7 ms·

Alternatives to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone

58 points by maudlinmau5 14y ago

networked 14y ago
Don't forget about Open webOS [1]. At the very least the progress of its Galaxy Nexus port is curious to watch [2], though I wonder how the recent acquisition of rights to webOS by LG might influence the project. [1] http://www.openwebosproject.org/ http://www.openwebosproject.org/. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelmomAq91o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelmomAq91o
- Zigurd 14y ago
  I believe LG's licensing WebOS will have as much impact as their licensing of SavaJe had at the time.
apunic 14y ago
You forgot BB OS 10
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Interesting that if you count iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BB OS 10 as the top four mobile OSes, they run four different kernels, BSD/XNU/Darwin, Linux, WinNT and QNX. The four new competitors all seem to be using Linux (five if you count WebOS).
  - untog 14y ago
    I suspect that's a cost-saving measure as much as anything else. If you're a scrappy small project, reusing the existing Linux kernel is probably a good move.
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      And if you're an entrenched BigCo you carry a lot of NIH belief along ;)
      - Guvante 14y ago
        Actually it is more leveraging your existing experience. I don't know about Blackberry, but the common kernel between your desktop OS and the mobile OS is a good thing.
        shawn-butler 14y ago
        One of the drivers in making the purchase of qnx for RIM apparently was the integration play in the embedded space. Automotive for example. Have seen not much fruit of that other than the QNX car project [0]. I remember seeing a Porshce at CES a year or two ago that had the system in it and it integrated with the Blackberry Playbook pretty well. [0]: http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/ http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/
npsimons 14y ago
Glad to see Tizen and Sailfish mentioned. As an N900 owner, I'm currently torn between them; I've always loved the sleek shininess of Enlightenment, but Sailfish is the obvious upgrade path. Or maybe I should just roll my own: https://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900 https://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900 Ah, so many fun options, so little time :)
dholowiski 14y ago
I'm not sure how these are actually alternatives, if you can't actually get a phone with any of these OS's on them.
- josteink 14y ago
  Both Ubuntu Touch [1] and Firefox OS currently has ports to numerous models of phones which you can flash if you unlock it (albeit most highly unofficial). Usually these are Android-phones, already open-source friendly and easy to build for. You will find all the relevant details in the appropriate sub-forums on XDA. If you want to try them today, you can. This should definitely not be confused for vapourware. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Work_in_progress https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Work_in_progress
melling 14y ago
Blackberry? How do the new models rate? From the couple of reviews that I read, their new products seem good.
- hrktb 14y ago
  From the user point of view I haven't used it much but it felts decent though not really convincing. From the dev point of view, it doesn't feel great from what I've seen, and people I know building mid-size projects for it are hating it with a passion. So it's still rough and there's not much good will on the dev side.
  - shawn-butler 14y ago
    Such a bullshit comment. First an offhand "feeling" based on zero experience then a hearsay slander without any real information or references.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - hrktb 14y ago
      The question was why BB10 is not in the list, and that was a quick answer from my POV. If you want the long one: I do maintenance for older (OS4~7) BB apps so I have an interest in where the platform goes. I'm following the evolution of the new OS and SDK since the playbook to the alpha device and up to the Z10, but even after the bbconf workshops on webworks or the sessions on cascade I don't see a future for native dev on this platform, and most of our clients just want their android app ported to BB10. From the dev perspective, I don't see a good ROI in deeply learning the platform, so I'll be happy with watching over the shoulders of the guys dealing with it. Hearsay is OK for me when I see the support tickets flying around. Like there is no simple way to have the scroll position of a listview in cascades...that's just crazy when so many apps will be managing lists. As a user, I'm not in the target audience since they never bothered to add japanese input support, but I tried most of devices by pure curiosity. I genuinely wonder what particular feature is so well executed that you wanted to dismiss my opinion. I've seen some feature here and there that aren't bad, the focus on gestures is distinctive and there is a definitive push for a "modern" feel...but I'm not a big fan of the swipe up/down gestures, as actual content can be found near these areas, and it conflicts with other operations (like drawing on the screen). Even the task switching is tiresome at times, as app order is not fully predictable (or you have an excelent memory) Is there any aspect that is not decent but really great?
berntb 14y ago
My plan is: For my next phone, I'll leave iOS and get a garbage feature phone (Symbian, or something). This will be when I get my next iPad, which will have 4G (I'll also need a small iPod for music). I will just suffer adding phone numbers and writing SMS the old fashioned way -- along with the week of battery life...
