimes with some difficulty but usually not much more than a 'how-to' or a readme is required to get most stuff working. Brand new laptops of any brand find themselves stripped of their default install and turned into Linux machines.

IshKebab 9y ago

This seems stupid. Android is hard to update because of closed source drivers - especially really proprietary stuff like Bluetooth, the RIL and graphics. That combined with the lack of a stable Linux driver interface means that only the manufacturers can really update the kernel. I'm guessing this "fixes" that by just disabling everything.

fixmycode 9y ago
The Linux community is already past the problems of proprietary drivers. We are talking about people that reverse engineered a full network stack, graphic cards, audio devices, you name it. If you build it, they will work.
- rubatuga 9y ago
  This statement is horribly wrong. The sad state of even wireless ac drivers in Linux today show that there is a severe lack of driver development. What makes you think that a more proprietary and more guarded cellular modem will have better driver support than the current state of driver support? Isn't this just wishful thinking?
- ac29 9y ago
  This is true for a subset of desktop/laptop/server hardware, but is nowhere near correct for other Linux devices like smartphones, routers, or SBCs. And for the most part the mature Linux Desktop/Server ecosystem isnt full of reversed engineered drivers, its full of open source drivers contributed by manufacturers. My Linux Laptop works well without binary drivers (a firmware blob or two excepted) because Intel spends the time and money to employ people to write drivers for their GPUs, WiFi, etc.
ollieparanoid 9y ago
As it says in the article, the project is no-where complete in a sense where you can just use it as your day to day smartphone OS, so it does not "fix" this yet. The project has just started, but there is a solid base with "pmbootstrap" now. Replicant is working on reverse engineering the userspace drivers (they also found a backdoor in the closed-source drivers by doing that btw): https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Samsung-RIL https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Samsung... Other people are working on mainlining the kernel drivers for certain devices: https://lwn.net/Articles/680109/ https://lwn.net/Articles/680109/ So there is hope, and we need to start somewhere.

znpy 9y ago

12/10 would install on my aging Nexus 5. One thing though: it doesn't state if it's possible to make/receive calls/sms using a phone. You know, I'd appreciate my phone to be able to do such things.

ollieparanoid 9y ago
Not yet, it is in a pretty early state: > Most drivers don't work so you can't make phone calls or use the WiFi. https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/#prototype https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/#prototype EDIT: SMS also do not work. In other words, what works is the touchscreen with Weston so far. But the underlying tooling (pmbootstrap) is pretty far, so that's why I have released it now.
- znpy 9y ago
  Thanks. I still think tgis project has a huge potential.
padraic7a 9y ago
UBports has taken over Canonical's Ubuntu Touch. They have an image that works on the nexus 5 https://devices.ubports.com/#/hammerhead https://devices.ubports.com/#/hammerhead

kasbah 9y ago

> Alright, so there is the LineageOS community, which provides weekly updates for an impressive number of smartphones. They provide a practical solution today, and I am very grateful for that. However, such Android based projects will always run behind Google and the phone industry, fixing only symptoms but never the root-cause. I think it's very ambitious to not base this off of the work being done on Android but of course would love a proper GNU/Linux distro on my phone as well. Lineage OS (formerly CyanogenMod) will run on a Samsung S II which is 5 years old. It might support some older devices that I am not aware of. I could see it still being supported 5 years down the line. https://download.lineageos.org/ https://download.lineageos.org/

StavrosK 9y ago
Wow, they have up-to-date images for the previous version of LineageOS for the Google Nexus, even. Has anyone tried it on such an old phone? Is it dog-slow?
- limeblack 9y ago
  Yes it is slow at least on the nexus I tried it on. It may have been improved since then.
- kasbah 9y ago
  I don't know if you count it as an old phone but I use it on a Samsung SIII (Wikipedia says that launched 2012) and it's snappy as heck. The current images are nightlies so I have encountered a few bugs. Previously was running CyanogenMod 13 on a stable image and that was fine (but the CyanogenMod company folded so it wasn't going to get security updates). Looking forward to a stable release of Lineage.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Very interesting, thanks. Which Android version is LOS 13?
    - 9y ago

jdietrich 9y ago

The original iPhone launched almost exactly 10 years ago. It had a 412MHz single-core processor, 128MB of RAM, a 320x480 screen, 2G data and no GPS. Will anyone want to use an iPhone 7 or a Galaxy S8 in 2027?

