Fuck Android. I want a vanilla phone that I can install Linux into…fully open source so we can be sure Walmart is not gathering ideas of what to sell me next.
Have you looked at grapheneOS? Its essentially a fork of the android open source project with extra privacy features. So, regular android apps still work for the most part, but you dont have google spyware built in.
O … open sauce it & it will get maintained for much loner, ya greedy bastards.
The good thing about android is you can flash some custom OS on them if they run out of updates easier than iOS
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no thanks. I’ll keep my Google free android.
This will probably help you with that. Having a phone that has 8 years of kernel updates is going to make it a strong target for community ports.
I still can’t understand how I can install modern Windows or Linux on a 20 year old PC but the same can’t be done with 4 year old phone… 8 year is cool but it’s nothing compared to 20 years.
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Because phones are a mess of out of tree patches specific to that phone model with zero hope of being upstreamed into the Linux kernel without a cleaner rewrite because it’s not good, it’s made to work and nothing more.
It’s improved but companies like Qualcomm also used to basically drop the code to the manufacturers when the chip launches and then move on with little maintenance for the code and stop maintaining the code once the chip is not produced anymore. Manufacturers don’t have the expertise to maintain that forever nor the will, so you end up with a kernel that keeps aging and isn’t keeping up with Android and the community hasn’t been successful in integrating it all either.
Google’s been pushing hard for this to improve but they’re the only ones to even care. Samsung and others would much rather sell you a new phone.
Not just Google, but the community has been hard at work with porting mainline Linux to phones. postmarketOS is the main OS that devices are initially ported to.
Qualcomm is actually involved with this as well, specifically with Linaro, who does a lot of kernel mainlining for Qualcomm SoCs.
Honestly I’m impressed with all the work the community has put into projects like LineageOS but when I recently checked the supported devices list I feel like we’re at the lowest point we’ve ever been and now to buy a phone for 10 years means to buy a Pixel.
Not often I say this but: Good job Google.
Phones have a hard life compared to a computer, I suspect the number of phones that last four years would be very small, never mind 8.
The last time I dropped my laptop in the sink is the same as the last time I dropped my phone in the sink.
Do people really treat their phones so badly? I have a Galaxy Note II (Almost 12 year old phone!) that still works. Thanks to community support it has Android 12 installed and it’s currently working as a radio in my garage.
My uncle is using my old S8 as his daily driver and it works no problem.They get carried around all day, charged every day, dropped, ports wear out etc. Compared to a computer, they have a hard life, even the most kindly treated ones.
My last phone lasted 5 years till the display broke. Had to switch the battery once, but nothing else gave out. My current one gets 8 years of updates, and I plan on using it till then, as long as nothing unexpected happens.
This is great news. It’s unfortunate that the 8 years of updates is limited to qualcomm flagship chip, anyway it’s still a step in the right direction. My phone will be 8 years this year and it survived this long because of custom ROMs that don’t support this device anymore, so i’m all in for this types of policies.