- anoncow 14y ago
  The week of battery life is more like two weeks on nokia feature phones. I really liked Nokia until they became what they have become nowadays.
- shawn-butler 14y ago
  Symbian phones will be getting pretty rare won't they? Especially in the US where they never had much of a market to begin with. The 808 PureView was announced to be the last Symbian phone some time ago. Vertu the "luxury" brand that Nokia sold to private equity has dropped Symbian as well. They were the last ones producing Symbian products of which I am aware. The Vertu Ti is the first Android handset produced by Nokia actually. A titanium case and reuses some of the internals of the Lumia 920.
- networked 14y ago
  >I'll leave iOS and get a garbage feature phone (Symbian, or something) It's funny that you say that because as a long-time Symbian user I remember when "Symbian" was pretty much synonymous with "smartphone", at least in my part of the world. As for your idea, well, I'm afraid devices that run recent editions of Symbian (Symbian^3/Anna/Belle, Symbian Series 60 5th Edition) usually don't deliver very good battery life. You'd have better luck with an S60 3rd Edition phone, especially a business-oriented one like the Nokia E72 or the E5 (I own the latter and can recommend it for sheer repairability -- see my earlier HN comment [1]) but it still won't run for a week on a single charge like Nokia's grayscale featurephones do; it's closer to 3-4 days with a fair amount of web browsing with Opera Mini and using GMail. On the plus side, I've written Python programs both for and on my E5 (the QWERTY keyboard is pretty nice) and you'll be able to do the same, unlike with a featurephone. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215787 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215787
Zigurd 14y ago
Of these, Sailfish has the most serious and experienced team behind it. It won't leave the shop unfinished. It is do or die for Jolla. For everyone else phone OSs are a hobby. Everyone else is learning by doing. Even Samsung. Samsung's feature phones run RTOSs licensed by Samsung, and, of course, while Samsung has made some impressive modifications to Android, that's far from showing they can make a complete modern phone OS.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  I don't know if/how you can say that Ubuntu Touch is a "hobby". And outside of Apple and MS, there is literally no other company as experience at creating an operating system as Canonical and the Ubuntu community. Based on the early revs, Ubuntu is by far the most polished. Canonical is also led by someone with a driving vision, very deep pockets and an absolute want to make a mark on mobile. So, Ubuntu has the most experienced team, the most polished early rev product and a focused founder. No way that Ubuntu Touch isn't the front runner here. Frankly, it isn't even close (or fair) to compare the rest to Ubuntu.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    I agree with the grandparent. This matters more to Jolla; it's literally their company. If Sailfish doesn't catch on they will go out of business. I'd feel better if I knew in advance that everything they are working on is open source. While Ubuntu has experience bundle's open source software and to a smaller extent creating their own, they don't have any experience in mobile, which is a different ball game entirely. Early progress is impressive though, I will agree.
  - Zigurd 14y ago
    Go listen to the Unity haters (I'm not one anymore, it finally seems to work well once you pry the Amazon spyware out of it) about Canonical's ability to innovate without shipping something half-baked. Ubuntu Touch is heavily dependent on Canonical being able to do major surgery on the Linux graphics stack on a very tight schedule. I agree with their plan and the reasoning behind it, but there are many reasons to doubt they can execute on schedule. As for the team, Ubuntu has some experienced phone OS developers but nowhere near the depth Jolla has. The way that Ubuntu used SurfaceFlinger as a provisional system compositor is brilliant. But getting from there to a product is more work than Canonical has ever had to put into a project.
ryanSrich 14y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the sticking point for mobile the availability of apps and not the actual hardware/OS?
JVIDEL 14y ago
Yeah, no: I live in Argentina and nobody, NOBODY here is going to get a FirefoxOS phone. The deal with emerging markets is that people here still cares about personal image which is the only reason why iPhones are still being sold despite being several times the price of Android phones due to import taxes. Couple that with Chinese Android phones that are getting better and cheaper every month and why would anyone get a phone that due to volume won't be cheaper and that will have only a fraction of the support? UP's achilles heel is the lack of proprietary hardware, 99% of the users out there can't even root their phones let alone install a completely different OS on it. Couple that with the innability to run Android apps and the horrible UX that is unity and you have a package nobody wants. Sailfish has no chance at all of growing beyond a very small niche of people. Tizen is basically Samsung's attempt at getting Google out of the picture now that is the biggest fish in the phone sea. BB10 is a better option than most of these OS', even WebOS should be in this list and yet for some reason it was left aside.

