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Is there a true Open Source Android phone? (drivers)

The current situation with the Dream and missing drivers have made me think about the importance of open drivers also for embedded devices like phones. Anyone using the combo Ati card + a distro that upgrades Xorg or kernel more often than Debian stable (whics is most of them) have felt the urge to curse closed source drivers to the deepest levels of hell. Now the same **** hits the fans for G1 owners.
Even though tis post is not about Ati, I must say in their defense that they have released specs, which is great.
Qualomm however, has not released anything whatsoever when it comes to source or specs, as far as I can understand. I have been stalking enough development efforts on embedded devices to know that this is common practise from hardware vendors - and extremely annoying for any geek wanting to do some heavy development for them.
And now i finally reach the question, which has already been mentioned in the title: Is there any device, released or upcoming, that features a SoC with opensourced drivers and firmware for all components? If not (and guess it is so, unfortunately), is anyone better than the others?

Of the many phones/MIDs/ARM gadgets I evaluated before I got my Vogue, the only ones I saw that had even remotely open OpenGL drivers were based on TI's OMAP3 SoC or had a PowerVR SGX GPU. Unfortunately, none of the OMAP3/PowerVR devices I saw were cheap (OpenPandora, AI Touchbook, BeagleBoard, Nokia N900, etc.) enough for me. That, and I saw what happened with the TouchBook's OpenGL ES library, which apparently wasn't allowed to be distributed outside of TI's SDK - but I haven't been following that. I also saw that the Samsung S3C6410, used in the cheap made-in-China SmartQ5 and Q7 MIDs, has open enough specs for writing a driver, but no one has stepped up to write one yet. Aside from OpenGL, though, an OMAP3/4 based phone would be perfectly open... except there aren't many consumer OMAP3 phones I really wish reverse-engineering or converting the Qualcomm/ATI libhgl.so for "real" Linux wasn't next to impossible/illegal - if doing it was easy, you'd have an OpenGL ES library for Debian on the Dream by now. I would reverse engineer it if I had the resources, unfortunately I'm unsure how legal it would be to do that.
EDIT: as far as phones (as opposed to the non-phones I was talking about), the most open right now seems to be Qualcomm - not counting Marvell PXA or other feature-poor (opposite of feature-rich ) SoCs - as contradictory as that may seem. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm basing everything on OpenGL drivers, since as far as other hardware goes, I don't have much expertise. Also, I haven't looked hard enough to find any Freescale- or other ARM SoC-based phones, and I don't know of any Android phones (shipped with android, not ported by third-party developers) that DON'T use Qualcomm chips. For the moment, it seems you must pay a premium for openness.

Well, thank for an insightfull reply anyway.
The N900 is definitely on my watch-list, but yeah, it sure is a bit expensive. Then again, it IS cheaper than the N1, So it isn't that bad.
As for the legality, it really shouldn't be legal NOT to give out open drivers for hardware when you sell it to consumers. They should have a legal right to have it!
But seriously, these outdated qualcomm chips in most HTC phones is no competitor to Snapdragon or Tegra, so who do they think they are fooling when they keep the drivers closed for "competitive reasons". Thats pretty much what they all us as an excuse.
Sad to hear about the "free" Touchbook fate though. I had high hopes for it, but if that is the stance they're taking now, I'm glad i didn't buy it myself.
Soooomewheeereee over the rainbooooow, coooode iiiiiiiiis freeeeeee (likeinfreespeechnotfreebeer) Soooomewheeeeree over...
In paradise there is no binary blobs in any code running on any of my devices.

Acer has just released the "Acer Liquid kernel source code". http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/service....tx1g.c2att92=122&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=2980211862 Liquid support under Document tab.
Hope that everything is there.

The GeeksPhone One is an open source Android device running on the MSM7225 processor, and worth checking out.
http://www.geeksphone.com/en/

The samsung moment uses the Samsung S3C6410 processor .... whitch is used in otehr windows mobile devices and i do belive samsung has a sdk advable but im not sure

I don´t know it exactly but shouldn´t be the OpenMoko a true opensource phone?