HeavenBanned 9y ago
If there was a cost-effective way to quickly "tune-up" said original iPhone up to current specs, would such a method be profitable?
ollieparanoid 9y ago
There are enough people around the world, who can not even afford a smartphone but would like to have one if they could. It had Wi-Fi already, you could write messages make phone calls, play some casual games, read e-books, listen to music. So they probably would be happy to have the original iPhone today, but with software and an open source software eco-system that allows it to still function like the day it came out. Assuming, we had reverse engineered all drivers, we could even improve it and give it state of the art cryptography for messaging and phone calls.
JBReefer 9y ago
I don't care about 10 years, I would love 6. This would be the first shot I have at 5 with security patches.
- valuearb 9y ago
  IOS 10 runs in 4.5 year old hardware, and iOS 9 on 5.5 year old hardware and Apple is still issuing security patches.
nradov 9y ago
Expect the rate of improvement in smartphone hardware to gradually decline over time, just like it already has for desktop and laptop computers. At some point even low-end smartphones will be "good enough" for the vast majority of users, and then device vendors will shift most of their innovation efforts to whatever is the next new hot form factor like AR glasses or whatever.

jancsika 9y ago

Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"? I mean, if a project wanted to put a "10 year life-cycle" on an IoT blender by porting Gnu/Linux to it, you'd think the first order of business would be writing a Gnu/Linux program to, you know, blend things. Getting 10+ years of running performant Weston demos would be a very distant 2nd to that.

ollieparanoid 9y ago
> Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"? Well, right now there is no phone interface available yet, and that is why it is a future goal (which does not necessarily mean, that it is in distant future). > I mean, if a project wanted to put a "10 year life-cycle" on an IoT blender by porting Gnu/Linux to it, you'd think the first order of business would be writing a Gnu/Linux program to, you know, blend things. Getting 10+ years of running performant Weston demos would be a very distant 2nd to that. I'm not selling you a blender here. I wanted to create a solid base to run GNU/Linux natively on smartphones, and now there is this pmbootstrap component, which works quite well and seems worthy of a release. This enables other people to jump in and contribute, if they want to, and accelerate development even more, because multiple persons can work in parallel on the project. This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS. So, imagine sharing a video that shows the fruits of your labor in order to drum up some interest in your project. Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is playing in the background. The video shows you booting the phone into Gnu/Linux. As the music builds, you touch the screen of the phone to make it start to do a task. As you enter data into the phone to complete this task, the music builds toward a climax. Finally, at the climax of the music the task on the phone is complete, and the phone reacts in the most dramatic way a phone possibly can. What do you imagine the phone doing in such a video?

salem 9y ago

It would be great if phone makers commit to something like this as part of their environmental plans

anigbrowl 9y ago

That'd be nice. I bought a MOTO X last year, don't do much on it besides using the camera and FB (hence my choosing a lower end model) and I can't use it for more than a couple of minutes without hiccups and app restarts.

505 9y ago

Great idea for a wicked problem. Phone manufacturers will be against it, telcos, retailers, and many consumers. Maybe we could get Green movement groups on board?

ghostly_s 9y ago

> postmarketOS is a GNU/Linux distribution, so there's no problem in having multiple phone interfaces (just like KDE/Gnome/XFCE/...) and let the user choose. IMO, there is a big problem with that. The WHOLE reason the smartphone space finally took off was because Apple came in and rationalized the interaction model and implemented a robust, responsive UI. Android is successful largely to the extent it faithfully aped that model. Treating this as a secondary thing your project doesn't need to be opinionated on is a recipe for failure.

ollieparanoid 9y ago
The ability to choose between multiple desktops does not mean, that each desktop itself is inconsistent. For example, you have the consistent Apple interface. And you have the consistent Android interface. If the user could choose between both on the same device, why would that be a problem?
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Focus. Apple and Google have hundreds or thousands of engineers working on these operating systems, full time, for years. To get this project to even 1/10th of the quality would be a massive undertaking. Open source mobile OSes do not have a great track record right now. It'd be amazing to have a real option with a solid development and user base behind it.
  - ollieparanoid 9y ago
    Yep. I have not fully decided yet on which part I will work next (that sort of depends on the feedback by the community). But I definitely want a solid base.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Not every project has to appeal to the mass market. It's okay to make stuff that only a hacker would find cool!
- 9y ago

joemccall86 9y ago

I like the ambition. I've had a tinfoil-hat theory for a while that phone hardware is only built to last roughly 1.5 - 2 years gnerally before they physically begin to degrade. I've flashed new roms to a Galaxy S3 but it tended to reboot (i.e. hard crash) a lot still.

ollieparanoid 9y ago

In reaction to people who are confused, that this is not a finished product, I have added a note saying "(Not usable for most people yet!)" at the beginning. The summary at the beginning did not make that clear before. https://github.com/ollieparanoid/ollieparanoid.github.io/commit/6a86986780e9001155ca3f07a6d43ca54c88a1cc https://github.com/ollieparanoid/ollieparanoid.github.io/com...