58 points by maudlinmau5 14y ago

Don't forget about Open webOS [1]. At the very least the progress of its Galaxy Nexus port is curious to watch [2], though I wonder how the recent acquisition of rights to webOS by LG might influence the project. [1] http://www.openwebosproject.org/ http://www.openwebosproject.org/. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelmomAq91o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelmomAq91o

Zigurd 14y ago
I believe LG's licensing WebOS will have as much impact as their licensing of SavaJe had at the time.

apunic 14y ago

You forgot BB OS 10

recoiledsnake 14y ago
Interesting that if you count iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BB OS 10 as the top four mobile OSes, they run four different kernels, BSD/XNU/Darwin, Linux, WinNT and QNX. The four new competitors all seem to be using Linux (five if you count WebOS).
- untog 14y ago
  I suspect that's a cost-saving measure as much as anything else. If you're a scrappy small project, reusing the existing Linux kernel is probably a good move.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    And if you're an entrenched BigCo you carry a lot of NIH belief along ;)
    - Guvante 14y ago
      Actually it is more leveraging your existing experience. I don't know about Blackberry, but the common kernel between your desktop OS and the mobile OS is a good thing.
      - shawn-butler 14y ago
        One of the drivers in making the purchase of qnx for RIM apparently was the integration play in the embedded space. Automotive for example. Have seen not much fruit of that other than the QNX car project [0]. I remember seeing a Porshce at CES a year or two ago that had the system in it and it integrated with the Blackberry Playbook pretty well. [0]: http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/ http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/

npsimons 14y ago

Glad to see Tizen and Sailfish mentioned. As an N900 owner, I'm currently torn between them; I've always loved the sleek shininess of Enlightenment, but Sailfish is the obvious upgrade path. Or maybe I should just roll my own: https://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900 https://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900 Ah, so many fun options, so little time :)

dholowiski 14y ago

I'm not sure how these are actually alternatives, if you can't actually get a phone with any of these OS's on them.

josteink 14y ago
Both Ubuntu Touch [1] and Firefox OS currently has ports to numerous models of phones which you can flash if you unlock it (albeit most highly unofficial). Usually these are Android-phones, already open-source friendly and easy to build for. You will find all the relevant details in the appropriate sub-forums on XDA. If you want to try them today, you can. This should definitely not be confused for vapourware. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Work_in_progress https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Work_in_progress

melling 14y ago

Blackberry? How do the new models rate? From the couple of reviews that I read, their new products seem good.

hrktb 14y ago
From the user point of view I haven't used it much but it felts decent though not really convincing. From the dev point of view, it doesn't feel great from what I've seen, and people I know building mid-size projects for it are hating it with a passion. So it's still rough and there's not much good will on the dev side.
- shawn-butler 14y ago
  Such a bullshit comment. First an offhand "feeling" based on zero experience then a hearsay slander without any real information or references.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - hrktb 14y ago
    The question was why BB10 is not in the list, and that was a quick answer from my POV. If you want the long one: I do maintenance for older (OS4~7) BB apps so I have an interest in where the platform goes. I'm following the evolution of the new OS and SDK since the playbook to the alpha device and up to the Z10, but even after the bbconf workshops on webworks or the sessions on cascade I don't see a future for native dev on this platform, and most of our clients just want their android app ported to BB10. From the dev perspective, I don't see a good ROI in deeply learning the platform, so I'll be happy with watching over the shoulders of the guys dealing with it. Hearsay is OK for me when I see the support tickets flying around. Like there is no simple way to have the scroll position of a listview in cascades...that's just crazy when so many apps will be managing lists. As a user, I'm not in the target audience since they never bothered to add japanese input support, but I tried most of devices by pure curiosity. I genuinely wonder what particular feature is so well executed that you wanted to dismiss my opinion. I've seen some feature here and there that aren't bad, the focus on gestures is distinctive and there is a definitive push for a "modern" feel...but I'm not a big fan of the swipe up/down gestures, as actual content can be found near these areas, and it conflicts with other operations (like drawing on the screen). Even the task switching is tiresome at times, as app order is not fully predictable (or you have an excelent memory) Is there any aspect that is not decent but really great?

berntb 14y ago

My plan is: For my next phone, I'll leave iOS and get a garbage feature phone (Symbian, or something). This will be when I get my next iPad, which will have 4G (I'll also need a small iPod for music). I will just suffer adding phone numbers and writing SMS the old fashioned way -- along with the week of battery life...

