5 ms·

Fire OS 7 is based on Android 9 with API level 28. So, yeah, it's not exactly cutting edge.

by voxadam 6y ago

rock_artist 6y ago
But isn't Firefox even supports Android 5 devices?
- scaladev 6y ago
  The latest version works fine on my x86 phone with Android 5.
  - jldl805 6y ago
    Why do you live your life like this?!?
    - molasses 6y ago
      I get this. I have a low spec phone by today's standards, and it has android 10, it is pretty useless practically. It is pretty much stock. And I would gladly go back some versions for speed hikes.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    > x86 phone Sorry, what? I think I need to know more...
    - GranPC 6y ago
      Possibly something like an Asus ZenFone 2 (ZE551ML) which has an Intel Atom processor, and a binary translator to run ARM code, for compatibility reasons.
      - brundolf 6y ago
        That's wild. Why would they make something like that? Does it dual-boot Windows or something?
        sgerenser 6y ago
        There was a period (back in 2016 or so?) where Intel was really gunning for the phone space with their Atom SoCs. I imagine they gave very good deals to Asus to put them into their products (undoubtedly large “marketing support” dollars were involved). Alas the lack of progress on Intel’s side combined with the utter domination of ARM basically killed Intel’s hopes at the phone CPU market.
        usr1106 6y ago
        > There was a period (back in 2016 or so?) where Intel was really gunning for the phone space with their Atom SoCs. The whole Meego project (Nokia + Intel, 2009 from the top of my head) was founded with the goal of getting Intel phones. When Nokia jumped ship in February 2011, Intel still continued and hired Nokia engineers to make phones. How long they tried, I have no idea.
        scaladev 6y ago
        Desktop Windows won't run there directly (but works just fine virtualized under qemu, I should add). It's a pretty typical all-in-one SoC, but with an x86 core: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/75203/intel-atom-processor-z2520-1m-cache-1-20-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/75203/i... But I can copy statically linked binaries from my main Linux machine, and they work. (Dynamically linked typically don't because Android userspace is so different from "proper" Linux.)
      - rock_artist 6y ago
        It was actually a good beast at the time. And was subsidized so it was cheap for the specs.
osmarks 6y ago
Two versions behind is actually better than the majority of Android phones in the wild.
sgt 6y ago
It may sound unbelievable, but to most Android users out there, Android 9 is cutting edge!
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Yeah, pretty much, looks like Android 9, 10 & 11 only add up to 63.2% of Android market share ? https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions
- pmlnr 6y ago
  Android 8 user here, because I got tired of hunting for half-working internet supported releases for my phone. Plus, to be honest, I lament the 2.3 times: apps were literally 100x smaller, and the OS was much simpler from every perspective. I still have a HTC Desire with the last 2.3 based MIUI, and that OS is still wonderful.
  - jebeng 6y ago
    Do you get security updates though? I stopped getting them in Dec 2019. Forcing my hand to move over to a phone with Android 9 that gets quarterly security updates still(on March 2021 now I think). I realize this is a manufacturer/carrier thing as far as I know, and I'd like to go back to a nice clean debloated 8.1 or whatever. But I feel like I'm dragged kicking and screaming along the path of forced obsolescence just skimming over the security stuff that apparently I'm never going to get if I don't upgrade phones. Honestly it's just really annoying. I've toyed around with Lineage and such but at some point it seems it got a lot harder to do things on a lot of models and carrier configs. It seems you need to really research exactly what phone model is open enough and has enough people graciously doing open source work to support updates and such outside of the manufacturer and carrier.
    - pmlnr 6y ago
      > Do you get security updates though Nope. And I even stopped updating Firefox, because their move to Quantum on Android made a great browser and abysmal experience. Once this phone dies, I'll go and buy a Fairphone, hoping that might be kept alive a bit longer with updates.
varispeed 6y ago
Android 9 is when that system ended for me, as Google completely disabled call recording by 3rd party apps. It's a must have feature if you want to have any defence against scamming insurance companies and so on. Probably they were losing too much money when people were able to call their lies and demand refunds, so they must have somehow convinced Google to remove this feature altogether.
- tssva 6y ago
  It was definitely a conspiracy between Google and insurance companies and not that the feature was a security/privacy risk used by too few people to be worth investing in developing in a manner which eliminated the risk.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    What do you mean? Pretty much every one I know used to record calls. It is perfectly legal in my country. If Google was concerned about security / privacy why they didn't disable cameras as well?
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
How are the security updates situation for the Fire OS devices?
ipaddr 6y ago
I'm on kitkat 4.4. I hope in 10 years to reach 9.
david_allison 6y ago
API 28 is released in 2018, 2 versions behind the latest. It's a sad state of software development that we so quickly drop support for older hardware, it contributes massively to e-waste, although Android manufacturers shoulder a lot of the blame for not supporting OS upgrades. Context: Put out a (hopefully) final release for API 16 last month. It'll mean that 15,000 people can no longer update the app. From analytics, we still have users on Android 1.5 (API 3)
- spicybright 6y ago
  Wowie, how many users run api 3?
  - david_allison 6y ago
    Negligible: 26 today, up from ~3 around Q4 2020. Not sure if that's Google Play's metrics being played with, but it's shocking that there appear to be installs on something that old (it's well before TLS 1.2 support on Android, and most of the internet will be broken)
ajfjrbfbf 6y ago
I have three libraries supporting API 14, one app API 16 and another API 21. There's rarely a reason not to support at least API 21 for general apps. Almost only very specific and niche APIs were added after that. Not supporting at least API 24 is unreasonable and most likely due to ignorance. Java 8 is only supported since API 24, but everybody switched to Kotlin ages ago.