aidenn0 9y ago

I've never had my phone hardware last for 5 years, much less 10.

peterburkimsher 9y ago
I'm still using an iPhone 4S 64GB from 2011, which my dad bought for me as a graduation present. Partly because I'm too poor to upgrade, and partly because it still meets most of my needs. The biggest problem I face is software rot in iOS 6. That would be the same regardless of OS. I can't use WhatsApp any more, or Kakaotalk. Facebook used to forward my messages to email, but now they demand that I use a Messenger app. Instead, I just check Facebook's website using the browser. There haven't been any really significant apps that I needed that have been released in the last 5 years. I've made a list in case I ever update my OS. I don't need BBM or Pokémon Go. The messenger apps are the worst for forcing software updates, but I hope that people will eventually move back to email and SMS, which just work.
- madez 9y ago
  Your experience is such a compelling argument for libre software and hardware, that I'd stop using Facebook and Google right away, if I still were using them.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  I got my first smartphone in June 2009. Here's the list of what's happened (in no particular order): * 2 phones had their 2.4GHz radio die (no bluetooth, no wifi) * 2 phones were damaged by water * 1 phone had screen cracked * 1 phone was lost I'm now on my 7th phone in 8 years. Ironically it was my first phone that lasted the longest (about 2.5 years before the 2.4GHz radio died). Since then I've gone through about 1 phone per year. Phones have gotten much more fragile as they've gotten thinner, though water-resistance is now more common so that could solve at least some of my problems. I do get what you're saying though because my wife's smart phone lineup is: Palm Centro iPhone 4S iPhone SE Each upgraded because software that had previously worked stopped working.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jacob019 9y ago

Smartphones only seem to last for two years before the hardware starts to fail.

bit-crazy-ivan 9y ago

Is the source a credible github project?

ollieparanoid 9y ago
What do you mean with credible? The source is all here: https://github.com/postmarketOS/ https://github.com/postmarketOS/ But from reading through the comments, no one has analyzed it yet, if you mean that. It has less than 2000 lines of code, and it is Python, so it shouldn't be hard to read through. Oh and there is room for improvement. Automatic Travis CI builds and what not. Alpine Linux already does this for every package, so with some effort postmarketOS could also do that.

super-io 9y ago

Like NetBSD but for mobile. Easy to port. Is it true the "Android" project rose from the ashes of an earlier company "Danger" who produced a NetBSD based mobile OS for the T-mobile Sidekick? If true, why did founder of Android use NetBSD for the Sidekick, not Linux? Microsoft acquired Danger. "You know if you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me." - Being John Malkovich (1999) Maybe easier just to collect on Android sales via threatened patent assertion. IDK.

bArray 9y ago

Disclaimer: I'm fully behind this idea, but I think there are some issues to be ironed out. I don't think the OS is really the bottleneck here. I think getting a mobile device's hardware to run for this long is. There are a few things that make this difficult: * Batteries - These currently only have so many cycles. A 10 year phone would need to provide a largish battery holding area allowing for two wires of varying voltages to be supplied. It would then in turn need to be able to charge at these various voltages through those two wires. I think voltages ranging from 1V to 24V would be a reasonable guess at where future battery tech would stay. Any person could then feasibly change their battery for some future tech. * Connectivity - In just a few years, we've gone from only really having 2G to having just 3G/4G. In 10 years time, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that maybe 4G will be switched off. I think it's unlikely that WiFi will remain for the next 10 years too. You need some robust connectivity module that hackers could connect to an arbitrary home-brew hacker's module. Something like UART/Serial/I2C/SPI. Other things could burn out over time, but replacing those things becomes way too difficult. The processor, GPU, RAM, case, buttons and screen are just things I think that need to be the core phone. Another place that could be interesting to explore is converting old, arbitrary phones into useful everyday devices. For example, I'm looking at converting my old HTC wild fire phone (the screen is small) into a permanent low-power alarm clock. It'll sit on the WiFi and if it sees my laptop/phone on the WiFi it will schedule the alarm, otherwise not. I have another slightly newer phone with a larger display, so I was thinking or either making some notification board for my office or some very cheap VR headset for watching YouTube videos in bed without holding my phone up. That said, there's no reason why all of these new "smart" devices couldn't reuse old technology. I think a small technology company that recycled old mobile devices into new smart devices would be pretty awesome. People pay loads for a recycled pencil for example, why not a recycled electronics device? On the far end of the scale I've seen some awesome coasters made from old motherboards. I would love to see offices and schools buying more second hand kit too. There's no reason why thin client software can't run on an old mini-intel board, or even a semi-old smart phone. Kids don't need this year's laptops to write a report in Word. I think there's a big space for reuse here.

