5 ms·

I'm really disappointed at the lack of alternatives. WebOS (Palm), Win Mobile, Ubuntu Touch .. We don't even have standardized micro-computer hardware to make i

I'm really disappointed at the lack of alternatives. WebOS (Palm), Win Mobile, Ubuntu Touch .. We don't even have standardized micro-computer hardware to make it remotely easy. Each device is prosperity custom arm disaster.

alphadevx 9y ago
Agreed. I started with WebOS (Pre was my first smartphone), then HP happened. So I jumped to Blackberry 10, then their new CEO moved them to Android. So now now I am a reluctant Android user, because I find it only slightly less invasive than iOS. Very disappointed that this is the state of mobile computing landscape going into 2018.
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  > So now now I am a reluctant Android user, because I find it only slightly less invasive than iOS. That's surprising, I'd say Android is many times more invasive than iOS. iOS tends to lean towards on-device features where Android will happily send excessive amounts of your data to their servers to make "neat" features work.
  - toxican 9y ago
    I switched to an iPhone because of this. I may not know everything that's going on behind the scenes with my phone, and I may not be able to tweak the hell out of it, but I do know that Apple's entire business isn't built around using personal info to sell ads. That's reason enough to stick with them if I really care about privacy/invasiveness. I'm sure they're not perfect either, but I just really do not trust Google anymore.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    On the other hand you cannot install what you want on iOS. They both suck in their own sweet way.
    - BoorishBears 9y ago
      I remember about 5 years ago I was telling friends on day we wouldn't be able to root flagships (that was back when root exploits were common enough). They laughed me off, but here we are with more flagships than not never getting root. Android's getting locked down, and GPS is getting more and more integral to Android's functions (stuff like needing FCM for communicating with a device in Doze mode). I'd still say iOS is more locked down, but iOS has side loading
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  How is it less invasive? Isn't Apple and iOS big on not sending your data out as much as possible? While Android isn't like that at all? I do miss webOS a great deal though. Same with Windows Mobile which I used for a year.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
I would suggest taking a look at the Purism Librem 5. Not because of whatever its own software stack will end up being, but because it'll help provide a basis for developing more FOSS software for phones. HiDPI support in Linux became polished and viable shortly after a couple of companies arranged for desktop developers to get a few of the first-generation Chromebook Pixel devices, with a 2560x1440 screen. And similarly, I expect support for the mobile touch experience and phone capabilities to drastically improve when developers have a device to work with.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I hope something can be done to support a stronger software ecosystem on this platform. Every previous attempt has failed. HTML5 and even Android emulation aren't good enough either. I'll likely switch to this regardless, but there are some key apps that people want that just weren't around on any of these alternative platforms. Not even Microsoft could pull it off with Windows 10.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    HTML5 is very nearly good enough for a huge number of applications, even more so if Firefox supports MWAs on the platform. Android emulation would be an interesting stopgap. What are examples of "key apps" that neither of those would cover?
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Uber/Lyft, whatever social media apps are popular at the time (facebook, snap, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, and periscope at the moment, probably), banking apps, high quality navigation app (a lot of people would never give up either Google Maps or Waze). There's probably more I'm not aware of, as I've never been a particularly heavy app user. But with things like Amazon moving into groceries etc I wouldn't be surprised if more and more software gets tied up in proprietary mobile platforms. Even if most of those applications could be done in HTML5, most of them are not, and I highly doubt you could make them that way without significant UX compromises.
LostWanderer 9y ago
For 7 years i have been searching for the perfect phone but everytime the phones grow bigger and more touchy. Maybe a gameboy styled modular phone could do the needful,but the touch phone era has dashed all my dreams of having a compact phone with tactile keys. Hopefully the the next year will be better
- toxican 9y ago
  Have you looked into keyboard cases for phones? Something thin like an iPhone + a relatively thin kb case can't be much thicker than your average smartphone with an otterbox. edit: actually, now that I'm looking, they really only seem to exist for older iPhones (pre-6) :(
ksk 9y ago
Why would a company that designs integrated systems want that kind of standardization? It doesn't seem to be in their economic interest at all. Can you make a convincing argument for it?
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  The only argument would be that the people are demanding it. And so far very few of us are. (I’d love standard hardware!)
magmastonealex 9y ago
The postmarketOS [1] project is trying to fix that. It's effectively creating a unified base layer on top of phones without any Android libraries. There are also lots of efforts to add UIs and other packages as well. In addition, there's a handful of devices that have actually been ported to use the mainline kernel. By no description is it ready for daily-driver use, but there's been a lot of progress for a project less than a year old. [1] http://postmarketos.org http://postmarketos.org
orionblastar 9y ago
Someone could take Aros, Haikuos, Reactos, or even something else and port it to ARM platforms with a touchscreen. I remember someone tried a Commodore themed smart phone. But the iOS and Android duopoly makes it hard for third parties to compete against a mountain of apps verses the few apps third parties have, not to mention development tools.

alphadevx 9y ago

Agreed. I started with WebOS (Pre was my first smartphone), then HP happened. So I jumped to Blackberry 10, then their new CEO moved them to Android. So now now I am a reluctant Android user, because I find it only slightly less invasive than iOS. Very disappointed that this is the state of mobile computing landscape going into 2018.