Isn't the Droid pretty decent? Doesn't Motorola even release the drivers for the hardware as open source here: https://opensource.motorola.com/sf/sfmain/do/home

The Moment has the same problem the SmartQ 5/7 have, unless Samsung released source code for the Android OpenGL drivers behind my back. That still wouldn't cover running Debian, sadly - I was hoping I could run Debian if I got one, but I know it won't be 3D-accelerated even if Debian does run. The Motorola Droid has pretty much the same SoC as the N900 and friends, hence the same PowerVR driver problems. IIRC, the SGX drivers are only partially open - I think most of the source code is available, but I remember hearing somewhere that there were redistribution problems. The infamous Intel GMA500 IGP (which was actually designed - and manufactured I think - by PowerVR) still suffers from poor-quality closed drivers, and Intel still hasn't done anything about it, pointing fingers at PowerVR for who knows what reason. I've come to a conclusion: hardware companies don't care about the consumer anymore

What's the status of this these days?
- how open are the n900 drivers?
The Nexus and i9000 both have a thing where the modem reads the CPU so that's as far as the reliant project goes.
Geeks phone is pretty cool but has binary blobs.
I remember reading about another project to make a phone like the Geeksphone but being prepared for compromise to achieve full openness. But I forget the name of the project. Anyone know what its called?
I'm really hoping there's a cheap Chinese phone out there that one can really own from driver level up now.

Android 4.0 for a Lg optimus 3D

Hey people does anyone know if android 4.0 will be available for the Lg optimus 3D when it comes out around December

Virus711 said:
Hey people does anyone know if android 4.0 will be available for the Lg optimus 3D when it comes out around December
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No........................

Virus711 said:
Hey people does anyone know if android 4.0 will be available for the Lg optimus 3D when it comes out around December
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almost had heartattack reading topic name :S
we dont have 2.3.3, and you are dreaming about 4.0?

Well let me read the cards...errrr
Some one is flying high. Anyways I can't see why not with a little magic of the dev community.
Sent from my LG-P920 using XDA App

i'm shire it will come also for o3d by lg or through the great developers in this forum.
but why do you what it already? maybe it's crap? i doubt it but maybe....
and one of the golden rules:
be patient, good things need their time

I wouldn't be surprised if 4.0 won't run on this phone due to the ram, even if it does its going to be well into next year before we get it, I would be surprised if we have it for next summer judging how far behind LG are now, this phone and the Optimus X2 should have launched with Gingerbread.

if cyanogen support this device, there will be 4.0 for us

the already support this device

typhex said:
if cyanogen support this device, there will be 4.0 for us
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but 3D will be useless without the drivers for the cameras and the screen

mmace said:
but 3D will be useless without the drivers for the cameras and the screen
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True but all the S3D core code it open to the devs thanks to TI as I understand it.
Also it's not even sure it's called 4.0, they haven't set a version number have they? and the number is just a indicator, the jump from 2.3 will be stuff like optimization in the system for dual core, and people still talking about too little RAM is just poppycock.
Most likely performance for the O3D will be better with Ice Cream Sandwich, might even beat all other phones as it's (so far) the only one with dual RAM and dual Channels which keeps the dual-core CPU from being bottlenecked by the rest of the system.

I have to admit, this talk of "ooooh it might not run version xx.yy of Android" or "ooooh what if the new uber fantastic app doesn't work because it ONLY has 512MB RAM" makes me laugh.
Why? Well lets look at what the problems have been in the past:
OS Partition is too small:
This was a problem when the OS was written to fit inside the small flash built-in to the CPU package. As the OS has gotten bigger this had to be solved one way or another. I'm not sure of the specifics, but I think its enough to say this is solved now.
Not enough RAM:
Fitting an advanced OS into 64MB or even 256MB of RAM is tricky, especially when the core OS is based on code from PCs with a lot more RAM than that and the luxury of a swap partition.
However 512MB was the turning point on PC where RAM became less of an issue and in the right configuration you could live without swap. So logically this should hold true, probably moreso, for Android. Because Android until recently was already running in 128MB/256MB without the advantage of swap space.
No Drivers:
Many are open source, we are also working with hardware a lot more standardised than it once was.
I can see from a glance that there are a lot of similarities between my N900 at the hardware level and the O3D. If you are dealing with devices that are basically upgrades of old hardware designs, drivers are a lot easier to deal with - especially if they are open source.
Lack of GPU or certain CPU instructions:
Many older devices could not handle newer Android because they lacked a proper GPU or the CPU did not have the right instructions. This is similar to what happened on PC for a while, when multimedia suddenly became big. Like on the PC once all these multimedia instructions became commonplace it was no longer really an issue. I believe we are at the same place now with high-end Android hardware.
So I really would be surprised to find a newer version of Android outright not be able to run on the O3D, for quite some time.

