True but if the app is too bloated, at least you get the opportunity to do something about it - strip unused functionality, rewrite performance-sensitive code sections, …
This sets the expectation that everybody is skilled enough. It also leads to problems with security updates. If I fork a program to build a smaller release, then one needs to maintain it.
And what if the inefficiency comes from the core technology used. For example an electron app vs native app writen in C. I am not going to rewite Discord from Electron to C because my phone has too little computational power. This would be ridiculous.
Human work costs money. This leads to the use of higher and higher level frameworks for development in order to code faster, but could be less efficient. The hardware must keep up.
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I agree with the basic points you made but it’s an opportunity and one that you don’t have with Android and Apple.
The idea that the hardware must keep up is somewhat counter to the Purism narrative. If bloatware means built-in obsolescence then we may indeed need to do some selective rewriting, although Purism would presumably seek to upstream any compatible changes.
In other words, let’s say that Purism comes out with the Librem 5v2 in a couple of years time and it offers much better specifications … the narrative should not be: put your Librem 5 in the electronic waste stream and buy a Librem 5v2.
I agree that a change to a different core framework is unlikely to be a compatible change - but maybe there is scope for compatible improvements in the framework itself.
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Definitely. If it works fine, then one could always find a nice application for an old Librem 5. It is a general purpose ARM computer at the end. It could be for example a mobile LTE router with hardware firewall with IPS. Or one could introduce a relative to Librem 5 as an iOS Android alternative.
Note that in the Raspberry Pi portfolio they have many older models still in production because one still has a justification for a 2015 Pi Zero.
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Do you really think there aren’t FOSS applications on Android and iOS ??? The
fact is that at the application level you have the “opportunity” to do the same on those platforms.
Furthermore the infrastructure that is available on those platforms is better
developed. This includes features such as security as well as anything to
do with battery life.
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Yes, but Purism actually develops the shell (phosh), the compositor (phoc), the calling app, the messaging app (Chatty) and is playing an increasing role in the development of GTK and the GNOME libraries, and has made commits to about 15 GNOME apps, so it has a lot more opportunity to influence the development of the GTK/GNOME ecosystem to not keep increasing the RAM, storage and processing requirements in the future.
If you are a company like Fairphone, SHIFT or Teracube that is trying to make ecological Android phones that last a long time, you don’t have nearly as much opportunity to control the resource consumption of future versions of Android. None of those companies have much programming talent on staff to develop their own software and they can’t easily influence the development of the couple dozen essential applications that every phone needs, like Purism can with the GNOME apps. In theory, any phone OEM can take the latest AOSP and make it more efficient (like Google does with Android Go) and develop their own lean apps to run on top of it, but it is unlikely to happen in the real world, because it won’t pass the Android Compatibility Tests and be cut off from Google Mobile Services (like Huawei). In addition, the big Android OEMs with the resources to do extensive software customization depend on planned obsolescence to stimulate new sales, so it isn’t in their business interest.
All of this is a moot argument, however, because the fundamental problem is that the chipmakers of mobile SoC’s (Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and UNISOC) are not releasing drivers updates for new Android kernels, and Android only supports 3 LTS kernels. For this reason, most Android phones are limited to just 3 years of Android upgrades, and Google only provides 2 years of security updates for each version of Android. Even when a phone maker, like Fairphone, wants to keep providing software updates, it often can’t because of the policies of Google and Qualcomm, which is why the Fairphone 2 was stuck with a 3.4.0 kernel from 2012 and only provided 4 years of software support instead of 5 years as promised.
None of what you’ve said confronts the issue at hand. You’re going
off topic. Let me remind you of the topic. Somebody said:
True but if the app is too bloated, at least you get the opportunity to do something about it - strip unused functionality, rewrite performance-sensitive code sections, …
The fact is that as long as you use FOSS applications on iOS and/or Android you actually do have the opportunity.
And while it is off topic, you’re wrong about your assertions about Android lifetime. The biggest error is your bad info about Fairphone 2. You claimed
that they only offered 4 years instead of the promised 5. That’s wrong. They
updated to Android 10 (https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/4608508653713-FP2-Android-10-FAQ ) which is basically 7 years instead of
the promised 5 years ( https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/24/fairphone-2-android-10-beta/ ).
You don’t have this opportunity with Linux kernel on your Android – unless you are going to rewrite it on your own. You are stuck with very old, bloated Linux.
You might be right, but it’s still very few. My 15+ -year laptop is still working fine with the latest Debian.
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-
We were talking applications.
-
What do you mean “very old, bloated Linux”? Nobody would describe old Linux kernels as bloated. And, as we discussed, you can control your applications.
You might be right, but it’s still very few. My 15+ -year laptop is still working fine with the latest Debian.
Similarly true with my Lenovo T61 although I think it’s only 14 years old.
