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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.

[Q] crazy idea about porting halo

ive just realised something. halo ce's minimum requirements are 800mhz processor and geforce 2 gtx and 256mb of ram. a lot of phones have more processing power than that (im mainly thinking about tegra 2 phones like the atrix)
So aside from the direct x issue would it be possible to port halo ce onto android?

thre3aces said:
ive just realised something. halo ce's minimum requirements are 800mhz processor and geforce 2 gtx and 256mb of ram. a lot of phones have more processing power than that (im mainly thinking about tegra 2 phones like the atrix)
So aside from the direct x issue would it be possible to port halo ce onto android?
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thre3aces said:
...aside from the direct x issue...
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Click to collapse
That is kind of a big issue, but maybe. It would have to run as a native application, and it would need to be ported to run on openglES, It would also involve a lot of refactoring to make a java-based interface to the game.
Possible... maybe with the source code, and some talented devs.
Not likely to be coming soon, and then there is the whole IP issue on top of the difficulty of the porting... I know I value my sanity too much to work on such a project.

Not likely. You may think that our current processors are more powerful, but that's not necessarily true. Watt for watt they are, but those non mobile x86 processors run many more instructions than these mobile chips. Also porting a game in x86 to ARM is a massive undertaking, not really worth it.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA App

ive recently started a thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1195712
wouldnt this help if the interface is java-based?

Yay I have a atrix
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

This is relevant to my interests. I was wondering why a Diablo 2 style game couldn't be tried. I know my phone far overpowers my old pc. Lol

There are two main technological hurdles to overcomes when porting games from consoles/PC to a mobile platform are:
1. CPU Performance
Just because a ARM CPU has a higher clock-rate than a non-low-power CPU doesn't mean that it is more powerful. ARM is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) CPU which means that it is ideal for low-power limited memory devices. However some operations that could be completed in one clock-cycle on an X86 CPU may take two or more clock-cycles an ARM CPU.
Even when comparing ARM CPUs to RISC PPC CPUs included in game consoles, the PPC CPUs tend to implement optimisations that aren't available in mobile ARM CPUs.
2. Graphics
As previously mentioned the main problem is that console and PC games are all developed with OpenGL (or possibly DirectX) not OpenGL ES. Whilst OpenGL ES 2.0 does have support for programmable shaders it's still very limiting compared to what can be achieved with OpenGL (even old versions).
Other Issues
There are also other issues due to the limited (or different) input mechanisms available to mobile device. The smaller physically sized screens are also potentially a issue even if resolutions are similar.

yea ive taken that into account and i know that arm CPUs are slower than an intel/amd counterpart despite higher clock speed. but surely a 1ghz dual core arm cortex a8 is faster than a 800mhz intel cpu.
the open gl thing was something i completely forgot about and know that you mention it i think the whole idea may not be possible. BUT i found this on wiki "PowerVR's Series5 SGX series features pixel, vertex, and geometry shader hardware, supporting OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1".
maybe it is still possible.
the screen size is another big issue. but maybe it will be ok on a tablet like the zoom.

We need to start looking into this again
Qualcomm will be releasing the snapdragon 810 soon it supports direct X, is x64, and has 2.7+ghz I think porting pc games is becoming much more of a reality and I would love for someone to give me a reason ditch my pc for gaming

I'd hate to re revive but since android practically is Linux, couldn't we focus on wine for android? That would not only allow people to install direct x in the first place on android phones and tabs but also open up many many possibilities such as a PC version of steam for android. A fun way of this could be taking advantage of Samsung's multi window support. But yes there is no halo for android before wine. Once wine is existant there will be PC on android. And Gabe's 3 will be comfirmed.

I have DREAMED of Halo in my pocket, and this is why I started developing. I thought I could put in the hours to at least get it off to a good start and get people involved. Here are the main issues, and the reasons that I (and I bet any others who have tried) eventually gave up.
It's been pointed out the difference in processing and graphics. X86 processors just run many more instructions than mobile processors. Mobile processors are catching up, and have been more powerful for a long time, but even if one runs a comparitively adequate number of instructions it still communicates differently with graphics processors and ram etc. This alone is intimidating because means that the entire game would have to be redone from scratch and the assets either stolen (yikes) or a partnership arranged with Microsoft.
Enter Microsoft. I love ole Mikey Soft I do, but they are defensive about their Halo. They recently made it almost impossible to install a fan project rework of Halo 1 CE. Any attempts to port to Android would be met with similar treatment. *Cough* they don't trust fans, but they gave Master Chief to 343, killed Cortana, and then made her evil.* That was a long cough. In their defense they have probably not pursued this because of the last point here: porr end product = poor user experience.
So processor, graphics, Mike, and finally porting itself. Borderlands 2 was recently ported onto an arm (mobile) processor. I bought a PS Vita+BL2 bundle specifically to see if I could learn anything about porting other pc games, like Halo. If you've played it you know that it is AWESOME, but has a great deal of glitches, frame rate drops, and even later loading textures than the PC/console version. To be fair I'm SHOCKED that BL2 and all its dlc run as well as it does on Vita. Bravo yo!
My conclusion was that it would have to be completely remade which would require using assets from a zealously guarded IP, and if a partnership was struck the final product would likely be extremely hard to optimize leaving all of us nostalgic fans with dissapointment as we are trying to launch each other to the top of blood gulch but run into such low fps that we can't coordinate the required wart hoggery. This is also why there are several Halo-ish games on Android. It's tough to Port, but much easier to imitate. Sad pandasaurus.

sorry to revive an older thread but heres an apk. i found however its in Spanish if someone can change the language it would be great.

