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> unlockable bootloaders so the users can load whatever they want Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 .
We shouldn't have to sacrifice performance, quality, and reasonable price points in order to have the basic things we've had in the desktop world for decades.
I think the throwback on HN on this decision is due to the lack of details and context on the news? From what I've understood from the local news (I'm a South Korean), It's not about blocking handsets with forked Android (that already happens regularly AFAIK), but the requirement of shipping Google apps like Chrome and Google Assistant. The big elephant in the room here is Samsung phones, which do ship it's own custo…
Also, it should be noted that Google didn't just disallow shipping Google apps to forked Android. Google disallowed shipping Google apps to any devices from vendors that ship forked Android : if your smartwatch is using forked Android your ordinary smartphone also can't have Google apps even when it's using genuine Android. The KFTC made very clear that this is a nuclear all-or-nothing option to hardware vendors and…
If you're signed into Google etc on your phone and that is compromised, it appears to the average person that Google messed up.
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If such snowden like person wants to use such a device, wouldn't he be able to change to lineage os or whatever knowing full well he is now the master of the device or is there malware that persists still ?
Someone could flash a hacked version of lineage when you're not looking.
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Reminds me of the idea I've been thinking about - kind of unrelated - but once a device is officially no longer supported by a company - particularly consoles and online games - they should make the source code available so people can continue from there on their own.
I've thought about that before too. As soon as something is no longer actively supported, it should become open for people to maintain themselves. Unfortunately, there's a lot of companies that would fight that with as much money as it takes, so it would never happen (at least not in the US)
Something like this would have to be done with regulation.
Shares some similarities with the gradual corruption of copyright over the years, extending it out into infinity (thanks Disney!), companies would rather hold close the things they refuse to use than give them to the people once they have no more profit to be made off of them.
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Reminds me of the idea I've been thinking about - kind of unrelated - but once a device is officially no longer supported by a company - particularly consoles and online games - they should make the source code available so people can continue from there on their own.
Ideally, companies should be forced to deposit everything needed for manufacturing a product - 3D designs, software toolchains, PCBs, BOMs, service tooling - at the national archives to be held in trust. Once the manufacturer ceases supporting a product, everything becomes open source.
I don't know if putting the government in charge of maintaining all of that would be the best idea.
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I've thought about that before too. As soon as something is no longer actively supported, it should become open for people to maintain themselves. Unfortunately, there's a lot of companies that would fight that with as much money as it takes, so it would never happen (at least not in the US)
It actively goes against their profit interests. If they deprecate the older devices and leave them as black boxes, that's another way to push consumers to buying the new stuff. Something like this would have to be done with regulation. Shares some similarities with the gradual corruption of copyright over the years, extending it out into infinity (thanks Disney!), companies would rather hold close the things they re…
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Give me a Librem 5 with an SoC that isn't hot garbage and I'd buy it immediately.
People already complain about the price of that thing. Include a better SoC and it's going to get more expensive.
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Kia is not a competitor to RR because there are loads of luxury car brands that compete with RR and loads of general-to-expensive brands that compete with Kia. In the smartphone OS market, it doesn't matter if apple is on the luxury spectrum and android is on the general spectrum, because they are the only relevant OSs around (excluding harmony because it doesn't have nearly as much market share as those two). So yes…
I feel like you’re strictly comparing things in terms of price and OS. Im trying to say a Kia user wont want to buy RR or RR user wont want to buy a Kia. The comparison im trying to make is, Switch form iOS to Android and vice versa is very rare. You can’t really call two OSes a competitor if their users want two different things. The users of iOS and Android have different views on what their OS means. And People ex…
> only real android competitor is manufactured by one company who doesn't allow even the end user to install apps not directly approved by Apple
Even if android and apple might be strongly separate segments of the smartphone market, since they are the only relevant ones at play (FirefoxOS is no more, harmony doesn't have significant market share and pure Linux is not a thing yet), they are the only competitiors of each other, because, even if not to frequently, we do observe people switching from apple to android and vice versa, people have no other alternative to get a mobile device to run their apps on.
Your point still stands, someone that's on android and want to leave android but doesn't like apple because they run the business in such a dramatic way, might feel like an OS monopoly, because Android and apple are so different from each other. Still, since both run out apps, both run browsers, both (usually) have cameras, etc etc, they are still competitiors, even if very weak ones (your car analogy doesn't apply here anymore, since smartphones and cars are very different, but it was a good analogy till now, but analogies only go so far).
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People already complain about the price of that thing. Include a better SoC and it's going to get more expensive.
The BoM cost of the i.MX 8M Quad in the Librem 5 is $35.49. The BoM cost of the Snapdragon 865+, when it was brand new, was $57. That $22 price difference brings a 700% performance increase.