KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System • Hacker News Board

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#11

Post by djsumdog » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s.

FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the devices it supports.

PostmarketOS is just a way to turn an old phone into a Raspberry Pi type device, but maybe that's the first step in a truly unified mainline kernel for all mobile devices.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#12

Post by danbolt » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

Even if I had to tune for low-end hardware, I’d love to own and hack around on a simple device with this sort of OS.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#13

Post by Jhsto » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

I'm on a high horse (I'm able to afford an iPhone), but what kind of problem does this solve? To me, it looks like Nokia now has Android, their own operating system, and this to upkeep. Does anyone else remember what happened when they last time partnered with an experimental mobile operating system? I think it was Microsoft last time.

Would love to hear some reasoning from the folks from HMD about this.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#14

Post by awesomepeter » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #9

fabrice_d wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably why Google is using the Progressive Web App version of Google Maps on Android Go instead of a native app... The issue with web UIs in general is that it's still too hard to get optimal performance (eg. make sure you leverage the GPU as much as possible, don't force reflows, etc.). That could be solved by better tooling but we're not there yet.

We have seen how WebOS and FirefoxOS turned out. Wishing Google good luck with PWAs on slow devices. Having seen Inbox web app animations and memory usage I'm not holding my breath

Did you actually use WebOS? I've had a great experience with the Palm Pre phones, way ahead of its time.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#15

Post by madeofpalk » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #2

Let's face it, web on mobile has failed. Web abstraction layer for UI is too heavy and very limited. Even today we can't have multithreaded scrolling or manage painting with the latest web standards. Native platforms don't have to worry about "other browsers" so they can optimize their UI abstraction layer specific to their target devices. They also don't have to wait for ever to get consensus for new APIs and archit…

> web on mobile has failed.

This definitely isn't true. The web is very much alive and flourishing on mobile.

Using web technologies for _everything_ on the phone however, is a mistake. That is not good.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#16

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

fabrice_d wrote: post #5

msoad wrote: post #2

Let's face it, web on mobile has failed. Web abstraction layer for UI is too heavy and very limited. Even today we can't have multithreaded scrolling or manage painting with the latest web standards. Native platforms don't have to worry about "other browsers" so they can optimize their UI abstraction layer specific to their target devices. They also don't have to wait for ever to get consensus for new APIs and archit…

That's probably why Google is using the Progressive Web App version of Google Maps on Android Go instead of a native app... The issue with web UIs in general is that it's still too hard to get optimal performance (eg. make sure you leverage the GPU as much as possible, don't force reflows, etc.). That could be solved by better tooling but we're not there yet.

Google is a schizophrenic company.

Just watch a few Google I/O tracks, and there is always the future of mobile apps is Android on the Android tracks, while the Chrome/Web tracks are pushing for the future of mobile apps is Web, with an occasional jab at native devs, as if on the room next door they weren't talking about native development.

Then to make it even better, now we have Flutter as the third track.

While PWAs are slowly being adopted by everyone else, Google is the company pushing them.

They even have a Web Site just for PWAs, https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/, so yeah politics.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#17

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #2

Let's face it, web on mobile has failed. Web abstraction layer for UI is too heavy and very limited. Even today we can't have multithreaded scrolling or manage painting with the latest web standards. Native platforms don't have to worry about "other browsers" so they can optimize their UI abstraction layer specific to their target devices. They also don't have to wait for ever to get consensus for new APIs and archit…

I still remember how Symbian introduced the Web Runtime for web based mini-apps.

Just today I had to kill Chrome on my device for the WebGL demo that was posted earlier. Yet it does OpenGL 3.x just without sweating.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#18

Post by fabrice_d » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #9

fabrice_d wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably why Google is using the Progressive Web App version of Google Maps on Android Go instead of a native app... The issue with web UIs in general is that it's still too hard to get optimal performance (eg. make sure you leverage the GPU as much as possible, don't force reflows, etc.). That could be solved by better tooling but we're not there yet.

We have seen how WebOS and FirefoxOS turned out. Wishing Google good luck with PWAs on slow devices. Having seen Inbox web app animations and memory usage I'm not holding my breath

Open secret: FirefoxOS "failed" because it could not get a few super popular services in the targeted markets to write apps for it. It's very hard to break the chicken and egg issue without that support when bootstrapping a new mobile OS.

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#19

Post by hollander » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #8

jpalomaki wrote: post #4

Looks like the new HMD-Nokia "banana" is powered by KaiOS [1]. [1] https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-8110-4g

Ugh...school wheel hijacking in the middle of the page ... still not has bad as the KaiOS page.

The horrors of modern webdesign... Looks over usability...

Re: KaiOS – A Smartphone Operating System

#20

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'd really like to see a truly open alternative on the mobile space. The biggest issue is the hardware. It's just not standardized and there's no incentive to do so. It's really preventing the way Linux took off on developers desktops back in the late 90s/early 2000s. FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch looked promising, but they lacked good hardware to run on. I'd really like to try Plasma, but I don't like any of the device…

I really want PostMarketOS to succeed, for one because it would be really neat to have an open phone OS but also because I think it would cut down a lot on the number of phones that end up being demolished long before their actual life-span is at an end.