[Q] please introduce today's phones' CPU and GPU

Many people told me that samsung's CPU is the best,qualcomm's and TI's is not good,why? And I also want to know,what different from kinds of GPU?Is there GPU can called"The Best"?I am a Chinese student,my English is bad....Please don't care...

If you re looking at the dual core cpu's and you want benchmark "best" then the snapdragon whips the latest qualcom cpu in the sensation without some serious overclocking... to be fair though the sensation is still an amazingly fast handset so its hard to tell..

小刷同学 said:
Many people told me that samsung's CPU is the best,qualcomm's and TI's is not good,why? And I also want to know,what different from kinds of GPU?Is there GPU can called"The Best"?I am a Chinese student,my English is bad....Please don't care...
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Well technically speaking the iPad 2 has the best GPU on the market (by a long shot), but we're probably talking about Android here so:
The best is the Adreno 220 in the dual core Snapdragons. (ie...HTC Sensation, MyTouch 4G Slide), (Any Qualcomm chip ending in 8x60). The Mali400MP in the Galaxy S II is supposed to be amazing, but the benchmark performance is rather disappointing. Either it's clocked very low or comes with a terrible OpenGL stack or driver.
As for CPU performance. They're all fairly close. They're all using dual core ARM Cortex-A9s. The differences come from L2 cache amounts, pipelines, RAM type, etc. I don't think you would find any noticable in every day usage going from the Tegra 2 to the 3rd gen Snapdragons to the Exynos, etc.
If you're buying a single core phone the only ones to look at are Hummingbird based ones and 2nd gen snapdragons (ending in 8x55).

Exynos 5250 and Tegra 4

Yes I've used the search tool and the last post in the last Exynos 5250 thread was at december 2011 and I can't find any rules about reviving old threads so I don't want to fiddle with it since I might get an infraction or worse a ban and and the last Tegra 4 thread wasn't coherent enough for me.
I don't know all the details but I would like to start talking about the supposed new Exynos 5250 and Tegra 4 development so please bear with me, I need all of those who has reliable information to add in the discussion. I'd like to start things with how will it fare against this year's smartphones and tablets? specifically the Samsung Galaxy S3 (1.4 ghz Quad ARM Cortex-A9 + Exynos 4412 & 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Krait + Snapdragon S4 MSM8960) and HTC one X ( 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 + Nvidia Tegra 3 & 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Krait + Snapdragon S4 MSM8960) since they are currently the top Phones out there in the market performance wise.
Further into the topic will the new Exynos and Tegra make their predecessors completely obsolete once they come out? or is the performance leap going to be minimal at best? due to various factors perhaps you can't fully utilize their potential due to the limiting software apps out there? What I want you guys to elaborate for the community is how better will it be in terms of CPU and GPU benchmark performance. Please do share your Ideas and any reliable information about the said topic at hand.
P.S. I just got an SGS3 my very first smartphone and android, did I make a huge mistake by buying it or should have I gone for a cheaper Galaxy Nexus and waited for the new Exynos to come out?

Itadakiimasu said:
Yes I've used the search tool and the last post in the last Exynos 5250 thread was at december 2011 and I can't find any rules about reviving old threads so I don't want to fiddle with it since I might get an infraction or worse a ban and and the last Tegra 4 thread wasn't coherent enough for me.
I don't know all the details but I would like to start talking about the supposed new Exynos 5250 and Tegra 4 development so please bear with me, I need all of those who has reliable information to add in the discussion. I'd like to start things with how will it fare against this year's smartphones and tablets? specifically the Samsung Galaxy S3 (1.4 ghz Quad ARM Cortex-A9 + Exynos 4412 & 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Krait + Snapdragon S4 MSM8960) and HTC one X ( 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 + Nvidia Tegra 3 & 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Krait + Snapdragon S4 MSM8960) since they are currently the top Phones out there in the market performance wise.
Further into the topic will the new Exynos and Tegra make their predecessors completely obsolete once they come out? or is the performance leap going to be minimal at best? due to various factors perhaps you can't fully utilize their potential due to the limiting software apps out there? What I want you guys to elaborate for the community is how better will it be in terms of CPU and GPU benchmark performance. Please do share your Ideas and any reliable information about the said topic at hand.
P.S. I just got an SGS3 my very first smartphone and android, did I make a huge mistake by buying it or should have I gone for a cheaper Galaxy Nexus and waited for the new Exynos to come out?
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what better than Nvidia Tegra 3

