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Toward a freer AndroidToward a freer AndroidPosted Oct 6, 2009 22:23 UTC (Tue) by fyodor (guest, #3481)In reply to: Toward a freer Android by xav Parent article: Toward a freer Android I'm also impatiently awaiting the Maemo-5 based Nokia n900. How can I not, when the hardware specs (especially the 800x480 screen) are to die for and their professed philosophy is the following? If freedom is your concern then you don't need to 'unlock' or 'jailbreak' Maemo 5. From installing an application to getting root access, it's you who decide. We trust you, and at the end it's your device. Nokia also trusts the open source community in general and the Maemo community particularly helping in getting casual users through the experience path. The N900 might just be a new and successful entry point for a new wave of open source users and developers. Also, Jonathan is planning to get one, so I'm looking forward too a not-so-grumpy-editor review coming up. Google claimed Android was going to be a very open Linux phone, but I'm just not impressed by their follow through :(. I'm hoping the n900 can be the open source answer to the iPhone. My Nmap Security Scanner is already available for its predecessor, the n810, and it should work just as well on the n900. No jailbreaking or root hacking necessary. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to checking the Amazon page every day for a pre-order shipment date. It is supposed to happen this month! Also, I recently found an extremely detailed review of the n900.
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Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 7, 2009 1:06 UTC (Wed) by nbd (subscriber, #14393) [Link]
Sorry, but I can only laugh at claims about Maemo being open. According to the (little) information about this issue that I can find on the web, enough essential parts of Maemo are binary-only, so that you cannot even build a remotely functional variant of it yourself without relying on binary-only stuff by Nokia. See http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages for some examples. Based on that it seems to me that Android is much closer to being a usable free software phone stack.
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 7, 2009 2:17 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
in reading that link it looks like the only thing that would be a significant problem for using it as a phone is the DSP stuff that they are working at changing
the power management stuff may be needed (depending on exactly what it does)
most of the stuff on that list is pure userspace code, most of which has free equivalents.
and I don't see any hint that you couldn't run that stuff on your own system image.
it's not perfect, but it seems at least as good as the Android "we will let you get a phone that's unlocked, but then we won't let you get apps for it" approach.
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 7, 2009 2:27 UTC (Wed) by nbd (subscriber, #14393) [Link]
I was talking about Maemo and Android, the platforms. I wasn't talking about devices like the N900 or the ADP1. Yes, most of the missing stuff is user space code, but most of what makes the platforms interesting is user space stuff ;)
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 7, 2009 5:53 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
One interesting difference is that N900 is the main product, while Android Developer Phone is just that, a side product. In general one cannot select any Android phone from the market because of the limitations, instead having to trust there will be sensible... no, even cool dev phones from Google.
In my mind I also prefer N900 simply because its developers did not decide to throw everything on top of Linux kernel away, and have greatly contributed to GStreamer, D-Bus, now Qt, etc. over the years. Android seems more like Symbian in the sense that it was (or is) vaporware and then BOOM, there is a code drop of open source code but no open source community. I simply don't like all these proprietary vendors doing code-drops and then claiming they are open source right away - there's much more to open source than the code, and it takes years to build that.
/me uses Neo FreeRunner until there is some other phone fully usable with Debian, so therefore I'm interested if it takes a year or two for eg. N900 to be fully usable with Debian.
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 7, 2009 10:43 UTC (Wed) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
Notice that I own a G1 (converted into ADP), so I have some pro-Android bias.
> One interesting difference is that N900 is the main product, while Android Developer Phone is just that, a side product. In general one cannot select any Android phone from the market because of the limitations, instead having to trust there will be sensible... no, even cool dev phones from Google.
I think you nailed it here. Nokia produces both the software, and the hardware of the N900. Google only does the software. So the ADP, *promoted* by Google and actually produced by HTC, have this aspect of "secondary" product to it (and it sucks).
The G1/ADP hardware has now the advantage that so many people bought it, that it is very well supported by the community. So the "side product" issue was mitigated, but it is uncertain how we are going to have well supported recovery images when the Android FOSS-fans user base becomes fragmented into many different handsets. Nokia could win big time here.