BoorishBears 9y ago
> So now now I am a reluctant Android user, because I find it only slightly less invasive than iOS. That's surprising, I'd say Android is many times more invasive than iOS. iOS tends to lean towards on-device features where Android will happily send excessive amounts of your data to their servers to make "neat" features work.
- toxican 9y ago
  I switched to an iPhone because of this. I may not know everything that's going on behind the scenes with my phone, and I may not be able to tweak the hell out of it, but I do know that Apple's entire business isn't built around using personal info to sell ads. That's reason enough to stick with them if I really care about privacy/invasiveness. I'm sure they're not perfect either, but I just really do not trust Google anymore.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  On the other hand you cannot install what you want on iOS. They both suck in their own sweet way.
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    I remember about 5 years ago I was telling friends on day we wouldn't be able to root flagships (that was back when root exploits were common enough). They laughed me off, but here we are with more flagships than not never getting root. Android's getting locked down, and GPS is getting more and more integral to Android's functions (stuff like needing FCM for communicating with a device in Doze mode). I'd still say iOS is more locked down, but iOS has side loading
skinnymuch 9y ago
How is it less invasive? Isn't Apple and iOS big on not sending your data out as much as possible? While Android isn't like that at all? I do miss webOS a great deal though. Same with Windows Mobile which I used for a year.

JoshTriplett 9y ago

I would suggest taking a look at the Purism Librem 5. Not because of whatever its own software stack will end up being, but because it'll help provide a basis for developing more FOSS software for phones. HiDPI support in Linux became polished and viable shortly after a couple of companies arranged for desktop developers to get a few of the first-generation Chromebook Pixel devices, with a 2560x1440 screen. And similarly, I expect support for the mobile touch experience and phone capabilities to drastically improve when developers have a device to work with.

jrs95 9y ago
I hope something can be done to support a stronger software ecosystem on this platform. Every previous attempt has failed. HTML5 and even Android emulation aren't good enough either. I'll likely switch to this regardless, but there are some key apps that people want that just weren't around on any of these alternative platforms. Not even Microsoft could pull it off with Windows 10.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  HTML5 is very nearly good enough for a huge number of applications, even more so if Firefox supports MWAs on the platform. Android emulation would be an interesting stopgap. What are examples of "key apps" that neither of those would cover?
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Uber/Lyft, whatever social media apps are popular at the time (facebook, snap, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, and periscope at the moment, probably), banking apps, high quality navigation app (a lot of people would never give up either Google Maps or Waze). There's probably more I'm not aware of, as I've never been a particularly heavy app user. But with things like Amazon moving into groceries etc I wouldn't be surprised if more and more software gets tied up in proprietary mobile platforms. Even if most of those applications could be done in HTML5, most of them are not, and I highly doubt you could make them that way without significant UX compromises.

LostWanderer 9y ago

For 7 years i have been searching for the perfect phone but everytime the phones grow bigger and more touchy. Maybe a gameboy styled modular phone could do the needful,but the touch phone era has dashed all my dreams of having a compact phone with tactile keys. Hopefully the the next year will be better

toxican 9y ago
Have you looked into keyboard cases for phones? Something thin like an iPhone + a relatively thin kb case can't be much thicker than your average smartphone with an otterbox. edit: actually, now that I'm looking, they really only seem to exist for older iPhones (pre-6) :(

ksk 9y ago

Why would a company that designs integrated systems want that kind of standardization? It doesn't seem to be in their economic interest at all. Can you make a convincing argument for it?

TaylorAlexander 9y ago
The only argument would be that the people are demanding it. And so far very few of us are. (I’d love standard hardware!)

magmastonealex 9y ago

The postmarketOS [1] project is trying to fix that. It's effectively creating a unified base layer on top of phones without any Android libraries. There are also lots of efforts to add UIs and other packages as well. In addition, there's a handful of devices that have actually been ported to use the mainline kernel. By no description is it ready for daily-driver use, but there's been a lot of progress for a project less than a year old. [1] http://postmarketos.org http://postmarketos.org

orionblastar 9y ago

Someone could take Aros, Haikuos, Reactos, or even something else and port it to ARM platforms with a touchscreen. I remember someone tried a Commodore themed smart phone. But the iOS and Android duopoly makes it hard for third parties to compete against a mountain of apps verses the few apps third parties have, not to mention development tools.