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Recently ive been wondering why android is so different compared to windows?
I mean, although android 2.2, 2.3, (2.4) is out and running, only a small percentage of the phones actually got the upgrade, and most of em are still running 2.1 or lower for the time being, so what is the point in having a new firmware available if you cant run it on your phone anyway ?
Android is just a firmware right ? So why cant it be like windows, when there is a new version, no matter what specs or brand of PC, you just install and your up and running... And phones are just like small computers right ?
So why doenst google make android just as compatible as windows, and as soon as a new version comes out, we just install it and were good to go ? I know this is sort or less the whole point of it being open source, but there has to be a solution to this.
This would actually make so much more sense than it is right now! I know all phone-brands want to add there personal touch to there android phones like SE did with timescape and mediascape etc, but its all just based on the same firmware right ? So why cant these things like timescape and mediascape be seen like an update ? rather than fully integrated in the firmware ?
In my opinion, phone brands should go back to what they are actually good at.. manufacturing phones, and google should go back to what they are good at, designing new android versions, this shouldn't be the other way around.
Could one of you pls explain this to me ?
As a master student in economics, IF android could actually be compared like windows as I just explained, this would only have positive effects on the android/phone market, instead of all these angry and disappointed customers...
http://gizmodo.com/5733556/the-complete-state-of-android-froyo-upgrades
this threat is what made me write this, it is clear we are not the only ones stuck with 2.1 (but the gods at XDA are doing their best to fix this!)
I understand your point. My take on it is about the fragmentation. I'm not commenting whether it is good or not, but here's what I think. Windows machine have a much higher memory where they can store drivers, settings, etc. Just Windows XP alone took approx 6GB? I don't think phones can have that much internal memory at the moment. Also, PC's have interfaces where everything comes out to the correct machine language (PCI, SATA, etc) While these lacks on phones. They have different architectures and peripherals that supports only that architecture. Therefore, to keep it lightweight, it is the manufacturer's responsibility that if they are using OS such as Android, that the OS works with their hardware, while on PC, it's more hardware to work with the OS.
I'm sure if there's a universal hardware interface for mobile devices and enough internal memory, your wish will come true
unknown13x said:
I understand your point. My take on it is about the fragmentation. I'm not commenting whether it is good or not, but here's what I think. Windows machine have a much higher memory where they can store drivers, settings, etc. Just Windows XP alone took approx 6GB? I don't think phones can have that much internal memory at the moment. Also, PC's have interfaces where everything comes out to the correct machine language (PCI, SATA, etc) While these lacks on phones. They have different architectures and peripherals that supports only that architecture. Therefore, to keep it lightweight, it is the manufacturer's responsibility that if they are using OS such as Android, that the OS works with their hardware, while on PC, it's more hardware to work with the OS.
I'm sure if there's a universal hardware interface for mobile devices and enough internal memory, your wish will come true
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I understand what you are saying, but then again, why dont we just manufacture android phones based on the same architecture ? So they will all be compatible with every version of android ?
If this could be accomplished in some way, manufacturers wont have to deal with the lack of compatibility of newer versions anymore, and every phone will run optimal with any given firmware.
Android is at the same development stage as windows when it was win.dos, effectively; the future development was not foreseen. The aggressive marketing by ms changed that, obviously, but pcs from that era are hopelessly outdated. Mobile manufacturers are keeping up with Google rather than being dictated to by them. Eventually, a physical threshold will result in Android updates being software instead of hardware.
I think...
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
android is a fairly new n young operating system... its hardly 2 yrs old....
give it time... the way its goin now it headed in the right direction (same as windows)... compatibility issues will be sorted as time progresses... bare in mind that android devices span vast array of price ranges (and thus diff hardware as suited for that price) so compatibility will be an issue which will be sorted out in time...
clintax said:
I understand what you are saying, but then again, why dont we just manufacture android phones based on the same architecture ? So they will all be compatible with every version of android ?
If this could be accomplished in some way, manufacturers wont have to deal with the lack of compatibility of newer versions anymore, and every phone will run optimal with any given firmware.
