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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

#61

Post by cwyers »

pantalaimon wrote: post #53
techrat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand (due to my ignorance, please explain if you can)... what keeps the driver blobs from continuing to work from one version of Android to the next? What prevents people from using the same drivers for a device on Android 7 and upgrading the OS to 9 or 10? I always understood that drivers would continue to allow the OS to recognize the component that the drivers are for unless something drasticall…

Are you implying the 'no stable binary ABI' policy is responsible for a lot of e-waste?

I mean, that seems to be the result, yes? The intent is to compel device manufacturers to release the source of their drivers, but at this point, I think we have to admit that's not a great description of what's happening in the mobile space.

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

#62

Post by Naac »

Decker87 wrote: post #26

I don't blame Qualcomm one bit. Why would they want to support old hardware long after 99% of people aren't using it?

People aren't using it because it is no longer receiving updates. 2-3 year old hardware should not be considered "old", or obsolete.

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

#63

Post by swiley »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #33
mmastrac wrote: post #24

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.

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.

The answer is a monolithic GPL kernel that forces manufactures to publish driver source code but they don't want to admit it.

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

#64

Post by zrm »

gruez wrote: post #52
ZiiS wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amd and Intel CPUs are still 100% backwards compatable with 40 year old chips. Not just their own chips but also nearly all the features of their competitor's chip too.

>Amd and Intel CPUs are still 100% backwards compatable with 40 year old chips The CPUs might be, but the chipset drivers definitely aren't. You'll have a hard time booting windows 95 on a ryzen system, for instance. Hell, ryzen doesn't officially support windows 7. Still, I get your point, standardization in the PC space (mainly stemming from the "IBM compatible" standard) has made backwards/forwards compatibility m…

What anybody wants is the other way around though. If you want to run Windows 95 on modern hardware you run it in a VM; running it on bare metal isn't that interesting.

And the current versions of various Linux distributions do run on 25+ year old PC hardware, if you really want to.

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

#65

Post by pantalaimon »

swiley wrote: post #47
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…

The Linux driver ABI doesn't need to be stable because the drivers are supposed to be published under the GPL. This way manufactures just need to help get their drivers upstreamed and are largely off the hook for support after that. Androids awful graphics API is hack that allows Qualcomm to keep the driver source closed which means the BSPs rot and you can't use your phone after 2-3 years. I'll happily buy a 10 year…

There is actually quite some upstream work happening for Qualcomm SoCs these days, it's just a lot of effort.

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

#66

Post by swiley »

pantalaimon wrote: post #65
swiley wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux driver ABI doesn't need to be stable because the drivers are supposed to be published under the GPL. This way manufactures just need to help get their drivers upstreamed and are largely off the hook for support after that. Androids awful graphics API is hack that allows Qualcomm to keep the driver source closed which means the BSPs rot and you can't use your phone after 2-3 years. I'll happily buy a 10 year…

There is actually quite some upstream work happening for Qualcomm SoCs these days, it's just a lot of effort.

Last I checked the official work the graphics drivers were completely left out.

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

#67

Post by josephg »

gruez wrote: post #52
ZiiS wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amd and Intel CPUs are still 100% backwards compatable with 40 year old chips. Not just their own chips but also nearly all the features of their competitor's chip too.

>Amd and Intel CPUs are still 100% backwards compatable with 40 year old chips The CPUs might be, but the chipset drivers definitely aren't. You'll have a hard time booting windows 95 on a ryzen system, for instance. Hell, ryzen doesn't officially support windows 7. Still, I get your point, standardization in the PC space (mainly stemming from the "IBM compatible" standard) has made backwards/forwards compatibility m…

True, but old hardware can run windows 10, or modern Linux just fine.

Windows and Linux (and others) seem to hold the policy of drivers for old hardware being maintained and supported seemingly indefinitely. This work isn’t free, but there’s no reason Qualcomm and Samsung and others couldn’t do the same.

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

#68

Post by chickenbane »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #33
mmastrac wrote: post #24

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.

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/

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

#69

Post by pantalaimon »

swiley wrote: post #66
pantalaimon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually quite some upstream work happening for Qualcomm SoCs these days, it's just a lot of effort.

Last I checked the official work the graphics drivers were completely left out.

That would be freedreno, not sure how complete it is yet.

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

#70

Post by nanna »

luckylion wrote: post #31
nanna wrote: post #30

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. F…

How happy are you with the audio quality? I've been reading about issues with echoes on coip connections that seem to have been plaguing some people for quite some time. I dislike the cell phone audio quality by itself, but additional echoes would be a complete show stopper for me.

Really can't say I've experienced anything like this at all. Audio has always worked fine for me.
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