“Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

Also, perhaps even more importantly, you'd be starting from scratch in terms of app ecosystem, which is even more important today (and especially on mobile) than it used to be in the PC era. You could get some mileage out of the web- but first you'd have to build or port a browser. Chromium certainly won't target your open OS, and with its 75% market share, it now strongarms the direction that web standards take. And many app makers don't even have mobile web apps these days (or their web apps are crippled versions of their "real apps"). Good luck getting Slack and Favor, or your bank, to build apps for your new OS. Or even Dropbox and Evernote. Forget about Netflix and YouTube.

Maybe you're okay with going back to the iPhone 1.0 days where a smartphone was just for phone calls, texting, email, a calendar, listening to music, looking up directions, and searching the web. But while you might get an mp3 player app, many people no longer own copies of their music and you won't get Pandora or Spotify. You certainly won't have a decent maps app - maps are one of the most heavily monopolized core features of today's phones, mainly because of the sheer size of the task of mapping the world. OpenStreetMap exists, but it's honestly not very good.

You start to see the problem.

I used an Android fork for about a year without any Google services before I gave up. I was able to grab a few crucial apps from APKMirror, but not many. I tried using OsmAnd for maps; it was awful. I once bought a pair of headphones I literally couldn't use without the app - available only on the App Store and Play Store. I used web apps to fill in some of the gaps; they were spotty and many were ugly and/or slow and/or didn't hook into APIs like push notifications. At least I had a fully up-to-date Chrome fork to use as my browser.

Maybe after the death of Android there would be greater momentum behind building and sustaining this kind of ecosystem. That would help bolster not only app development, but possibly even the value of the open web, and maybe even the contributions to (and therefore quality of) things like OpenStreetMap. It's hard to say.

Go to https://store.google.com/us/category/phones?hl=en-US and cmd+F search for "android". They aren't selling "android phones" anymore already.

PostmarketOS is the closest I've seen to the right idea for sustainability and openness: mainline Linux kernel, no closed drivers, and a userland that lets various current and future environments be layered (and can run the existing wealth of GNU/Linux software immediately, modulo the small touchscreens).

A word of warning is that still developer-only, not ready for real use. (Even my Replicant devices are much more functional than my PostmarketOS ones, at the moment, but PostmarketOS is a much better idea.)

My previous guess for a roadmap [0]:

1) Pixels move to Fuchsia, native apps are in Dart/Flutter, compatibility layer for Android. Fuchsia becomes a distinguishing feature of Googles hardware, and allows Google to differentiate vs Android competitors.

2) Google continues to support Android, but only as it affects their business interests (as a funnel for search).

3) Google migrates some service level functionality away from Android and Pixels become a first-class citizen in Google's ecosystem. In my mind, Fuchsia is a direct result of Google's newfound interest in hardware (as a business). I imagine the following:

- Google sees voice (and maybe AR) as the next frontier, which is actually an existential threat for them--they are harder to monetize via ads.

- Google decides to start making hardware (for profit), to monetize their services (a la Apple). That is, their Voice Assistant is now differentiated from Android, and to use that service, you have to buy their hardware. Now, they don't need to make money on ads for voice searches.

- Google will continue to roll out more ML-driven services that are exclusive to their hardware, and eventually, exclusive to Fuchsia. This will allow them to both a) further differentiate their hardware from other Android manufacturers, b) better monetize their services (effectively through HW purchases), and c) steal market share of the most valuable customers from Apple.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16568275#16569138

I mean, I know you're suggesting the claim has no merit because the poster doesn't know what they're talking about; but you know, even if the poster were a genius with intimate knowledge of the project, a claim like this is bogus.

If somebody with a modicum of common sense and software experience says some software of this kind of complexity that they're working on "can" be good enough in 5 years that basically means: it's a herculean task, and they have no clue whatsoever as to how long it's actually going to take. Also, they probably don't really know what they're really trying to do, only general aims, not actually how they're achievable.

There's no way in hell anybody can plan something that novel and hugely complex, with that many people involved in an ecosystem that's constantly changing not to mention a business that's not known for its long term perseverance, with any kind of accuracy for 1 year. 5 years is a complete joke.

Who knows - it might happen. It might in just 1 year. Or maybe 50. Or more likely, never. But I cannot believe that estimate to have any kind of sane grounding.

The only way they're actually going to follow through on a schedule that long term is by giving up on scope and quality, which is to say - sure, something will be delivered, but perhaps nothing resembling today's expectations.