[Q] What is the technical reason for android hardware fragmentation?

I have heard a lot about how very often an android developer will need to adjust their app for different devices with different screen sizes or resolutions or graphics cards.
How come it is possible that an app can work perfectly on whatever device they are testing on and crash on another?
How come it isn't like Windows? In Windows you can develop one program and expect it to run on any pc no matter what graphics card it uses or processor or screen resolution or size of the screen.
I most recently read about this issue on Mika Mobile's blog regarding Battleheart for Android.
I understand that this may not be a simple answer and may end up being very detailed, but I welcome that.

because unlike pcs mobile phone companies ***** and moan about every component in there device ie the patent wars that are going on. with pc's you make it as compatible as you can nearly every game uses direct x so if your a hardware manufacture you make sure your components run with direct x if you dont your products wont sell. mobile phone companies dont do this they seem to try make there phones as uncompilable with other phones as they possibly can

In Windows you can develop one program and expect it to run on any pc no matter what graphics card it uses or processor or screen resolution or size of the screen.
I most recently read about this issue on Mika Mobile's blog regarding Battleheart for Android.
I understand that this may not be a simple answer and may end up being very detailed, but I welcome that.
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That's not really correct many windows programs work only at set resolutions, meaning if your screen is lower res parts of the interface are out of sight.
Dave
Sent from my LG P920 using Tapatalk

[Q] Why our generation cant support WP8?

I dont understand much about the architecture of software, im asking this because i dont get it, why the processors of our devices cant understand the new kernel and the instructions of WP8. in my head, its exacly the same saying that our pc desktops processors couldnt run the new Windows 8. i would like to know what are the barriers in this case. So guys, what they would be in your opinion?

This was posted by a dude on Reddit.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft. But not on Windows Phone.
Windows Phone 7 was built on top of Windows CE kernel (the same as Windows Mobile, and for those who are young enough to remember, Pocket PC and Windows CE Handhelds - this was in 1997).
Windows Phone 8 is moving to NT kernel, the same one as your desktop operating system is using. NT kernel requires radically different hardware - specificaly, TLB mappings in pre-v7 ARM CPU contained logical addresses and this does not work very well on symmetric multiprocessor OS.
So older ARM CPUs did not work with NT kernel, and move to the different OS kernel required radical redesign of the OS. Also, of course the desktop/server OS kernel requires significantly more RAM.
With the large generational shifts it is not uncommon for OS to lose compatibility with old software. These shifts do not happen very often, but they do happen.
For example, Windows NT did not support PCs with 286 CPUs (which were rather common when it shipped), or with less than 12MB RAM (something that is easily upgradeable on a PC, but much more difficult with the phone). Similarly, Windows NT 3.5 dropped support for 386 family entirely.
For Microsoft to have, as you call it, "foresight", it would probably have to drop Windows Phone 7 altogether and go to NT-kernel based solution. It would not have made Phone 8 to appear any faster, however - it would just have lost 2 years.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/vdjwe/designed_to_fail_all_windows_phone_7_handsets/c53rh01
I think that answers your question.

Beautifuly!!! Thanks!!

m125 said:
This was posted by a dude on Reddit.
I think that answers your question.
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This answer is a complete bull****! MS already run NT kernel on the arm cpus for a years! This guy is referred to the "desktop" kernel but of course Apollo/WinRT/ (whatever the MS ****heads will call it in the future) has a different (from the desktop OS-es) kernel.
What the "older arm cpu" he's mentioned about??? Nokia Lumia 900 has Qualcomm APQ8055 Snapdragon cpu (google or wiki for that). What the hell "pre-arm"???
Sorry, it's not an explanation, just a stupid bull**** from ignoramus. He definitely needs a "radical redesign" of his brain

Oh c'mon, if our CPUs were the same old Qualcomms from Android 1.6 days I would believe it, but they are last-gen Snapdragons, goddamit!
I'm pretty sure Microsoft could support it as easy as adding two drivers, but it won't. Specially since all phones are the exact same hardware, with WP7.