But that’s Lenovo. I don’t know about the Librem 14’s but I’m pretty sure one shouldn’t expect that from the Librem 13s and Librem 15s given the issues
with the hinges/cases/screens. Purism doesn’t sell replacement LCD/cases/lids/hinges/heatsink+fan/keyboards.
Write me if you are still using your Librem 5 as a daily driver in 7 years.
Hint: Purism doesn’t sell any replacement parts for their phone other
than batteries and cellular modem. I feel certain that the phone’s LCD panel will
be broken or not registering touches long before that 7 years. And with the abuse phones take (drops, heat) you would be likely to have solder and capacitor failures before then (mainboard failure). Compare: https://shop.fairphone.com/ch_en/spare-parts
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I’m still certain that this one comes from Paracelsus: “Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.”
But then (only talking about iOS in this post) you may have to either jailbreak or get the application past the Apple App Store Police in order to use the app. iOS is a highly unfriendly environment for open source.
Also, the original comment by me was really talking about an existing unspecified app.
Don’t like the fact that the latest version of Apple Xyz app is not compatible at all with the older version of iOS that you unavoidably have on an older iPhone? Tough luck.
Don’t like the way Apple Xyz app works on iOS? Tough luck. It’s not open source and you can’t “strip unused functionality”, “rewrite performance-sensitive code sections” or use a different underlying framework.
Well um the actual topic is: It’s been 3 years since I ordered my Librem 5… and never received it
So perhaps we have all gone wildly off topic. The OP hasn’t been seen for 19(?) days.
Maybe time to let his topic die a quiet death and fork this digression.
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My Librem 15 is still flawless, except the battery. I don’t see any signs of damage and expect it to work for a very long time.
It depends on what you want to do with it. If you try to backport all fixes and improvements from the newer version yourself, you will find it bloated enough to not be able to do it.
Sure, but some of them have a lot to do with the kernel running underneath.
Ok, I have put a reminder here on the forum 
They are at least planning to do so. Now, with the supply chain crisis, they just can’t do it.
Yes, my info on the Fairphone 2 is out of date, and the wiki needs to be updated, because I am unfairly criticizing Fairphone. I checked into this. Between Dec. 2019 (Nougat 7.1) and Mar. 25, 2021 (Android 9), Fairphone did not provide any OS updates for the Fairphone 2, and I saw complaints on the Fairphone forum about this. I assumed that support had ended, because Google stopped supporting Android 7.1 in October 2019, so the Fairphone 2 couldn’t get security updates.
Kudos to Fairphone for finally providing an Android 9.0 upgrade on Mar 25, 2021, and an Android 10 upgrade in Mar 9, 2022, but the troubles that Fairphone had with the Android upgrades for the Fairphone 2 actually proves my point. Of the millions of phones with the Snapdragon 800/801 chipset, the Fairphone 2 was the only phone to officially get an Android 7 (Nougat) upgrade. Its Android 9 upgrade came out 31 months after Google released Android 9. Fairphone stated:
To get to where we are today, we had to go through approximately 477,000 Google tests and pass them all in order to get the certification. That’s a huge achievement for us. Not that we were counting. Ok, we were. Wouldn’t you?
Google stopped supporting Android 9 in Jan. 2022, so again the Fairphone 2 couldn’t get security updates for several months. The Fairphone 2’s Android 10 upgrade was released 29 months after Google released it, and its support ends in Jan. 2023. Fairphone’s FAQ says:
Q: Android 10 is almost 3 years old. Why not upgrade to Android 11 or 12?
A: We started working on Android 10 in late 2020. Back then it was the obvious choice. Android 11 had just been released and the open source community was still working on making it available for a range of devices. Frankly, taking matters into our own hands when upgrading a 7 year old device, the odds of passing the hundreds of thousands of tests for GMS approval are already stacked against you. The further you get, the more difficult this process becomes. With Fairphone 2, we’re really hitting limitations with regards to video decoding tests, for example. We will not develop Android 11 for Fairphone 2. Android 10 is the last software upgrade we will do for the device.
Q: For how long will Fairphone support Android 10 by providing security updates?
A: We will continue to provide software updates for as long as Android 10 is still actively supported by Google. We aim to release 3 Android 10 version updates in 2022, after the upgrade.Q: Why aren’t you doing another upgrade after Android 10 for the Fairphone 2? You are doing Android 11 for the Fairphone 3, so why not for Fairphone 2?
A: It has become increasingly difficult to bring newer Android versions to the outdated Fairphone 2. This is because the hardware in the Fairphone 2 doesn’t meet Google’s requirements for later Android versions. We would have loved to support Fairphone 2 beyond Android 10. We will continue our longevity efforts for our other devices.
