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I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to d
by djsumdog 9y ago
I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s.
FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the devices it supports.
PostmarketOS is just a way to turn an old phone into a Raspberry Pi type device, but maybe that's the first step in a truly unified mainline kernel for all mobile devices.
- jacquesm 9y agoI really want PostMarketOS to succeed, for one because it would be really neat to have an open phone OS but also because I think it would cut down a lot on the number of phones that end up being demolished long before their actual life-span is at an end.
- smt88 9y agoI have a 1st-gen Moto X that I use as a backup. It's about as responsive as my Pixel (i.e. not very responsive, not even close to iPhone) and it's a great size. The problem is, as always, the battery. If I could replace that and install PostMarket, I might use it as my daily driver.
- 1011_1101 9y agoCouldn't find any numbers for battery life comparison between original and postmarketOS. Could you share your experience please? (Your last line seems to indicate there might be a significant increase)
- smt88 9y agoSorry, I wasn't clear. I haven't used Postmarket because no software can fix the battery issues with that phone. If I could easily swap out the battery and also install Postmarket, I would do both. As of now, I can't get a new battery and will therefore do neither.
- thom_nic 9y agoHave you looked into a DIY battery replacement?[1] I've replaced "non removable" batteries and cracked screens in several phones over the years (the latest being a Nexus 5X) and it's definitely doable if you have a steady hand, patience, and the right tools. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Motorola+Moto+X+Battery+Replacement/16974 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Motorola+Moto+X+Battery+Replace...
- striking 9y agoRelated reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839629
- cmrdporcupine 9y agoWebOS was open sourced years ago. And a community even ported it to the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7, to the point that I believe there was even the ability to make phone calls. But it never got any momentum and the community seems to have fizzled out.
- acabal 9y agoMan, WebOS was truly excellent. I had a Palm Pre back in the day and to this day there are moments when I'm using Android and I wish I was using WebOS instead. It had such a natural interface for multitasking too. Unrelated to WebOS, but the Pre's wireless charging accessory is IMHO still the best to date.
- cmrdporcupine 9y agoIMHO a large part of WebOS's excellence was the UX design work of Matias Duarte. Android improved immeasurably once he came to Google.
- RandallBrown 9y agoThe multitasking interface from webOS is very similar to what iOS has now.
- acabal 9y agoYeah, but on WebOS it was a little different... the home screen was actually the open app list, and the app launcher was accessed from that home screen; compared to iOS, which has the app launcher as the home screen, and the open app list as a semi-hidden double-click feature. I much prefer WebOS's approach. On the other hand, in those days you wouldn't really have more than a few apps open at once, unlike iPads which could have dozens of apps or browser tabs. So who knows if WebOS's style would translate well to today's usage patterns.
- u801e 9y ago> [WebOS] had such a natural interface for multitasking too. On the MeeGo OS used on the Nokia N9, it requires swiping in one direction a couple of times to get to the open tasks screen. You can then press and hold on the screen to allow for closing any app(s) you want and click on the done button after you're finished. Closing an app requires just swiping from the top to the bottom. IIRC, WebOS required you to swipe upward to get to the task screen and then swipe upward again to close the app.
- zokier 9y ago> It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. It is somewhat ironical that the Wintel monopoly that standardized so much of PC space ultimately ended up helping Linux desktops, despite the grumblings of UNIX greybeards.
- bachmeier 9y agoI don't really agree with the claim. What allowed the Linux desktop to take off was extreme security problems in Windows and generally a terrible user experience. Anyone adopting Linux had to put up with constant hardware incompatibility issues. It's just that Windows was so bad that it was worth it. (I made the switch sometime around 2003, and have been Linux-only for more than a decade.) In contrast, there is no obvious need to move away from Android, and if you don't like it, you can move to the iPhone. The Mac was not a good alternative 15 years ago.
- nasredin 9y agoIn addition to security. Linux and BSDs were not as polished usability-wise as Windows NTs before early 2000s. Just my humble opinion.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoStill not. Just tried to schedule a disk check on reboot and had to scour a bunch of pages to find something that might work. No std msc or service manager gui available either. Some of these existed but were lost in a CADT.