Fire OS 7 is based on Android 9 with API level 28. So, yeah, it's not exactly cutting edge.

rock_artist 6y ago

But isn't Firefox even supports Android 5 devices?

scaladev 6y ago
The latest version works fine on my x86 phone with Android 5.
- jldl805 6y ago
  Why do you live your life like this?!?
  - molasses 6y ago
    I get this. I have a low spec phone by today's standards, and it has android 10, it is pretty useless practically. It is pretty much stock. And I would gladly go back some versions for speed hikes.
- brundolf 6y ago
  > x86 phone Sorry, what? I think I need to know more...
  - GranPC 6y ago
    Possibly something like an Asus ZenFone 2 (ZE551ML) which has an Intel Atom processor, and a binary translator to run ARM code, for compatibility reasons.
    - brundolf 6y ago
      That's wild. Why would they make something like that? Does it dual-boot Windows or something?
      - sgerenser 6y ago
        There was a period (back in 2016 or so?) where Intel was really gunning for the phone space with their Atom SoCs. I imagine they gave very good deals to Asus to put them into their products (undoubtedly large “marketing support” dollars were involved). Alas the lack of progress on Intel’s side combined with the utter domination of ARM basically killed Intel’s hopes at the phone CPU market.
        usr1106 6y ago
        > There was a period (back in 2016 or so?) where Intel was really gunning for the phone space with their Atom SoCs. The whole Meego project (Nokia + Intel, 2009 from the top of my head) was founded with the goal of getting Intel phones. When Nokia jumped ship in February 2011, Intel still continued and hired Nokia engineers to make phones. How long they tried, I have no idea.
      - scaladev 6y ago
        Desktop Windows won't run there directly (but works just fine virtualized under qemu, I should add). It's a pretty typical all-in-one SoC, but with an x86 core: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/75203/intel-atom-processor-z2520-1m-cache-1-20-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/75203/i... But I can copy statically linked binaries from my main Linux machine, and they work. (Dynamically linked typically don't because Android userspace is so different from "proper" Linux.)
    - rock_artist 6y ago
      It was actually a good beast at the time. And was subsidized so it was cheap for the specs.

osmarks 6y ago

Two versions behind is actually better than the majority of Android phones in the wild.

sgt 6y ago

It may sound unbelievable, but to most Android users out there, Android 9 is cutting edge!

BlueTemplar 6y ago
Yeah, pretty much, looks like Android 9, 10 & 11 only add up to 63.2% of Android market share ? https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions
pmlnr 6y ago
Android 8 user here, because I got tired of hunting for half-working internet supported releases for my phone. Plus, to be honest, I lament the 2.3 times: apps were literally 100x smaller, and the OS was much simpler from every perspective. I still have a HTC Desire with the last 2.3 based MIUI, and that OS is still wonderful.
- jebeng 6y ago
  Do you get security updates though? I stopped getting them in Dec 2019. Forcing my hand to move over to a phone with Android 9 that gets quarterly security updates still(on March 2021 now I think). I realize this is a manufacturer/carrier thing as far as I know, and I'd like to go back to a nice clean debloated 8.1 or whatever. But I feel like I'm dragged kicking and screaming along the path of forced obsolescence just skimming over the security stuff that apparently I'm never going to get if I don't upgrade phones. Honestly it's just really annoying. I've toyed around with Lineage and such but at some point it seems it got a lot harder to do things on a lot of models and carrier configs. It seems you need to really research exactly what phone model is open enough and has enough people graciously doing open source work to support updates and such outside of the manufacturer and carrier.
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    > Do you get security updates though Nope. And I even stopped updating Firefox, because their move to Quantum on Android made a great browser and abysmal experience. Once this phone dies, I'll go and buy a Fairphone, hoping that might be kept alive a bit longer with updates.

varispeed 6y ago

Android 9 is when that system ended for me, as Google completely disabled call recording by 3rd party apps. It's a must have feature if you want to have any defence against scamming insurance companies and so on. Probably they were losing too much money when people were able to call their lies and demand refunds, so they must have somehow convinced Google to remove this feature altogether.

tssva 6y ago
It was definitely a conspiracy between Google and insurance companies and not that the feature was a security/privacy risk used by too few people to be worth investing in developing in a manner which eliminated the risk.
- varispeed 6y ago
  What do you mean? Pretty much every one I know used to record calls. It is perfectly legal in my country. If Google was concerned about security / privacy why they didn't disable cameras as well?

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

How are the security updates situation for the Fire OS devices?

ipaddr 6y ago

I'm on kitkat 4.4. I hope in 10 years to reach 9.

david_allison 6y ago

API 28 is released in 2018, 2 versions behind the latest. It's a sad state of software development that we so quickly drop support for older hardware, it contributes massively to e-waste, although Android manufacturers shoulder a lot of the blame for not supporting OS upgrades. Context: Put out a (hopefully) final release for API 16 last month. It'll mean that 15,000 people can no longer update the app. From analytics, we still have users on Android 1.5 (API 3)

spicybright 6y ago
Wowie, how many users run api 3?
- david_allison 6y ago
  Negligible: 26 today, up from ~3 around Q4 2020. Not sure if that's Google Play's metrics being played with, but it's shocking that there appear to be installs on something that old (it's well before TLS 1.2 support on Android, and most of the internet will be broken)

ajfjrbfbf 6y ago

I have three libraries supporting API 14, one app API 16 and another API 21. There's rarely a reason not to support at least API 21 for general apps. Almost only very specific and niche APIs were added after that. Not supporting at least API 24 is unreasonable and most likely due to ignorance. Java 8 is only supported since API 24, but everybody switched to Kotlin ages ago.