First off, let's talk processors:
Your phone, the SGS3 i9300 is packing the Quad-Core Exynos 4412, rather than the dual-core Snapdragon S4 (MSM8960) for North American versions of the SGS3. The international version of the HTC One X has the 1.5GHz Tegra 3 vs the North American version which has the S4 as well.
Performance wise, these processors are all pretty on-par. Benchmark scores are close, with the Tegra 3 gaining the upper hand graphics-wise with its 12-core GPU. The processor to look out out of these 3 would be the S4, considering it's the first processor to (kinda) take advantage of the A15 cortex.
...The reason I say kind of, is because there is some discussion on the S4 being a hybrid between the A9 cortex (Tegra 3, Exynos 4) and the beastly A15. Qualcomm is a rebel, and doesn't follow ARM's chip designs like the others do. But I digress...
A15 is going to be a HUGE improvement over A9. HUGE performance gains, higher resolution displays, USB 3.0,OpenGL ES 3.0 (depending on the GPU) and much much more. The dual-core Exynos 5250 is going to be based off the A15 cortex, and it's going to blow even the quad core A9's out of the water. Tegra 4 will almost definitely be based off A15 as well, and it's going to be a sight to see. As for the Snapragon S5, who knows? I'm sure Qualcomm has some cool stuff up it's sleeve.
To answer your question, yes the new Exynos and Tegra processors are going to make older generation processors obsolete, but that doesn't mean you made a bad choice. The SGS3 is a great phone, and as such has tons of developers making custom roms, kernals, and other fun hacks to keep you occupied for the months to come hack away!
hope that helped!

You didn't make a mistake as at present android is not able to push current quadcore devices to their limits and there is a scope for lot more improvement
So even though next gen processors will be lot more powerful, your phone will still be able to handle next android releases so Don't worry and enjoy your S3
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

vivek_bhoj said:
You didn't make a mistake as at present android is not able to push current quadcore devices to their limits and there is a scope for lot more improvement
So even though next gen processors will be lot more powerful, your phone will still be able to handle next android releases so Don't worry and enjoy your S3
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android already has full multi core support. The only thing holding back multi cores is the fact that many apps still don't make use of them.
Also, that other guy made some great points but forgot to mention S4 Pro, which we already know a good deal about and is very impressive. It sets the bar high for the next tegra and for exynos 5250.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using xda app-developers app

Itadakiimasu said:
Further into the topic will the new Exynos and Tegra make their predecessors completely obsolete once they come out? or is the performance leap going to be minimal at best?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They're not going to be "completely obsolete" (even GN and SG2, for example, are still good phones despite being "last year") but there is going to be a large performance increase to A15.
There's always a next big thing coming out, but generally it's not worth waiting for unless you're on the cusp. Even if the generation you shop is relatively old, the competitive market (unlike, say, that of a fruity company) helps to compensate you by providing discounts of the previous tech.
S3, in particular, is a darn good phone no matter how you look at it (except that it has hardware buttons, but I digress..)

[Q] Is swapping out Snapdragon processors possible?

I did post this under Nexus 5 Q/A, but I realized this probably applies to all Android devices, not just the one I have. So sorry for dual-topic, but I feel this kind of belongs here more.
With the Nexus 6 announced, I was quite disappointed, as I was expecting Google to release an updated version of Nexus 5, just like they did with Nexus 7 back in 2013. I'm not a fan of phablets, and 6 inches seems too big for a phone, while Nexus 5 sure hit that sweet spot.
So I had this idea - would it be possible to replace the old existing Snapdragon processors with newer versions? 801? 805? What about the new 808/810 models? Problems that come to my mind are:
Do the newer processors have the same pin layout as the 800 version? I managed to find information that the 801 is, but I'd like to know about 805 or even 808/810.
Do different Snapdragon 8** series processors use the same instruction-set? If not, are the newer versions backwards-compatible with old versions, like for example Intel's x86?
Would the old chipset be able to take advantage of a faster processor? I know ROMs with custom kernels allow overclocking up to 3 GHz, although that's just stupid. With a 805/808/810 though... Would it be as simple as getting for exapmle CyanogenMod, "overclocking" the 805 to 2.7 GHz (what it's actually rated at), and that would be the end of the story? Or am I missing something?
How hard would it be physically to replace the processor? I imagine a skilled engineer with a soldering station would be able to do the job, or are the connections so small that it's practically impossible to do by hand?
How does one obtain a stand-alone Snapdragon processor? I can't seem to find any on Amazon. Do they even sell retail, like Intel/AMD? If not, how do I get hold of one?
What else am I missing? How feasable is this idea really?

Short answer. No.
Unlike the "Can I upgrade my phones memory?" question, this one is a much more definitive no.

From what I hear, the 810 will be the last 32-Bit Snapdragon SoC.
Meaning, even if you could (I highly doubt you can) your only improvement would be less than 0.5gHZ.
So not really worth the risk.