zlacker

The problem with Android is that it’s something of a bad compromise. That one can’t just drop whichver ROM on whatever device undermines the whole thing, and unfortunately nobody in the industry with any kind of power is doing anything to try to fix that situation. I’m not even really sure that it can be fixed so long as smartphones are based around custom ARM boards. Attempts at truly open ARM-based smartphones all have a laundry list of problems mostly thanks to compenent vendors that won’t play nice with drivers and documentation (or if they do, it’s with SoCs so old as to not be remotely competitive).

Following that, I may as well benefit from an overall smoother user experience, better app selection, etc on iOS. It’s not open and doesn’t pretend to be.

I’m keeping my eyes open for a smart device analogue of x86 desktop PCs, though. It might be powered by an open RISC SoC design or maybe someone finally figures out how to make x86 work well in handhelds, I dunno, but the current situation isn’t it.

>>cosmic+(OP)
> That one can’t just drop whichver ROM on whatever device undermines the whole thing, and unfortunately nobody in the industry with any kind of power is doing anything to try to fix that situation.

You're right, but Google could do this (and probably the only one who could do it).

>>cosmic+(OP)
> The problem with Android is that it’s something of a bad compromise. That one can’t just drop whichver ROM on whatever device undermines the whole thing,

You used to be able to do exactly that with Nexus & Pixel. That you still chose to buy something that doesn't let you do anything just proves GP's point.

>>kllrno+Ti
Yeah, because that’d be limited to only Dell Inspirons and Latitudes for laptops. Half the point of using Android (or Windows or Linux) was to not have to be bound like that, so if that freedom is gone and you don’t like the OS for other reasons you’re not left with much of a desire to use it.

>>cosmic+8n
Isn't that literally Linux? You had a choice between the XPS Developer Edition or System76 and... that was about it for official support from anyone

>>kllrno+yj1
If you’re looking for preloaded with first party support, yeah options are limited. If you’re installing Linux yourself however, it’s much, much more universal than Android is. It’ll run on just about any x86 PC manufactured in the past 20 years and run well on the majority of them.

I don’t really need first party support though, as long as the OS in question has that kind of universality. I can grab Fedora or Mint or whatever and it’ll run more or less perfectly on any generic PC box I happen to have with a little effort.

It’s a much better situation than what we have with Android where outside of model-specific ROMs like Graphene, whether or not you can run a ROM on your phone depends on the model specific build (which has a decent chance of having been uploaded by a high schooler) existing and continuing to get updates. It’s a mess.