- michaelmrose 9y agoSometimes finding it difficult to do something is an indication you might have a suboptimal work flow. You can get plenty of info about the health of the drive while the system is running. There isn't much reason to run a filesystem check unless something is wrong. Speaking of services it's extremely easy to query which services are running and enable and disable stuff. Plus there aren't 85 different things running. If you insist you can run something like https://github.com/mmstick/systemd-manager https://github.com/mmstick/systemd-manager
- bri3d 9y agoI agree, open hardware and specifically the awful state of radio chipsets is the biggest issue here. We're at least getting close to some working open-source SoC hardware with all the work on Mali and Sunxi/Allwinner reverse engineering efforts, but there's nothing good going in the baseband space and the standards and certification are so complex and expensive that it's a complete lock-in.
- rhn_mk1 9y agoAn open alternative is the goal of the Librem phone from Purism.
- mirimir 9y agoDoes it use closed-source firmware in the radio baseband? And is there a physical switch between the baseband and main system board?
- rhn_mk1 9y agoThe campaign page [0] says there will be a kill switch: > Hardware Kill Switches for Camera, Microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Baseband but is somewhat unclear on the baseband firmware: > The mobile baseband will most likely use ROM loaded firmware, but a free software kernel driver. [0] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
- mirimir 9y agoThanks. I somehow didn't see "baseband" in the list of switched stuff. Impressive! About baseband, as others note, I get that it's a minefield.
- yeukhon 9y agoYou are probably referring to FxOS targeting emerging markets where smartphones were not common, so the hardware (thus cheaper) was expected to be very weak. But really, hardware is not a problem from a marketing point of view, from a competition point of view. You can make FxOS to run on the best hardware with supported drivers, but the ecosystem is so behind, eventually users would move away from it. That was the real problem. Consequently, developers would likely give up on FxOS. Samsung's are all based on Android - which tops iOS's market share by nearly 70%. Neither Ubuntu Touch nor FxOS had any real chances.
- harikb 9y agohttps://www.freecalypso.org/ https://www.freecalypso.org/ I know the person behind this, but not sure of the status
- blitmap 9y agoSpeaking as someone not at all involved in this space, I'd love for Google to take smartphones waaaay more seriously. I feel like in an effort to make Android easy to adopt and customize they have let the "feel" of Android suffer. I hate bloatware on every new phone. I hate that phones differ so greatly. Something invaluable to me on an iPhone is the switch to silence alerts. I wish Google would define a "standard" like Intel has with what is and what isn't an "Ultrabook". As in, to be a "Nexus" phone it must have a minimum resolution of ..., it must last for x hours of video playback and x hours of wifi use, it must have the damn alert-killing side switch, it must have a camera of a minimum quality (megapixel/zoom/can record at 1080p@60hz), etc... Google should be defining what an Android phone is in terms of hardware; define a brand other makers can adopt so customers can trust the standard to at least cater to those needs. And that isn't even getting into how fucking awful the Google Play store is. What a malware magnet. Sorry this is somewhat off-topic, I just feel this is how Google has lost us and why we seek alternatives.
- nasredin 9y agoI think Goog is trying to compete with Apple with quantity and, bear with me, not quality. Famous quote: "quantity has a quality all its own".
- Feniks 9y agoHow many non Apple phones run iOS? The strength of Android is that you can customize it. Some people like Touchwizz. I prefer oxygenOS.
- TickleSteve 9y agoThat's exactly what the Android One (and previously Android Go) standards where all about, they set minimum hardware standards and experiences. They then guarantee updates for two years, etc...
- blitmap 9y agoThe focus of Android One seems to be running an unmodified Android? I don't think there is an emphasis on a minimum hardware spec. The phones showcased there do impress.. https://www.android.com/one/ https://www.android.com/one/ Is there a requirement for how long the phones are supported with software/security updates? If I were to add to the brief spec I defined above I'd also require speakers at both ends of the phone for stereo output, and require keeping the 3.5mm jack (yay S9?). I still think Samsung likes to make slippery bar-soap phones that I cant hold. I still don't like how permissions are done even on LineageOS - I wish I could grant access to the camera for an app "for the next 5 minutes". Now I'm really off topic. I shall diminish ~
- Apocryphon 9y agoIt appears that Sailfish OS might be getting bought by a Russian firm: https://www.telecompaper.com/news/rostelecom-cleared-to-acquire-sailfish-developers--1232739 https://www.telecompaper.com/news/rostelecom-cleared-to-acqu...
