71–80 of 226 posts
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Last I checked the official work the graphics drivers were completely left out.
That would be freedreno, not sure how complete it is yet.
Congratulations to Fairphone. This sounds like a massive task especially for such a small team. I run a Fairphone 3 and I couldn't be happier. Sure it was on the pricy side but it's served me well, takes great photos, has survived numerous drops (the phone protector shipped with it is great), looks cool,strikes up interesting conversations now and then, and will apparently have Android updates well into the future. F…
I justified the higher price to support their vision, not because it's a great daily driver, but it serves well as a backup phone with /e/OS. The cameras can be upgraded to the 3+ ones, so it's great that it's the only truly modular and DIY repairable device on the market.
I wish that a chipset swap and upgrade would be possible though. Google's Project Ara was interesting, but it was probably infeasible, and the technology might not be there yet.
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Are you implying the 'no stable binary ABI' policy is responsible for a lot of e-waste?
I mean, that seems to be the result, yes? The intent is to compel device manufacturers to release the source of their drivers, but at this point, I think we have to admit that's not a great description of what's happening in the mobile space.
I doubt that was the "intent"... perhaps a contributory argument in favour of a non-stable ABI, but I understand the reasons are far more pragmatic: maintaining a stable kernel ABI is a lot of work which could have strangled Linux in its early years.
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The radio firmware could be executed on different CPU than the Android kernel and communicate with a standard protocol ?
That's more or less what happens already.
Right now it is the worst of both worlds. Closed interface for a closed undocumented chip able to execute arbitrary code.
It's mind-boggling to me that Qualcomm only guarantees 2-3 years of support for their chipset. Compare that to the PC processor space, how much does AMD/Intel provide? 10 years? More? Somehow people seem to be running on 15 year-old Thinkpads without a problem, yet a $1000 phone apparently can't scrape by for more than three years due to vendor support?
So, not quite 10 years. Still a hell of a lot better than Qualcomm, though.
It's mind-boggling to me that Qualcomm only guarantees 2-3 years of support for their chipset. Compare that to the PC processor space, how much does AMD/Intel provide? 10 years? More? Somehow people seem to be running on 15 year-old Thinkpads without a problem, yet a $1000 phone apparently can't scrape by for more than three years due to vendor support?
>Compare that to the PC processor space, how much does AMD/Intel provide? 10 years? More? They don't "provide" anything. It's the software (eg. linux/windows) that's providing backwards compatible support. Vendor support for pc hardware lasts a few years at most.
It's not just Qualcomm it's closed source driver blobs in general. Even if your CPU might still be supported your other hardware might not. A common offender is camera drivers as far as I know and while you sometimes can still make the camera work it often comes with noticeable decreased quality (as the special patent encumbered closed source image post processing sausage is missing). Besides that potential but as fa…
What I don't understand (due to my ignorance, please explain if you can)... what keeps the driver blobs from continuing to work from one version of Android to the next? What prevents people from using the same drivers for a device on Android 7 and upgrading the OS to 9 or 10? I always understood that drivers would continue to allow the OS to recognize the component that the drivers are for unless something drasticall…
This is a conscious and opinionated strategy on the part of Linux, as an effort to make the cost of keeping drivers closed-source high and the cost of kernel refactoring low. It also has... disadvantages, in the form of a massive wasteland of only-supported-once snapshot-in-time devices. I am sure this comment thread will happy expound on this in great and painful detail.
Secondly, there was an entire effort by Google called "Project Treble" to build a stable Android HAL/ABI over the top of these unstable kernel interfaces. Unfortunately it would/will require essentially an Android-specific rewrite from vendors in order to fully implement, so many drivers are not yet operating in this model.
Congratulations to Fairphone. This sounds like a massive task especially for such a small team. I run a Fairphone 3 and I couldn't be happier. Sure it was on the pricy side but it's served me well, takes great photos, has survived numerous drops (the phone protector shipped with it is great), looks cool,strikes up interesting conversations now and then, and will apparently have Android updates well into the future. F…
It's a decent device, but feels several generations behind any mid-range phone released in 2019. The screen has color blurring when scrolling especially visible with text, the fingerprint reader often doesn't get a good read, and it's noticeably sluggish in everyday tasks. I justified the higher price to support their vision, not because it's a great daily driver, but it serves well as a backup phone with /e/OS. The…
> The screen has color blurring when scrolling especially visible with text
Mine doesnt
> the fingerprint reader often doesn't get a good read
I don't make a habit of volunteering biometric data near Google, so can't comment.
> it's noticeably sluggish in everyday tasks.
Not sure what everyday tasks you mean? Haven't ever really noticed it being sluggish? HN is snappy as hell :)
> The cameras can be upgraded to the 3+ ones
I didn't know, thanks!
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What I don't understand (due to my ignorance, please explain if you can)... what keeps the driver blobs from continuing to work from one version of Android to the next? What prevents people from using the same drivers for a device on Android 7 and upgrading the OS to 9 or 10? I always understood that drivers would continue to allow the OS to recognize the component that the drivers are for unless something drasticall…
This is because the Linux kernel itself is constructed and developed in a way where driver interfaces (API) are ruthlessly refactored and the linker interface for kernel modules (ABI) is intentionally version-incompatible. If the driver's source code is not in the kernel, it doesn't gain the benefit of kernel developers doing this ruthless refactoring and falls behind immediately from a source point of view, and from…
And Qualcomm is probably very, very happy with this arrangement. They can put a gazillion devs to maintain their BSPs using any means possible, but a small 2nd tier SoC fabbless don't.