7 ms·

> The SoC/Modem at the heart of the (pre 6) pixels is not first party, though. If qualcom says "yeah, we're not going to bother backporting $newIssueFix to the

by ilyt 3y ago

> The SoC/Modem at the heart of the (pre 6) pixels is not first party, though. If qualcom says "yeah, we're not going to bother backporting $newIssueFix to the kernel fork we used during chip development/bring-up" then there's not a _lot_ that google can do about it unless there's a contractual agreement in place. "You support it for 6 years or give us code, else we will take our million chip order to competition" should be enough

xethos 3y ago
This only works if the "competition" is willing to sell to you (like Apple or Samsung won't) or is roughly on-par with Qualcomm's performance and power consumption (which MediaTek absolutely is not). Otherwise your billion dollar company gets laughed out of the room.
- paulmd 3y ago
  I don't know why there is this concerted effort to stick your head in the sand and pretend that such things cannot be the subject of a contract if the parties involved want them to be. I severely doubt that if you offered qualcomm a trillion dollars they could not support the hardware for another 3 years. In fact it would be much less than a trillion dollars in practice. What you're fundamentally saying is, qualcomm isn't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and google is not willing to write the check to make it happen, and that's still on them.
  - baby_souffle 3y ago
    > What you're fundamentally saying is, qualcomm isn't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and google is not willing to write the check to make it happen, and that's still on them. So QCM should just get to name their price and google should pay it?
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Willful misreading of a comment is extremely impolite on this site. I said that this wasn’t a “not available at any price” situation, it’s a matter of figuring out a cost that works. Google (and other phone vendors) want to pay zero ($0), and the law currently allows them to externalize this cost onto their customers and society at large (e-waste going into landfills, unpatched OSs promoting malware, etc) instead. And they do.
baby_souffle 3y ago
> "You support it for 6 years or give us code, else we will take our million chip order to competition" should be enough QCM has: a) YEARS of RnD -> Patents on cellular tech. b) YEARS of experience making the modems (on both ends of the link!) compared to the other players in the space. Where is google going to go here? Can't do huawei because sanctions. Can't do MediaTek or Samsung because their modems are inferior in almost every way (speed, bandwith, power consumption ...). Intel never was a serious player and I don't think they're in the space at all anymore.
- ac29 3y ago
  > Where is google going to go here? > Can't do huawei because sanctions. Can't do MediaTek or Samsung because their modems are inferior in almost every way (speed, bandwith, power consumption ...). Google has been using Samsung modems since the Pixel 6.
  - baby_souffle 3y ago
    > Google has been using Samsung modems since the Pixel 6. "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." (with apologies to Douglas Adams!) The various google/android/pixel discussion forums are _full_ of "the p6/7 is a regression compared to p4/5" threads. I can confirm that I get much more reliable connectivity with my p4 compared to my p6 and my p7 is only marginally better than the 6. Regardless, my *whole point* is that it's not a coincidence that we start getting "extended support periods" when QCM isn't supplying the CPU. Up until ~2020 (when the p6 would have been under development) there was no serious competition in this space and that's why google and pretty much every other android device used QCM. Now that there's a second option that's even remotely close to QCM in performance, the OEMs are taking it ... and we're getting extended support as a result. Samsung will have "won" when even QCM has to capitulate and starts offering extended support.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Then it needs to be a law so there is no choice for chip manufacturers.

by ilyt 3y ago

xethos 3y ago

This only works if the "competition" is willing to sell to you (like Apple or Samsung won't) or is roughly on-par with Qualcomm's performance and power consumption (which MediaTek absolutely is not). Otherwise your billion dollar company gets laughed out of the room.

paulmd 3y ago
I don't know why there is this concerted effort to stick your head in the sand and pretend that such things cannot be the subject of a contract if the parties involved want them to be. I severely doubt that if you offered qualcomm a trillion dollars they could not support the hardware for another 3 years. In fact it would be much less than a trillion dollars in practice. What you're fundamentally saying is, qualcomm isn't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and google is not willing to write the check to make it happen, and that's still on them.
- baby_souffle 3y ago
  > What you're fundamentally saying is, qualcomm isn't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and google is not willing to write the check to make it happen, and that's still on them. So QCM should just get to name their price and google should pay it?
  - paulmd 3y ago
    Willful misreading of a comment is extremely impolite on this site. I said that this wasn’t a “not available at any price” situation, it’s a matter of figuring out a cost that works. Google (and other phone vendors) want to pay zero ($0), and the law currently allows them to externalize this cost onto their customers and society at large (e-waste going into landfills, unpatched OSs promoting malware, etc) instead. And they do.

baby_souffle 3y ago

> "You support it for 6 years or give us code, else we will take our million chip order to competition" should be enough QCM has: a) YEARS of RnD -> Patents on cellular tech. b) YEARS of experience making the modems (on both ends of the link!) compared to the other players in the space. Where is google going to go here? Can't do huawei because sanctions. Can't do MediaTek or Samsung because their modems are inferior in almost every way (speed, bandwith, power consumption ...). Intel never was a serious player and I don't think they're in the space at all anymore.

ac29 3y ago
> Where is google going to go here? > Can't do huawei because sanctions. Can't do MediaTek or Samsung because their modems are inferior in almost every way (speed, bandwith, power consumption ...). Google has been using Samsung modems since the Pixel 6.
- baby_souffle 3y ago
  > Google has been using Samsung modems since the Pixel 6. "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." (with apologies to Douglas Adams!) The various google/android/pixel discussion forums are _full_ of "the p6/7 is a regression compared to p4/5" threads. I can confirm that I get much more reliable connectivity with my p4 compared to my p6 and my p7 is only marginally better than the 6. Regardless, my *whole point* is that it's not a coincidence that we start getting "extended support periods" when QCM isn't supplying the CPU. Up until ~2020 (when the p6 would have been under development) there was no serious competition in this space and that's why google and pretty much every other android device used QCM. Now that there's a second option that's even remotely close to QCM in performance, the OEMs are taking it ... and we're getting extended support as a result. Samsung will have "won" when even QCM has to capitulate and starts offering extended support.
ilyt 3y ago
Then it needs to be a law so there is no choice for chip manufacturers.