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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

#21

Post by kogir »

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 radio driver to change across various android versions. The hardware is the same!

And if you want a newer phone, you’re free to buy one! It’s just sad that you can’t safely use older devices just because the blobs break compatibility with OS security and feature updates. This need not be the case.

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

#22

Post by bayindirh »

traverseda wrote: post #18

Isn't this (binary blob drivers) an obvious violation of the linux kernel's GPL license? I presume that there's a good reason why that isn't being enforced, but I would like to better understand why.

There are intentional loopholes left in the kernel to allow such drivers (Nvidia, fglrx, etc. are also closed source).

There are some rules though: Kernel module is always open source and cannot use all the symbols. Also, using such driver marks the kernel tainted.

There are some very valid reasons for not releasing open source drivers. NDA bound 3rd party code is one (Java had it, fglrx had it, HDCP stuff has it, Intel's old GPU drivers had it). Another reason is software based secret sauce. Again GPU drivers are the worst offenders in this class. Third reason is greed/being insecure. Lastly, some companies use this method to effectively deprecate their products, so they can sell newer units more. Embedded space is the biggest example of this. I also worked with such vendor in a very unrelated product category. It's unpleasant.

I don't support any of these reasons, but I understand them from an economic sense. Some companies started to bake their magic into their hardware (Mellanox, AMD), so they can open their software completely. This is a much better path IMHO.

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

#23

Post by monocasa »

traverseda wrote: post #18

Isn't this (binary blob drivers) an obvious violation of the linux kernel's GPL license? I presume that there's a good reason why that isn't being enforced, but I would like to better understand why.

For the most part, yeah, the closed source kernel blobs are blatant GPL violations. I've heard a cute legal theory as to why Nvidia's GPU blobs are at least grey area, but most of the other blobs don't follow that model.

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

#24

Post by mmastrac »

It will be interesting to see what Project Treble brings to the table w.r.t. long term support for Android devices. It should help with the bitrot problem, though it pushes a bunch of stuff into blobs instead of creating long-term maintainable kernel source code.

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

#25

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bgorman wrote: post #2

Why would a company which holds an effective monopoly over Android chips in the US do anything in order to discourage the sale of new chips? Providing support for older chips would hurt sales. Qualcomm is abusing its monopoly position and the laws/patents that allow this need to be changed. Qualcomm is a great example of how IP laws can hurt progress and competition. In the future China and other countries will leapf…

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 companies" narrative about Android's product line just doesn't square with the reality.

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

#27

Post by phh »

What about Google? The issues fairphone mention are passing Google certification suites. They should be relaxed to help those cases. As far as I know the major issues are around GLES. It passed older CTS, so GLES was good enough back then. Surely it could be good enough now.

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

#28

Post by flas9sd »

some Qualcomm SoCs (410c and 845c) are seeing mainline support. I booted a 5.11 kernel on an 2015 device yesterday and had surprisingly good working handheld with the pmOS/Phosh stack. Of course this is still a raw experience for enthusiasts, but one can use an AOSP distribution instead.

The Fairphone concept of easily replacing common problems with screens and battery complements the longterm chipset support, one needs both. It wouldn't help the repair/replace decision if the screen needs 2 hours and heatguns to replace. Making it difficult to unlock the bootloader is another barrier manufacturers and mobile operators are guilty of.

Mainline phones can be used until their counterpart antennas fall from the operators towers - and for 4G I think this is well into 2030.

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

#30

Post by nanna »

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. Fairphone's a great company shipping a great product. Well worth the investment!
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