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The problem is there's too many architecture to go for. A universal architecture means we're eliminating many companies. For example, say we choose snapdragon as our universal. That means ARM, NVIDIA, will all be taken out the competition. Of course ARM cannot build a microcontroller based on snapdragon's design either, this is due to licensing and such. I'm sure manufacturer wants something like you said, it will be much easier to manage, but chip makers are doing things their own way. Also, you have to consider how much new technology is being introduced to phones in just one year. It is massive. Even if phones have the same architecture, the problem that comes about is the memory size to store all the drivers. Either way, it will have to go through the manufacturer to strip it out, which would be back to where we start again. So it will not work out anytime soon...However I did heard Google is aiming to make a flexible Android where it can do something like you said, but looking at the hardware change, it's impossible for now
FWIW - I think that it's more to do with USP's - Each manufacturer could, quickly and fairly easily just bung stock android onto their hardware, and therefore make it extremely easy for us all to upgrade to the latest OS.. but they think.. "hang on, if we do that then all the phones will look and work in the same way.. why would anyone want to buy ours, over xxx competitors phone... no that simply won't do.. we must make our phones special, different and more appealing to XYXY subset of the market... that way we'll sell more phones than our competitors and eventually.. if we're lucky, we might just compete with Apple"..
Or something along those lines!
Gawd - I thought for a minute you actually wanted Android to be "like" Windows...
I nearly pooped myself.
k1sr said:
Gawd - I thought for a minute you actually wanted Android to be "like" Windows...
I nearly pooped myself.
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I was thinking the same way! Windows? Nah! Windows itself is a bloatware OS...
Deleted...
Since all of us basically have our life on our phones it would be nice to have some security, especially filesystem encryption. Fortunately Android is open source and so is cryptsetup/luks. I would love to see this implemented in some roms. Even a encrypted private folder like ubuntu sounds like a great idea. Once we get the backend compiled and working we can work on a nice native android gui. This has already been done on the G1, im surprised that cyanogen or the other great android hackers have not seen this:
Cryptsetup/luks on android
Alternatively you could star some issues on the android code page, but I doubt we will see any progress for a while since that really isnt a priority. Lets work together and get this started, brainstorm, etc.
I have moved my sensitive information onto my Vibrant, I now use anMoney paid for all my finances and budgeting, as well as usernames/passwords/documents, etc. I think this needs to be an option for a user.
I'm all for better security. Business users always welcome better security. This will help make Android more readily to be an enterprise phone or else it will never get its footstep in the door.
At my work we are evaluating the feasibility of using some Android devices for data collection/modification purposes.
Right now we use the all too familiar (in the retail industry anyways) Symbol/Motorola Windows Mobile PDA. While these devices work, they are stuck in the past in almost every way. The always have awful resistive touch screens, often don't properly support modern WiFi encryption standards, are very expensive, slow, etc... Not to mention Microsoft has all but dropped support for Windows Mobile/CE entirely, and you have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of writing an application for the platform. Maintaining the app we use for that platform is becoming a pain, and its not going to get any better. Instead of putting any more time into the WM app, we feel its time to move on.
We have already been developing a intranet page to replace the functionality of the Windows Mobile app. What really pushed us towards Android was the fact is has a modern internet browser. This allowed us with just a bit of additional html/css/javascript to serve up a version that works fine in the Android browser. Something we tried and failed to do with the Windows CE browser. We where also able to get it working fine with a external motorola bluetooth barcode scanner for input purposes.
Our only issue now is what kind of devices are out there for this type of application? The ideal device would be about phone sized, or maybe slightly larger (small tablet even), would be a bit more ruggedized than your normal consumer electronics and have Wifi/Bluetooth (cellular functionality not required or wanted) Right now the only device I've found that meets those requirements has been the Motorola ET1 Android tablet. Am I missing some others out there?
The test devices we have been using where a modified Nook Color and a original Motorola Droid, obviously such devices would not be suitable in actual use.