Another important point is that the Android 5.1, 6.0 and 7.1 releases for the Fairphone 2 were based on Linux 3.4.0, which was released by kernel.org in May 2012, and the Android 9 and 10 releases are based on Linux 3.4.113, which was released in October 2016, so the Fairphone’s kernel is effectively 5.5 years old. Fairphone makes a point to say that it relied heavily on the work of the LineageOS community to do these upgrades, which supports my point that it is very hard for any of the small Android phone companies to actually provide these software updates:
Once again we’d like to thank the open source community, we couldn’t have done it without them. More specifically, we thank the LineageOS community and some of its members: Chris Hoffmann, Bruno Martins, Michael Bestas and Kevin Haggerty for their work on the Snapdragon 801.
Another point is that Fairphone must have gotten special permission from Google to use these kernels, because officially Android 9.0 only supports the android-4.4-p, 4.9-p and 4.14-p kernels and Android 10 only supports the android-4.9-q, 4.14-q and 4.19-q kernels.
For my web searches, I can find no other Android phone that approaches the Fairphone 2 in being able to support Android 5.1 through Android 10. The next best Android phones that I can find only supported 4 years of Android releases:
- Galaxy S6: Android 5.0.2 - 8.0
- Galaxy Note10: Android 9.0 - 12
- Google Pixel 2: Android 8.0 - 11
- Google Pixel 3: Android 9.0 - 12
- Motorola Moto X4: Android 8.0 - 11
Most flagships have only supported 3 years of Android releases:
- Galaxy S8: Android 7.0 - 9.0
- Galaxy S9: Android 8.0 - 10
- Galaxy Note9: Android 8.1 - 10,
- LG G6: Android 7.0 - 9.0
- LG G7 Thinq: Android 8.0 - 10
- Google Nexus 6: Android 5.0 - 7.1.1
It is very rare that these phones get a kernel upgrade. Most of them keep using the old kernel with newer versions of Android on top. This is very different from the Librem 5 and PinePhone which use recent kernels and I fully expect both of them to keep getting OS upgrades for the next decade.
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I have a T60 too, along with a couple of newer Lenovo laptops. But we were screwed by Intel and its Spectre family of bugs. Intel didn’t release any attempts to fix the Core Duo CPUs in the T60/T61 nor the first couple of Core i series generations and has steadily dropped releasing fixes for newer and newer generations of Core i and the associated Pentium and Xeon generations. If you value security you shouldn’t really be using those older laptops, even if they work perfectly well.
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What are you on about? The known speculative execution bugs (spectre, meltdown, spectre v2, etc.) have been patched under Linux even on the Core 2 Duo’s.
Most flagships have only supported 3 years of Android releases
It is very rare that these phones get a kernel upgrade. Most of them keep using the old kernel with newer versions of Android on top. This is very different from the Librem 5 and PinePhone which use recent kernels and I fully expect both of them to keep getting OS upgrades for the next decade
So getting back to the title of this thread, I know it is all good to have the decade of updates, but I have also been waiting over three years since January 2019 to get one of these in my hands. I am aware that as time goes by that the closed source proprietary drivers in my Pixel XL are not getting fixed, and I should really be looking at a Pixel 5a (as reportedly the Pixel 6a will not have a headphone socket).
Every now and again a few L5 handsets trickle out, keeping my hopes alive and postponing my shopping trip to the local grey market Google importer. Yes Google don’t even have a presence here but I still view all the locally sold and warrenteed Android models as even worse.
So I come to the puri.sm forum hoping to find out how shipping is going better.
What are you on about? The known speculative execution bugs (spectre, meltdown, spectre v2, etc.) have been patched under Linux even on the Core 2 Duo’s.
No, proper fixes to some of the spectre family require microcode updates. Fixes to the Linux kernel were necessary but not sufficient without the microcode fixes.
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Interesting. I was unaware of this. Thanks.
I think that everyone is disappointed with how long it is taking. It takes 52 weeks to get a new order of i.MX 8M Quad processors, and the L5 didn’t get FCC certification until July 2021.
Actually, Qualcomm does provide open source drivers for Google Pixels, but Qualcomm hasn’t released kernels upgrades for the Snapdragons used by the Pixel 1-5. For example, the Pixel 3 is still using Linux 4.9. In theory, Google can provide kernel upgrades for the Pixel 6, since it uses Google’s custom processor, but it is based on a MediaTek processor, and MediaTek generally doesn’t provide kernel upgrades for its processors. I noticed that Google is only promising 3 years of Android upgrades for the Pixel 6, but 5 years of security updates, so that probably means that the kernel will always be stuck on version 5.10.
5 years of support for the Pixel 6 is better than 3 years of support for the Pixel 5, but it is nothing like NXP providing kernel upgrades until Jan. 2033 and probably longer, and Purism promising that the Librem 5 will be able to run on mainline Linux in the future, so the Librem 5 can be ported to any distro that wants to support it.
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Of course I don’t know what’s worse, the security flaws in older hardware or the hypothetical embedded hardware that spies on you in the new ones!
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