Brakenshire 9y ago
>>In just a few years, we've gone from only really having 2G to having just 3G/4G. In 10 years time, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that maybe 4G will be switched off. I think it's unlikely that WiFi will remain for the next 10 years too. I'm using a Nexus 5, which was launched almost 4 years ago, that uses 4G. A reliable, widespread 5G network is at least 2 years distant, probably more. Barring breakage, and changing the battery, the Nexus 5 could almost certainly be used 6 years after launch, and still work well. The barrier for that sort of lifetime is software, not hardware. I think you're right that 10 years is pushing it. But, firstly, bear in mind the range of smartphone users there are. Really large percentages of people have never installed an app for instance. There are grades of users on their technology demands, and just as there will be a percentage that always want a brand new phone, there will be a percentage that just want something that is stable. There are a substantial percentage of people that are more worried about the UI changing underneath them than whether or not they're using 3G or 4G. Secondly, even if 10 years is unlikely, the prospect of being able to run a functioning device indefinite ly allows the lifetimes to increase by more realistic but still significant amounts, 10 years is niche but 4 or 5 isn't.

746F7475 9y ago

10 years is pretty long time. Like think about still using first generation iPhone

yeukhon 9y ago

I don't like Android. I prefer iOS because there is a single vendor for managing the sales and the development of both the hardware snd the software. This pro does come at a premium cost but I don't want my phone to stay on Android 2.X because AT&T does not want to release upgrade, then the only option is only going to be flashing and installing a new version on my own. That wipes my data and I probably will break my warranty worh ATT by flashing (I never checked). iOS has bugs and performance issues too. But overall it is quite solid. The app store experience as a consumer is nice too. If this project is aimed to bring freedom software to users on mobile with thr goal of running on phones for 10-years, great. But for mass adoption I am going to be bold: it won't happen. Firefox OS failed because (1) device spec is poor (Mozilla wanted to market it in countries where smartphone was not common), (2) not enough apps, (3) the influence and trending look of Android and iPhone.

rovr138 9y ago
> then the only option is only going to be flashing and installing a new version on my own. That wipes my data Make a backup. When you restore your phone, you also loose the data. > and I probably will break my warranty worh ATT by flashing (I never checked). You don't. First of all, you don't have any warranty in regards to your phone with AT&T. Second of all, you can always flash back your original firmware. Third, there are exceptions to allow these kinds of things. > (3) the influence and trending look of Android and iPhone Are you talking physical or on the software side? If it's the software side, it's just software and it can improve. iOS and android both have.
delecti 9y ago
> I prefer iOS because there is a single vendor for managing the sales and the development of both the hardware snd the software If that's really your only reason for preferring iOS, Google has been making phones for over 7 years. There are obviously valid reasons for that preference, but the single one you've mentioned isn't.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  I am aware of Google phone. But is it Google who's also rolling out the upgrades to users directly? iphone does not care carrier's upgrade schedule.

kungito 9y ago

All the new versions of Android are very much similar to an average user and my gf is always surprised when I'm so happy one of my devices is getting an update because getting "more fine grained permissions" or "customizable quick settings" are things about which an average user doesn't ever think about anyways. It's mostly for us power users and people who just want to show off how they got something only cool/rich/smart people have. There were big differences between older versions of Android but apart from split screen which I used 3 times so far I don't see a reason to update. I'm pretty sure the reason they don't port back the features to older androids is either because the old devices are lacking the specs or because they only want to have something to show as "new". I know my friends avoided updating their iPhones for years because the new OSs only slowed the devices down.

acd 9y ago

Thanks supporting phone devices longest is good for the environment instead of buy and throw.

deleted_soon 9y ago

Could anyone explain what a "chroot zap" is (from the 'effective caching' feature)? Googling it just brings me to the same page.

ollieparanoid 9y ago
It means: remove the chroot folder (safely, with umounting everything first). You can do it with "pmbootstrap zap", it will ask interactively, which chroots you want to delete.
- deleted_soon 9y ago
  Ahh I see, thanks!

butz 9y ago

Good idea, I hope it gets developed much further. To cover the lack of apps you should concentrate on providing native internet browser with good PWA (progressive web apps) support. That way only a few native apps will be needed by user, e.g. dialer, SMS messenger.

wtracy 9y ago

I would very much like to find a way to use something like this on old devices that have locked bootloaders that prevent third-party kernels from booting. Is anyone looking at a way to bootstrap a system like this underneath the manufacturer's Android kernel?

LostWanderer 9y ago

Will it be possible to revive the old Symbian button phones through this or some similar project?

olivier1664 9y ago

Great project! It will be cool to use our old smart phones as Raspberry pi.