The point about TLB mappings might be valid... if it weren't for the fact that these are all single-CPU, single-core processors (in WP7 devices). There's no need for a kernel to support SMP. In fact, you don't *want* a SMP kernel on such a processor; there are performance optimizations you can make for single-hardware-thead systems.
Historically, Microsoft has actually shipped two copies (per architecture) of the NT kernel on their desktop OS install media, one for SMP and one for single-core. The installer would use the correct one for the hardware. There is no technical reason that they couldn't do similar with WP8, shipping one NT kernel for single-core phones (which would be able to run on ARM v6) and one for multi-core (which would require ARM v7).
As for the RAM issue, that's a red herring. The RAM requirements of a basic MinWin system are far below the half-gig of WP7 devices. Even adding the phone's extra libraries and user interface, it should still be possible to implement msot if not all of the software features of WP8 while leaving a comfortable overhead for running and app or two at a time (that being all that WP7 officially allows anyhow).
@sensboston: The first that I'd heard of Microsoft running NT on ARM was 2010, when multi-core ARM v7 was already available.
Actually, I agree that the guy doesn't seem to know what he's talking about; according to Wikipedia (unreliable but in this case I see no reason to expect incorrectness), the Snapdragon processors use the ARM v7 instruction set anyhow.

@GoodDayToDie, last two days I've heard a lot of very different (but all BS and incompetent) explanations from MS employees... Seems like guys in marketing department don't have enough engineering knowledge, and can't announce any realistic-looking reason. But may be they don't have to: for general public some unknown "martian" words like "TLB mapping", "GDT and IDT" etc. sounds very "reasonable"

guilhermedsx said:
Oh c'mon, if our CPUs were the same old Qualcomms from Android 1.6 days I would believe it, but they are last-gen Snapdragons, goddamit!
I'm pretty sure Microsoft could support it as easy as adding two drivers, but it won't. Specially since all phones are the exact same hardware, with WP7.
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I really agree with that!! how loudly do we have to yell? But in my point of view nothing about it will be done, microsoft need money and need for yesterday, and yes they will sacrificate the poor white sheeps (that would be us) and watch them bleed just to launch "a completely new OS" that our phones "doesnt support".

[Q] Why is iPhone still faster than any Android Quad-Core Phone?

Hi,
my friend and I are comparing which Phone is better.. The iOS Phones or the Android Phones.
In my opinion an iPhone is not a real Smartphone because you can't really do nothing with it..
There is just a damn Appdrawer without a damn Home screen.
Just Apps and some other notification stuff.
An Android Phone has almost everything that you need. You can even Update a Ps3 system with just an Android Phone.
You can build your own system and run your Rom with your taste.
But why the hell has the iPhone 5 still compared to HTC One X or Sony Xperia Z a better Benchmark result?
I mean the iPhone got a Dual core with just 1 Ghz per Core. But it beat a Quad-Core Phone.
For example I got a Sony Xperia S and how you know it has a 1,5Ghz Dual-Core hardware. And STILL the iPhone runs Asphalt 7 or Shadowgun: Deadzone better than the Xperia S
How that can be possible??

xShottaZx said:
Hi,
my friend and I are comparing which Phone is better.. The iOS Phones or the Android Phones.
In my opinion an iPhone is not a real Smartphone because you can't really do nothing with it..
There is just a damn Appdrawer without a damn Home screen.
Just Apps and some other notification stuff.
An Android Phone has almost everything that you need. You can even Update a Ps3 system with just an Android Phone.
You can build your own system and run your Rom with your taste.
But why the hell has the iPhone 5 still compared to HTC One X or Sony Xperia Z a better Benchmark result?
I mean the iPhone got a Dual core with just 1 Ghz per Core. But it beat a Quad-Core Phone.
For example I got a Sony Xperia S and how you know it has a 1,5Ghz Dual-Core hardware. And STILL the iPhone runs Asphalt 7 or Shadowgun: Deadzone better than the Xperia S
How that can be possible??
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To answer the question in title.
Iphones would seem faster because its software is only written for one device.. the Iphone.
When you build the hardware and the software you able to really optimise it for that device.
This would be possible with Android but for a device manufacture would take far to much work at the lower levels of android itself, and they simply do not have the time or resources to do that (After all we do want updates within 6 months of google pushing them).
If you however get a Nexus device built for stock Android you will see what android can do

