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

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

#201

Post by ocdtrekkie »

izacus wrote: post #156
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google holds a far stronger monopoly than Qualcomm ever will. If Google required the driver support as a condition of allowing Android devices to be distributed with their hardware, Qualcomm would have to comply overnight. Every single Android device from every manufacturer that wants access to Google apps must be approved by Google, and compliant with Google's terms. The "poor Google is at the mercy of other compani…

That's a strange take considering millions of devices sold across the world running AOSP Android without any kind of Google software. From Huawei/Oppo phones in China, car infotainment systems, tablets used in Enterprise environments... Your own post doesn't really square with reality.

Phones in China alone and some infotainment systems won't keep Qualcomm afloat.

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

#203

Post by ksec »

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…

>Windows Phone 10......shame the platform was never competitive

I still think there is some possibility of Microsoft releasing Windows Kernel as open source. But they will need Azure to be a competitive and stable business first. ( Which is not right now )

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

#204

Post by pjmlp »

chickenbane wrote: post #68
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has been promising to 'solve' fragmentation and long-term support for almost a decade, and it doesn't seem like there is any real solution. If you interested in long-term updates, the answer is simple: buy an iPhone.

We agree that Google hasn't completely solved the support problem, but it's not to say Treble hasn't improved things. Android Pie: https://www.androidauthority.com/project-treble-2019-1045370... Android 11: https://9to5google.com/2020/12/16/android-updates-4-years/

For the lucky ones buying flagship phones, it has hardly changed in the traditional models used by pre-paid customers.

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

#205

Post by boring_twenties »

rubatuga wrote: post #138
boring_twenties wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, don't think so. Vendors cannot create CPU microcode, Intel has to do that. And the relevant Intel document[1] clearly stated that they weren't going to do that. The HP400 specs I found only list Bloomfield processors[2], not Westmere. Perhaps that is the source of your confusion? 1- https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents... 2- https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01709672

X5690 (Westmere) works well in Z400. Here’s another article specifying the BIOS update: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/new-microcode-for...

That's a Meltdown and Spectre update from 2018. I'm talking about Microarchitectural Data Sampling, from 2019.

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

#206

Post by fragileone »

ntauthority wrote: post #182
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…

Meanwhile, on a platform with a generally stable binary driver ABI alike Windows, even drivers for a prototype MSM8960 phone (Snapdragon S4) released in 2012-2013 will still run on 2021 versions of ARM32 Windows (insofar as these are still being built and released, of course).

Google is changing this for Android with GKIs (General Kernel Images) being mandatory[1] for new phones which launch with Android 12 (i.e. late 2022 phones). They'll maintain a stable ABI so that OEMs can plug in their proprietary drivers as kernel modules.

Additionally with the work the Android Kernel team are doing to upstream so Android Common Kernel can be just replaced with using the Linux mainline, we're getting ever closer to limiting the effect that closed-source drivers have on updates.

[1] https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/kernel/gener...

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

#207

Post by joelellis »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #194
fakename11 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat pragmatic for the Linux developers. Support a stable kernel API probably wouldn't be that expensive. It's clearly a political decision against writing close source code that does anything low level.

I am not sure why the comment is being downvoted - thats exactly what it is, a political decision to force companies to produce open drivers.

Because of this unsubstantiated and baseless claim:

> Support a stable kernel API probably wouldn't be that expensive

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

#208

Post by Nextgrid »

surround wrote: post #139

> First, your SoC (System on a Chip) manufacturer (usually Qualcomm) has to get hold of it and customize Android for a particular SoC, adding drivers and other hardware support. Then, that build goes to your phone manufacturer (Fairphone, in this case) which adds support for the rest of the hardware—things like cameras, the display, and any other accessories. Why is it so easy to boot any linux distro on almost any d…

A PC is somewhat standard, at least standard enough that you can use a common API to read from a boot drive and display text on a screen. Going beyond that however does require hardware-dependent drivers and problems start if you don't have them.

A phone doesn't really have this standard; it's closer to a microcontroller with random shit attached to its pins, including for critical operations such as display or disk IO (where as on PCs you can get away with using the generic BIOS-provided functionality, which while not fast will at least work).

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

#209

Post by forty »

kevincox wrote: post #176
codewiz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not just Qualcomm it's closed source driver blobs in general. To be precise, Qualcomm's Linux drivers are GPL'd like the rest of the kernel. Drivers often come with firmware blobs and proprietary binaries in userspace, but it should be possible to keep the kernel driver compatible with both. The actual reason why older SoCs stop working on newer Linux kernels is that Qualcom's drivers were not fully upstreamed…

That may keep the phone working but that doesn't provide security updates. Only Qualcomm can provide security updates for the binary blobs, so if Qualcomm won't sell security updates past 3 years than no OEM can guarantee a secure phone for more than 3 years. Sure, they can update other components but I would be very upset if 3.5 years into my 5 year supported phone a CPU vulnerability was discovered that let apps ge…

> I'll tell you right now that if any somewhat reputable manufacturer promised 5 year support on an otherwise reasonable phone I would buy it

I think that's exactly what Fairphone does. Sure they are not as big as Samsung, but they seem to be true to their word (I'm a happy FP3 customer, but to be honest I have much reasonable expectations for my phone than many :) )

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

#210

Post by toast0 »

Joeri wrote: post #185
toast0 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows Phone 10 was actually in a position to support phones for years and even got Qualcomm onboard. It’s a shame the platform was never competitive, and they’d burned all their goodwill on the 7 and 8 fiascos. Regardless of how much goodwill they burned with 7 and 8, their handling of the WM 10 release nailed the coffin shut. They actually made a release that ran ok, but it was 18 months after the initial releas…

Yes, exactly that. I got onto windows phone with 8.0 and it was very nice to use even if app support was lacking. I steadily saw it decline. 8.1 took away much of what made it unique in the hope of getting better app support ( narrator: it didn’t ) but still remained fast and stable. Windows phone 10 was an outright disaster, slow and buggy, with no advantage to the user. Maybe microsoft was always doomed in the mobi…

> Maybe microsoft was always doomed in the mobile space because of app support, but they did a lot of things wrong that sealed the deal.

I don't think they really were. They were actually gaining market share in the 8.x days, in part because their low priced phones were a lot more usable than similarly priced Android phones. Had they continued that trend with 10, instead of making a terrible release and pivoting towards high priced phones, they might have gotten enough market share to change developer's minds. And it's not like Microsoft didn't have experience on breaking into a market; the first xbox was weird and different, but they became a top tier console.

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