- jrcii 9y agoLook into the Neo900 and the DragonBox Pyra
- devit 9y agoWhat they lacked is support for Android apps, since obviously expecting everyone to rewrite all apps for a new platform is a non-starter. If Mozilla had simply acquired LineageOS, worked on MicroG to reach feature parity with Play Services, added Firefox for Android and their own app store in addition to Google Play via MicroG, and resold flagship Android phones with that as well as offering it to OEMs, they would have had significant success at very little cost. In fact, they still could do that.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoThe problem is that would still be Android. Which means they'd still be beholden to Google, having to support their code, maintain compatibility with their design decisions, etc. That's not a good place for any serious business to be in.
- devit 9y agoBecause writing a whole OS from scratch competing with giant companies and having to somehow magically go from 0 to a million apps (while being unpopular due to the few apps) is a good place to be in? Instead, they could have gotten all the Android apps and the popularity of Android essentially for free. It's even possible they could have overtaken Google and became the effective steward of the Android platform, since Google doesn't offer a version that can be installed by users and also doesn't offer their version to OEMs with no strings attached. Again, they still can do that now, since there still isn't a version of Android that runs on any phone other than LineageOS, which is relatively underfunded. [obviously what Mozilla would gain from this is market share for Firefox for Android]
- stonogo 9y agoWho on earth wants an android phone but is waiting for a fork from some random company before they make the switch? Your argument applies to approximately nobody. If someone wants an android phone right now they can pick from literally thousands of devices. On the other hand, I'm already a KaiOS customer because they power the phone I want: the one that makes calls and handles text messages, and then gives me a high-speed network for my computer. I spend about a quarter of my time in India; while there I got a Jio phone and liked it so much I found a KaiOS device that works in the US as well.
- culot 9y agoApparently KaiOS is a fork of Firefox OS/B2G. So... where's the code, yo? I've scoured Github, but no sign of it. edit: nevermind: "KaiOS is based on the Firefox OS open-source project and we are committed to abide by the rules of the applicable open source licenses. Therefore, we’ll make the source code available to the extent required by the applicable open source licenses." So that's a no on giving back to the B2G which born thee. Nice. Another closed-source OS is just what the mobile space needs.
- bobajeff 9y agoChecking out the site it looks like they are targeting feature phones and they appear to be quite successful at it. Which is funny because Mozilla tried that shortly before abandoning the whole project.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI wonder where some of those people went when then? Did they move to Kai os or not? Or maybe the phone partners figured out that they could run the project themselves and when mozilla axed it they just moved on.
- bobajeff 9y agoWell, some of them went to Acadine Technologies to work on H5OS.
- fabrice_d 9y agoIt's not a "no on giving back". You only have to make available the source for products you ship, and KaiOS itself is not the one shipping the devices, so it's up to the OEMs to provide the source they use on their phones (they do their own customizations). That being said, I'm trying to get us to open source the "base" version which is provided to OEMs.
- beefhash 9y ago> I'm trying to get us to open source Can I assume you're involved with KaiOS development? Android vendors have a terrible reputation about pushing security updates in a timely manner (or at all for devices that aren't the current flagship). Do you have any plans to contractually force or otherwise encourage vendors to push security updates?
- debatem1 9y agoIIRC Android is the most common operating system on Earth, while Linux desktops are still around 5% market share. Seems like desktop Linux needs to do as Android does to take off, not the other way around?
- toyg 9y agoAndroid arrived when the smartphone marked was in its infancy, whereas Linux emerged much later in the development cycle of the PC market, when it was way too late. If IBM could have chosen a free and open DOS for its first PCs, the market would look very different today.
- amelius 9y agoOne problem is compatibility. My banking app only supports Android and iOS. Not sure how that is going to be handled in a new system.