In terms of size i'm sure you have heard of the galaxy note, mind you you might kill it in a comercial setting.
You probably want to google for IP67 certified devices. The Motorola DEFY+ comes to mind since it's so cheap, It also has CM7/9 support and possibly MIUI.
What are the chances we'll see the new Ubuntu for phones os running on our hardware anytime soon?
As far as I understand it it should be just a matter of compiling for our specific soc, making a flashable rom and then flashing, right? They say it can run on android kernels so there shouldn't have to be any hardware interface work that needs to be done, right?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app
If you don't mind me asking, how would this make any difference to us?
rangercaptain said:
If you don't mind me asking, how would this make any difference to us?
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It would enable us an alternative operating system choice, allowing application developers to create processor native applications (rather than using a java virtual machine that's quite resource intensive than running apps on the bare metal) thus using less system resources, enabling faster multitasking, greater compatibility with preexisting applications, enhanced security, and the desktop mode that they are touting is quite nice as well. connect an hdmi dongle and use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to turn the phone into a desktop computer... there are lots of uses for a bare metal operating system on a hardware platform with restrictive system resources.
there's really nothing wrong with android per se, she's a great OS, but there are a wide number of other approaches to building os's and user experiences. I would consider this pretty similar to choosing to install ubuntu on a PC, or windows on a mac for that matter. it's a matter of widening the variety of application approaches and compatibility. a matter of choice.
I really want to know if this is possible after seeing the demo of it on engadget this morning I'm convinced that this is one os I'd be willing to flash and possibly leave on over android, as amazing as Android is this just better though out in terms of where everything is and speed of access
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It may take off, if someone is able to best the entire android community as a whole, but the odds of that are "0"...
We would be better served if google took it over, and incorporated the OS into a handful of smart phones. Beyond that prospect, a port for us would be nothing more than a pet project.
This idea is not new, and mention of it can be found in virtually ever forum on this site, and a few devs have met with success on getting a bootable Android device running Ubuntu, but it was a short lived event, as support for the OS is simply not there ATM.
I do agree that a different OS is a good idea, but as a dedicated Android user, I would not be willing to switch at this point, as a stable, functional OS is months or even years away.
Likely the OS would fall the way of RIM, and other OS platforms, albeit, ahead of it's time.....g
gregsarg said:
It may take off, if someone is able to best the entire android community as a whole, but the odds of that are "0"...
We would be better served if google took it over, and incorporated the OS into a handful of smart phones. Beyond that prospect, a port for us would be nothing more than a pet project.
This idea is not new, and mention of it can be found in virtually ever forum on this site, and a few devs have met with success on getting a bootable Android device running Ubuntu, but it was a short lived event, as support for the OS is simply not there ATM.
I do agree that a different OS is a good idea, but as a dedicated Android user, I would not be willing to switch at this point, as a stable, functional OS is months or even years away.
Likely the OS would fall the way of RIM, and other OS platforms, albeit, ahead of it's time.....g
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While I strongly believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, the fact of the matter is that it's already running on the quintessential android test bed for the current generation of phones (the galaxy nexus) which means that it should be very easily ported to other, similar hardware (which is most of the android devices out there right now.). if they made this completely open source (which i'm pretty sure they'd have to given that most of the components of the OS are built on open-source licenses), and allowed the already very good and very diverse linux community expand it's functionality, write good apps for it, I think it has some pretty great promise.
my personal standpoint however, is that operating systems for mobile should work exactly like they do for PC's (and macs for that matter). you should be able to install whatever, whenever, without the approval of the company that happens to make the hardware, and without the approval of the company who provides the data and telephone services for the device... it's a pocket computer, not a dumb phone designed for one thing.
I thought Android was Linux and Ubuntu was Linux. Why is one type better than the other? And to run native, wouldn't hardware manufacturers have to write a butt load of drivers? Like the fiasco of upgrading from win2000 to win7.
Ubuntu won't be released til 2014, will older phones like our note1 be supported?
