Toward a freer Android [LWN.net]

Toward a freer Android

Posted Oct 7, 2009 5:53 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
In reply to: Toward a freer Android by nbd
Parent article: Toward a freer Android

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.

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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.