zacthespack said:
To answer the question in title.
Iphones would seem faster because its software is only written for one device.. the Iphone.
When you build the hardware and the software you able to really optimise it for that device.
This would be possible with Android but for a device manufacture would take far to much work at the lower levels of android itself, and they simply do not have the time or resources to do that (After all we do want updates within 6 months of google pushing them).
If you however get a Nexus device built for stock Android you will see what android can do
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Yes and Java android implementation has a really time spent garbage collector, IOS programs are written over Objective C with just in time memory management.
No garbage collector = faster app

The on-the-surface reasons are a fast and capable CPU and GPU, but mainly the fact that apps have a very limited ability to run in the background. There are more technical reasons, as mentioned above, but that's the gist of it.
iOS's efficiency and performance comes from its heavy software limitations.

Okay, so mainly it has to do with optimizing the hardware with the software right?

xShottaZx said:
Okay, so mainly it has to do with optimizing the hardware with the software right?
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Yes, and like I said, heavily disallowing apps from running in the background.

I bet thats also the reason why macs are seen as such intuitive machines compared to pcs. Windows is made for any pc while mac os is strictly built for mac. :good:

Omega Supreme said:
I bet thats also the reason why macs are seen as such intuitive machines compared to pcs. Windows is made for any pc while mac os is strictly built for mac. :good:
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Macs use the same parts as PC's. It's just that they say, "Alright, these are the parts we're going to use this year. We only need drivers and software compatible with these parts. Anything extra is up to the manufacturers." It's the same thing with Windows, but like you said, just a wider array of devices and parts.
Intuitiveness has nothing to do with hardware and interfacing software; it has everything to do with aesthetics and software design.

Okay thanks for your answers guys

for me, Iphone is only good for old people, who doesnt really care about their gadget, they only use it for show off, without knowing the "true" potential of their phone.
with android, we could squeeze the juice from the phone out untill its screaming, lol, and our device will worth every dime and penny we spent, like many of people only know that they have Intel i7 processor without knowing that their i7 processor can beat up so easily with Overclocked core 2 Quad processors.
just my 2 cents though

There's more to it than benchmarking though. I actually carry and use both devices. My DNA is a good bit faster than my iPhone with some processes. Other things the iPhone is faster with. But as stated above, the apple hardware and software is highly optimized, which is why iPhone users don't see force closes or random reboots except for the occasional rare extreme problem.
They both have their pros and cons, there's a lot of young people also that the iPhone fits better than android.
There's a lot of people in this world that think differently than me. I did not see the dialer or keyboard on my DNA until after it was unlocked and rooted and had a custom rom and kernel overclocked. I didn't realize until later that I didn't even open much on the interface until after I had installed the software I wanted. Lots of people wouldn't want to take an off contract 700 dollar device and blindly void the warranty, but that's all I bought mine for is the hardware and ability to build my rom and interface to fit my needs.
Sent from my DNA... S-Off like a baws

apple not only manufactures its own software, but also hardware, hence it has better control to customize their hardware according to the software or vice versa.

ob7125 said:
apple not only manufactures its own software, but also hardware, hence it has better control to customize their hardware according to the software or vice versa.
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Apple doesn't manufacture anything. Most of their components come from Samsung and other manufacturers like Qualcomm. They work ONLY on the software.

i think you are wrong.
zacthespack said:
To answer the question in title.
Iphones would seem faster because its software is only written for one device.. the Iphone.
When you build the hardware and the software you able to really optimise it for that device.
This would be possible with Android but for a device manufacture would take far to much work at the lower levels of android itself, and they simply do not have the time or resources to do that (After all we do want updates within 6 months of google pushing them).
If you however get a Nexus device built for stock Android you will see what android can do
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i saw the nexus 5 benchmark fight with the iphone 5s, NEXUS 5 can't reach near iphone 5s , actually i don't understand how is this possible and i don't believe that optimization makes iphone to this much faster, when we are looking forward the case of samsung galaxy note 3 and iphone 5s just an optimization can't beat the 8 core and 3Gb ram with 1.3gh 2 core with 1gb ram, may be the precision is the key