I am curious about how well integrated and easy to use will be the N900. My wife has a Nokia smartphone, and I find it *very* poorly executed in some places. Nokia didn't even release this new Maemo, and (if I got it right) its API is already marked as deprecated.
Also, there is at least one company advertising another Free Android phone: http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/10/03/geeksphone-one-i... but most likely Nokia hardware would be better built. But in any case, we *may* have other devices will be released with root access, and decent support.
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 7, 2009 18:25 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] Google doesn't manufacture the hardware, but Google did most of the hardware engineering that went into the G1 and ADP1. They provided this as a reference platform to HTC. So Google was much more "in control" of the hardware than you might think.
Sorry, but no. Posted Oct 7, 2009 18:33 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Google doesn't manufacture the hardware, but Google did most of the hardware engineering that went into the G1 and ADP1. Not really They provided this as a reference platform to HTC. So Google was much more "in control" of the hardware than you might think. Not even close. HTC designed and provided the hardware. Sure, Google supplied requirements, but details were left to HTC - result is usual HTC crazyness (instal of 2.5mm jack and mini-USB or even normal 3.5mm jackand min-USB there are this strange combination favored by HTC).
Sorry, but no. Posted Oct 7, 2009 18:44 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] Sure, HTC changed the audio jack, but the reference hardware platform was designed by Android before Google bought them, much less before HTC got their hands on it. Even the mechanical design was done by Android, as one can see by the patent on the slide mechanism. Certainly HTC made some minor changes, but it was not fundamentally hardware designed by HTC.
Sorry, but no. Posted Oct 8, 2009 1:25 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Sure, HTC changed the audio jack, but the reference hardware platform was designed by Android before Google bought them, much less before HTC got their hands on it. You are correct,of course. Google guys have developed initial version of the device. This is how it looked like. Find ten differences between Google's creation and G1... Even the mechanical design was done by Android, as one can see by the patent on the slide mechanism. Certainly HTC made some minor changes, but it was not fundamentally hardware designed by HTC. Hard to believe if you compare Google's creation and HTC's one. The only common thing they have is hardware keyboard! It was probably hard requirement at that stage so HTC was forced to design a slider. But other stuff... there huge number of differences between engineering prototype and G1...
Sorry, but no. Posted Oct 8, 2009 1:42 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] That photo is one of the much later designs. The early ones were very similar to the G1. I can't find any photos of it, which isn't too surprising since Android was still in "stealth mode" at the time.
This is not photo. Posted Oct 8, 2009 16:22 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I can't find any photos of it, which isn't too surprising since Android was still in "stealth mode" at the time. You can't find any photos if it because they don't exist. What I showed above is not even photo - it's default skin from the very first public release of Android SDK! Why it looks like that? Well - it's the render of actual developer device. Hundred of these or so were produced at the end 2006 (not 2007, but 2006!), but even if HTC produced them (and they even beed spotted in the wild eventually) HTC hated them. And so HTC developed Dream (aka G1) - with Google's guys help, of course, but it's not Google creation. Later Android SDK stopped using this skin and switched to G1-like skin. Why? Google finally got sizable number of new HTC-developed devices and dropped support for it's own development platform and form-factor. First prototypes were ready by the middle of 2007, but developers got sizable number of them closer to the end of 2007. Public, of course, got them in 2008. That's the story and please don't try to rewrite it. If you are correct and initial creation was like Dream and later ones were like aforementioned developer platform,then how come we never got anything like the development platform? Why it was used by default in the very first release of the SDK and not in the later ones? Why all photos of the "later design" (by your interpretation) are shown with early versions of Android (ribbon-like interface was in the first release of SDK and in the first presentation video) and never with modern UI design? Facts just don't add up to your crazy story, sorry.
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 8, 2009 3:52 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
The vast, vast, vast (in fact, basically all) majority of the actual power management code is in the kernel. DSME is replaceable with few-to-zero negative consequences.
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 8, 2009 12:07 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
So much for the 'differentiation' then. A difference that makes no difference is no difference :)
Toward a freer Android Posted Oct 8, 2009 12:48 UTC (Thu) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link]
"in the kernel" doesn't mean it's GPLed code, unfortunately.
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