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Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

arstechnica.com

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Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#111

Post by CameronNemo »

dathinab wrote: post #15

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…

The whole point of the patent system is that you do not keep the technique obfuscated.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#112

Post by CameronNemo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #57
kelnos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and we're not going to get support in the mainline kernel without chipset manufacturer support. Namely in the form of open sourcing all the binary blobs, because those aren't going to be accepted into the mainline kernel. Qualcomm just doesn't want to do this. I'm not sure if it's because they don't feel like spending the developer time (money) to do so, or if they believe 2-year obsolescence is better for the…

The kernel- and user-space binary blobs can be replaced by the community. See freedreno, lima, panfrost, nouveau etc.

... with a lot of work that starts only after devices start shipping, and rarely takes advantage of the whole functionality of the hardware.

This is not a sustainable model.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#113

Post by zokier »

blackoil wrote: post #105
zokier wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That got me thinking, why aren't Dell, HP, Lenovo etc selling "enterprise" Android phones? They could get probably pretty good margins on basic devices if they'd have good well-defined support periods. Bonus points for good MDM compatibility and various silly standard compliances that nobody cares about. Just being able to do purchases from same supplier as workstations seems like a major benefit for IT depts. They c…

Long term support for client side machine isn't a requirement for enterprises. Most companies typically refresh laptops after 3-5 years.

3-5 years is long-term for a phone.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#114

Post by coder543 »

zokier wrote: post #55
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #32

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?

That got me thinking, why aren't Dell, HP, Lenovo etc selling "enterprise" Android phones? They could get probably pretty good margins on basic devices if they'd have good well-defined support periods. Bonus points for good MDM compatibility and various silly standard compliances that nobody cares about. Just being able to do purchases from same supplier as workstations seems like a major benefit for IT depts. They c…

Minus the bundle deals, it sounds like you're describing iPhone.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#115

Post by cwyers »

nobodywasishere wrote: post #34
dathinab wrote: post #15

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…

Android should have been GPL

The part of Android that talks to the Qualcom drivers is the Linux kernel, which is GPL already.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#116

Post by yuuta »

mannerheim wrote: post #103
yuuta wrote: post #86

Compare mobile phones to PC today, you will find that a PC made like five or more years ago can run the latest software without issues while for mobile devices, they can hardly survive for more than three years (I guess?) since the ability to support a new Android version completely depends on the SoC manufacturer. You may also upgrade part of the hardware of PC or install whatever OS you like on them if you want to.…

Battery is also an issue. I'm two for two on destroying (my own) Android phones trying to replace the battery myself, but I've been able to replace two iPhone batteries without issue.

Yeah. That's why replaceable battery is a good idea but they disappeared in the recent years.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#117

Post by Marsymars »

toast0 wrote: post #98
muststopmyths wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard one of the reasons Microsoft had to ruthless kill support for phones when switching from WP7 to 8 to 10 was Qualcomm not willing to ship chipset drivers for the older devices with the new kernels in each of those iterations. It would have gotten Microsoft a lot of goodwill if they had, but strangely enough Microsoft at that time did not seem to be interested in the goodwill of Windows Phone users anyway :-) I…

From WP7 to WP8 was WinCE kernel and single core to WinNT kernel and multicore. Maybe the WP7 devices could do it, but not with good performance. That one just wasn't going to happen. Most of the WP8 devices were able to run WM 10, but the experience was really poor on the low memory devices, so those didn't get a release outside of the public insider builds. There was one or two devices that didn't get upgrades for…

> All of that said, a bigger problem was dumping goodwill of developers. WP7, WP8, and WM10 all had new frameworks for apps that were needed for new functionality and didn't work with prior Microsoft OSes; calling the WM10 one 'Universal' was darkly humorous.

I think this was somewhat overstated, since compatibility in the other direction was great. I wrote a WP7 app that worked fine across WP7/WP8/WM10 that I supported until MS pulled the plug entirely on the ecosystem.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#119

Post by Marsymars »

CameronNemo wrote: post #109
foepys wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example: the Nokia 7.2 was released at the end of 2019 and is running on Linux 4.4.194 on the newest available Android update. 4.4 was first released in January 2016 and is currently at 4.4.262. 4.4.194 was released in September 2019. The newest LTS release at the end of 2019 was 4.19, released in October 2018. 4.9 and 4.14 are also LTS releases. 4.4 is a bit special because it's a Super Long Term Support kernel but…

Is that a fair example? Most phones sold are going to be from Samsung.[0] Their recent flagship, the Galaxy S21, is a 5.4.61 kernel. [0] https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-manufacturers [1] https://github.com/mohammad92/android_kernel_samsung_sm8350/...

For a like-for-like example, the Galaxy S10 released in 2019 like the Nokia 7.2 is 4.14.212.

Re: Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support

#120

Post by PurpleFoxy »

kogir wrote: post #21
kogir wrote: post #5

Qualcomm is only able to obstruct in this way because Linux doesn’t keep the kernel driver ABI stable for any fixed period of time. If Android used FreeBSD and Qualcomm shipped drivers for the latest build when the SoC was released, you’d have up to five years of support from that kernel release. Windows Phone 10 was actually in a position to support phones for years and even got Qualcomm onboard. It’s a shame the pl…

I’m going to reply to a few sibling comments at once: Yes, they could upstream drivers, but they won’t. It’s not in their best interest. I’m taking about what could be done in spite of this. Given that they won’t upstream drivers, if the blobs they release keep working for the reasonable life of your device, your phone can get other software updates, including major OS updates. I don’t expect or need the camera or ra…

You can use older devices safely. Switch to iOS. My iPad Air 2 from 2014 still receives every update. It’s clear that android vendors have no interest in long term support and apple does. So I send my money to the company that works the way I want.
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