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> this is why phones maybe shouldn't ship with a working OS anyways and make the user supply it instead I think this goes against the main reason people buy ph

by isodev 4y ago

> this is why phones maybe shouldn't ship with a working OS anyways and make the user supply it instead I think this goes against the main reason people buy phones from mainstream brands. The reason is the features and ecosystem that come with such devices. If you are a tinkerer or prefer to install your custom OS, then you'd choose a "foss" device like the pinephone, librem or other. If you buy a device for convenience, with the expectation that it just works, you buy an iPhone. If you are somewhat in the middle of that spectrum, you consider an Android device where you trade some convenience with the ability to intervene more deeply with how the device works.

aftbit 4y ago
>If you are a tinkerer or prefer to install your custom OS, then you'd choose a "foss" device like the pinephone, librem or other. Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). If I could install a custom OS on iPhone, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Otherwise I'm stuck with AOSP on my Pixel.
- isodev 4y ago
  > Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). Yes, and the irony is that Apple can afford to develop impressive hardware thanks to their "vertically integrated" offering. People like it and spend a lot of money to have it. Why don't FOSS phones have the budget to create this kind of experience then? Maybe there are ways for this to be improved, or perhaps we shouldn't try to decouple a phone from the ecosystem it was created for. A lot of money and energy is now being pointed at trying to make Apple and Google loosen their grip on hardware. At the same time (in my view), this would not address the root cause, which is that there are no effective means for economic advantage generated by foss software on proprietary hardware to find its way back to the community.
- usrn 4y ago
  Not having to run Android makes up for the mediocre hardware on the Pinephone IMO. Also Linux has a far more healthy ecosystem than Android.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    Android/Linux is Linux. You must be confusing "Linux" with Systemd/Linux.
    - usrn 4y ago
      Yeah I mean GNU/X11/Linux obviously. I don't always want to write it out because most people know what I mean. The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. Because of this most of the useful software projects for it are slowly dying if they're not already dead.
      - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
        > The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Compared to your average desktop computer, Android at least tries to use SELinux, and by-app unix user partitions. Systemd/Linux "Flatpak app" and "snap app" security by comparison is awful. I think that Termux, (once you get past Zygote forking) to be reasonably fast and responsive, and it runs on almost barebones Android/Linux fine. So I don't think it's fundamentally related to the Android userspace platform as well. > Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. I think we all need more libre software in our lives. Or at the bare minimum, more things like F-Droid; not ideal since the base OS is still somewhat locked, but a start.
car_analogy 4y ago
> I think this goes against the main reason people buy phones from mainstream brands. The reason is the features and ecosystem that come with such devices. I.e. anti-competitive bundling of software and hardware. There is no reason one could not buy a generic phone, the same as one buys a generic PC, and then install whatever "mainstream" OS one wants. You are also assuming that because installing an alternate OS is difficult now (in large part because manufacturers make it difficult, if not impossible), it would continue to be just as difficult in the future.
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  Yup. Instead of requiring USB Type C chargers EU should have required selling chargers separately. Same for OS and computers and phones. The setup process is already cumbersome both for Windows and for MacOS.
abofh 4y ago
I think you presume too much idealism. It's more along the lines of "if you want a 'free' phone, you take the shiniest one your carrier gives you for contract renewal" Oh you want more GB's (metric unspecified)? This one is only 100 currencies more, but it'll just be five more per month for 24 months. That's all? What about for a better camera? Oh, for a top of the line photo app, you'll want our xl series, just ten more currencies a month! For 70% of sales, the is matters zero.

by isodev 4y ago

aftbit 4y ago

>If you are a tinkerer or prefer to install your custom OS, then you'd choose a "foss" device like the pinephone, librem or other. Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). If I could install a custom OS on iPhone, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Otherwise I'm stuck with AOSP on my Pixel.

isodev 4y ago
> Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). Yes, and the irony is that Apple can afford to develop impressive hardware thanks to their "vertically integrated" offering. People like it and spend a lot of money to have it. Why don't FOSS phones have the budget to create this kind of experience then? Maybe there are ways for this to be improved, or perhaps we shouldn't try to decouple a phone from the ecosystem it was created for. A lot of money and energy is now being pointed at trying to make Apple and Google loosen their grip on hardware. At the same time (in my view), this would not address the root cause, which is that there are no effective means for economic advantage generated by foss software on proprietary hardware to find its way back to the community.
usrn 4y ago
Not having to run Android makes up for the mediocre hardware on the Pinephone IMO. Also Linux has a far more healthy ecosystem than Android.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  Android/Linux is Linux. You must be confusing "Linux" with Systemd/Linux.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Yeah I mean GNU/X11/Linux obviously. I don't always want to write it out because most people know what I mean. The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. Because of this most of the useful software projects for it are slowly dying if they're not already dead.
    - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
      > The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Compared to your average desktop computer, Android at least tries to use SELinux, and by-app unix user partitions. Systemd/Linux "Flatpak app" and "snap app" security by comparison is awful. I think that Termux, (once you get past Zygote forking) to be reasonably fast and responsive, and it runs on almost barebones Android/Linux fine. So I don't think it's fundamentally related to the Android userspace platform as well. > Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. I think we all need more libre software in our lives. Or at the bare minimum, more things like F-Droid; not ideal since the base OS is still somewhat locked, but a start.

car_analogy 4y ago

> I think this goes against the main reason people buy phones from mainstream brands. The reason is the features and ecosystem that come with such devices. I.e. anti-competitive bundling of software and hardware. There is no reason one could not buy a generic phone, the same as one buys a generic PC, and then install whatever "mainstream" OS one wants. You are also assuming that because installing an alternate OS is difficult now (in large part because manufacturers make it difficult, if not impossible), it would continue to be just as difficult in the future.

sam_lowry_ 4y ago
Yup. Instead of requiring USB Type C chargers EU should have required selling chargers separately. Same for OS and computers and phones. The setup process is already cumbersome both for Windows and for MacOS.

abofh 4y ago

I think you presume too much idealism. It's more along the lines of "if you want a 'free' phone, you take the shiniest one your carrier gives you for contract renewal" Oh you want more GB's (metric unspecified)? This one is only 100 currencies more, but it'll just be five more per month for 24 months. That's all? What about for a better camera? Oh, for a top of the line photo app, you'll want our xl series, just ten more currencies a month! For 70% of sales, the is matters zero.