anoncow 14y ago
The week of battery life is more like two weeks on nokia feature phones. I really liked Nokia until they became what they have become nowadays.
shawn-butler 14y ago
Symbian phones will be getting pretty rare won't they? Especially in the US where they never had much of a market to begin with. The 808 PureView was announced to be the last Symbian phone some time ago. Vertu the "luxury" brand that Nokia sold to private equity has dropped Symbian as well. They were the last ones producing Symbian products of which I am aware. The Vertu Ti is the first Android handset produced by Nokia actually. A titanium case and reuses some of the internals of the Lumia 920.
networked 14y ago
>I'll leave iOS and get a garbage feature phone (Symbian, or something) It's funny that you say that because as a long-time Symbian user I remember when "Symbian" was pretty much synonymous with "smartphone", at least in my part of the world. As for your idea, well, I'm afraid devices that run recent editions of Symbian (Symbian^3/Anna/Belle, Symbian Series 60 5th Edition) usually don't deliver very good battery life. You'd have better luck with an S60 3rd Edition phone, especially a business-oriented one like the Nokia E72 or the E5 (I own the latter and can recommend it for sheer repairability -- see my earlier HN comment [1]) but it still won't run for a week on a single charge like Nokia's grayscale featurephones do; it's closer to 3-4 days with a fair amount of web browsing with Opera Mini and using GMail. On the plus side, I've written Python programs both for and on my E5 (the QWERTY keyboard is pretty nice) and you'll be able to do the same, unlike with a featurephone. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215787 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215787

Zigurd 14y ago

Of these, Sailfish has the most serious and experienced team behind it. It won't leave the shop unfinished. It is do or die for Jolla. For everyone else phone OSs are a hobby. Everyone else is learning by doing. Even Samsung. Samsung's feature phones run RTOSs licensed by Samsung, and, of course, while Samsung has made some impressive modifications to Android, that's far from showing they can make a complete modern phone OS.

fingerprinter 14y ago
I don't know if/how you can say that Ubuntu Touch is a "hobby". And outside of Apple and MS, there is literally no other company as experience at creating an operating system as Canonical and the Ubuntu community. Based on the early revs, Ubuntu is by far the most polished. Canonical is also led by someone with a driving vision, very deep pockets and an absolute want to make a mark on mobile. So, Ubuntu has the most experienced team, the most polished early rev product and a focused founder. No way that Ubuntu Touch isn't the front runner here. Frankly, it isn't even close (or fair) to compare the rest to Ubuntu.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  I agree with the grandparent. This matters more to Jolla; it's literally their company. If Sailfish doesn't catch on they will go out of business. I'd feel better if I knew in advance that everything they are working on is open source. While Ubuntu has experience bundle's open source software and to a smaller extent creating their own, they don't have any experience in mobile, which is a different ball game entirely. Early progress is impressive though, I will agree.
- Zigurd 14y ago
  Go listen to the Unity haters (I'm not one anymore, it finally seems to work well once you pry the Amazon spyware out of it) about Canonical's ability to innovate without shipping something half-baked. Ubuntu Touch is heavily dependent on Canonical being able to do major surgery on the Linux graphics stack on a very tight schedule. I agree with their plan and the reasoning behind it, but there are many reasons to doubt they can execute on schedule. As for the team, Ubuntu has some experienced phone OS developers but nowhere near the depth Jolla has. The way that Ubuntu used SurfaceFlinger as a provisional system compositor is brilliant. But getting from there to a product is more work than Canonical has ever had to put into a project.

ryanSrich 14y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the sticking point for mobile the availability of apps and not the actual hardware/OS?

JVIDEL 14y ago

Yeah, no: I live in Argentina and nobody, NOBODY here is going to get a FirefoxOS phone. The deal with emerging markets is that people here still cares about personal image which is the only reason why iPhones are still being sold despite being several times the price of Android phones due to import taxes. Couple that with Chinese Android phones that are getting better and cheaper every month and why would anyone get a phone that due to volume won't be cheaper and that will have only a fraction of the support? UP's achilles heel is the lack of proprietary hardware, 99% of the users out there can't even root their phones let alone install a completely different OS on it. Couple that with the innability to run Android apps and the horrible UX that is unity and you have a package nobody wants. Sailfish has no chance at all of growing beyond a very small niche of people. Tizen is basically Samsung's attempt at getting Google out of the picture now that is the biggest fish in the phone sea. BB10 is a better option than most of these OS', even WebOS should be in this list and yet for some reason it was left aside.