Keep in mind that by 2014 the note1 would be considered old in mobile years.
rangercaptain said:
I thought Android was Linux and Ubuntu was Linux. Why is one type better than the other? And to run native, wouldn't hardware manufacturers have to write a butt load of drivers? Like the fiasco of upgrading from win2000 to win7.
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hardware drivers always run on the bare metal anyway (usually as part of the kernel, or occasionally as a background daemon service). the point is that android applications are built on top of the java environment which is a virtual machine - it's processes are abstracted and emulated which requires much more system resources than writing in something like c++ for the underlaying hardware. the only compatibility that this would break is that binaries don't work across cpu platforms. if something is compiled for the arm9 architecture for example (what most modern smartphones use, including our note), it wouldn't run on android for x86 or another java virtual machine like bluestacks. in order to get it to run on a different hardware platform you'd either have to emulate a complete device (like the iphone and android sdk simulators), or recompile it for the platform you want to run it on (only useful if you have the source code). the latter method is how linux distributions have been doing things for years. there are virtually identical linux distributions that can run on intel, arm, powerpc, sparc, motorola 68k, etc. etc. they can all run pretty much the same applications (because of the hardware abstraction layer present in the kernel), but in order for it to work, those applications must be recompiled for the appropriate underlaying processor architecture, as the output of a c(++,#) compiler is code that is cpu architecture specific.
also, windows 2000 and windows 7 were designed for the same (or similar) underlaying hardware problems. windows 2000 to windows 7 was mostly a piece of cake. whereas the move from windows 98 to windows 2000 or windows 98 to windows xp was difficult because windows 9x and windows 2000/xp use a different variety of hardware abstraction layer and thus different drivers must be written as drivers designed for one HAL won't work with another. (same thing for major linux revisions. the HAL in the 2.4 series of kernels is different from the one in 2.6 series of kernels which means one has to rewrite device drivers in order to get some less-than-standard hardware working.
So cp....
your a smart guy...
Get it going for us.....
you've got the skills we need to pull it off....g
gregsarg said:
So cp....
your a smart guy...
Get it going for us.....
you've got the skills we need to pull it off....g
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Click to collapse
Actually, If i had access to the sources (that by all rights should be open thanks to the way the gpl is designed), I'd be happy to build a rom and help with the development efforts. I'm pretty decent at optimizing linux distributions for arm hardware. we should all petition canonical to release the code post haste.
I would love to see ubuntu ported over to phones. I almost fell off my chair when I heard of the idea that your phone could just connect to a monitor/keyboard/mouse to become a fully fledged desktop computer. This would literally replace almost all of my gadgets into one device. I wouldn't need a laptop, an ipod, a dvd player, or even a gaming console possibly as well.
I've been using ubuntu for a number of years and would be overjoyed to see almost all of my electronics and computing essentially made into one pocket sized device. The possibilities are so great for this kind of leap in technology and it almost seems to be the inevitable succession in personal computer technology. This could possibly be the beginning of the end for laptops, desktops, tablets, and netbooks/ultrabooks. All data would be transmitted using flash memory or transmitted OTA instead of spinning disks or other media.
If the source code is released, and I'm sure it will since Canonical has done a decent job of running Ubuntu lately, I hope someone brings it to the i717 because then I would probably sell a lot of electronic equipment
The release will never happen to allow a single, all inclusive device.
Ubuntu or not, there are too many hands in the pie, and billions of dollars on the table.
The apples, and Samsungs of the world will go at it until the day we die.
They all want the biggest piece, and will squash anyone that gets in their way.
Ubuntu would need a home run piece of code that emulates a magic carpet if they ever hope to slay the beast.
And if they did, I'm not so sure that people would embrace the one stop shop mentality for a single device anyway.
It simply stinks of yet another apple type monopoly in the making.
I support the idea, but it's the logistics that kill the deal, money driven logistics of course.....g
gregsarg said:
The release will never happen to allow a single, all inclusive device.
Ubuntu or not, there are too many hands in the pie, and billions of dollars on the table.
The apples, and Samsungs of the world will go at it until the day we die.
They all want the biggest piece, and will squash anyone that gets in their way.
Ubuntu would need a home run piece of code that emulates a magic carpet if they ever hope to slay the beast.
And if they did, I'm not so sure that people would embrace the one stop shop mentality for a single device anyway.
It simply stinks of yet another apple type monopoly in the making.
I support the idea, but it's the logistics that kill the deal, money driven logistics of course.....g
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Too true, it's all about the money in the end, even with free stuff.
Now that you mention it, it does sound a lot like some sort of Apple type ploy to get you to buy their things... either way I hope it happens someday
With FirefoxOS being the only real open source platform, there is an undeniable attraction to test it on many older devices. I would like to compile a sticky thread of older phone hardware that lists attempts on these phones. A good start would be the cutoff of the following hardware:
Single CPU 400MHz
256MB RAM
4GB storage
WiFi
Does anyone know if there would be any other attributes that would exclude devices further?
Gmaslin, from what I understand, the "gonk" layer will require Android drivers from Android v4.x if I'm not mistaken.
I found the list of compatible Android driver versions at some point on the MDN documentation, but I've not stumbled across it again. If I find it, I'll link it here.
Saijin_Naib
Hmmm. Does that mean the FirefoxOS makes specific calls to objects in the "gonk" layer that cannot be replaced/renamed? If so, that restriction might severely limit the list of candidates. I've found the biggest headaches with cooking ROMs are getting the drivers sorted out and playing nicely with each other. Any kind of hardware abstraction layer should help organize this process in theory but problems arise when the device in question has a fuzzy relationship to the layer calling it. That list from MDN will be a good starting point but it won't be comprehensive if this thread has anything to do with it.
:highfive:
gmaslin said:
Saijin_Naib
Hmmm. Does that mean the FirefoxOS makes specific calls to objects in the "gonk" layer that cannot be replaced/renamed? If so, that restriction might severely limit the list of candidates. I've found the biggest headaches with cooking ROMs are getting the drivers sorted out and playing nicely with each other. Any kind of hardware abstraction layer should help organize this process in theory but problems arise when the device in question has a fuzzy relationship to the layer calling it. That list from MDN will be a good starting point but it won't be comprehensive if this thread has anything to do with it.
:highfive:
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GMASLIN, sorry, I'm a complete and utter noob. My knowledge with FFXOS extends only so far as git/build/flash, and that all only happened in the past two weeks or so, haha.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Firefox_OS_build_prerequisites
"Important: Only devices running at least Android 4 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) are supported. If your device is listed above but running an older version of Android, please update it before doing anything."
I've also heard rumblings that not having the up to date drivers can cause issues on newer versions of gecko/gaia, like what happens on the ZTE Open/Inari with current builds. Things like GPS, home button light, and hwcomposer break because the gonk bits are out of date, and ZTE has to provide them.
Saijin_Naib said:
GMASLIN, sorry, I'm a complete and utter noob. My knowledge with FFXOS extends only so far as git/build/flash, and that all only happened in the past two weeks or so, haha.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Firefox_OS_build_prerequisites
"Important: Only devices running at least Android 4 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) are supported. If your device is listed above but running an older version of Android, please update it before doing anything."
I've also heard rumblings that not having the up to date drivers can cause issues on newer versions of gecko/gaia, like what happens on the ZTE Open/Inari with current builds. Things like GPS, home button light, and hwcomposer break because the gonk bits are out of date, and ZTE has to provide them.
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Anything running Jellybean will run this?
Isn't this separate from Android?
crobjam said:
Anything running Jellybean will run this?
Isn't this separate from Android?
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I believe that it's seperate from Android OS, however JB identifies a hardware benchmark. Is it possible that a phone capable of running JB should be capable of running Firefox OS?
djphrost1 said:
I believe that it's seperate from Android OS, however JB identifies a hardware benchmark. Is it possible that a phone capable of running JB should be capable of running Firefox OS?
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FFXOS uses the Android hardware drivers and runs its own userspace stuff (if I read everything correctly).