I am not a developer so I don't understand why it is so hard to receive updates on some android devices.
Today, particularly I am concerned with the ICS update . Why is it that even though TF meets all the hardware requirements it still can't receive ICS?
To a n average user like me this is like saying "we both have similar computers but Windows 7 won't work on yours and it's nothing do do with hardware".......
it is not the same at all. For windows computers all of the components are supported by their respective manufactures and all of those manufactures write the drivers for the operating system. By doing this you can install windows (or linux) on most platforms because of the cumulative support. In android there are many more steps. Most drivers have to be written by a single manufacturer which may get hardware from other manufactures but they do not provide software support for that hardware. writing those drivers takes some time and implementing them into each release of android as it changes the parameters it accepts ect. then each device has to be tested rather than just testing one part to make sure everything is in order then it goes through google who do even more checks to make sure that it is near perfect before it is released to the general public
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I know this is an incredibly newbish question, but I'd flipped through various forums and articles and googled it and still don't quite seem to understand it.
My question is why is android dependent upon manufacturer's release?
Take for example, a desktop computer.
OS
This is the core of the device and the UI between the user and the hardware.
Applications talk to the OS to instruct the hardware to do stuff.
Microsoft and Apple makes the OS.
ex. Windows 7, Mac OS, Linux.
Hardware
Asus, Nvidia, Realtek, marvell make the hardware.
ex. video, LAN, sound etc.
Hardware Bundler
Dell, Alienware, Gateway, Acer
They take commercial hardware and some OEM hardware and assemble it in a way that many consumers will buy their bundle.
For 99.9% of us, not counting Synapse, this is the only way the hardware is packaged together.
Device Standards
Collectively, the manufactures work together to determine certain industry standards ex. ATX, PCI-E, SATA 3, USB 3.0 etc...
Drivers
The manufacturers also make drivers so the OS can make use of their hardware.
Compatibility Is Determined by Driver Support
If the driver exists to talk to a given OS, then the hardware will work.
Not all hardware manufacturers will code for every OS out there.
ex. USB works on all OS because it's more established, but not every sound card will work on a Linux system.
Bringing it home...
So if Microsoft releases Windows 8, and as long as Nvidia releases a driver that works with that OS, then the video card will work.
Can you help me understand how the android phone architecture is so different that it's no longer
OS <-> Driver <-> Hardware?
Sorry for not getting it.
Culverin said:
Can you help me understand how the android phone architecture is so different that it's no longer
OS <-> Driver <-> Hardware?
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Click to collapse
It isn't different, it's exactly as you written. But manufacturers usually don't release sources of drivers, neither binaries for newer versions of OS. Also many manufacturers add protection against installing your own software into "their" device.
Android is open, but many manufacturers of Android devices - aren't.
Many devices just like????
You say manufacturers, are you referring to components such as the modem (???), video encoding/decoding chip (tegra), sound chip (wolfson)? NFC chip?
Aren't these drivers publicly available?
How else would small companies be able to develop low volume items such as these?
http://www.bigboxstore.com/computers/android-tablet-pcs
http://cheapandroidtablet.org/
When a company, samsung for example, makes a phone.
They start tying all the components together and making them talk to each other.
How "custom" are the "motherboard bios"?
Is that what you are saying by the manufacturers add protection?
Like at the "bios" level?
As for things like this...
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/27/sony-announces-playstation-suite/
Does that mean Sony is banking on Google making it more standardized?
Culverin said:
You say manufacturers, are you referring to components such as the modem (???), video encoding/decoding chip (tegra), sound chip (wolfson)? NFC chip?
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I mean both components manufacturers and phone manufacturers.
Usually there are problems with Wifi, GPS, GPU support, camera, etc. Many alpha-stage ports have problems with these things.
Culverin said:
Aren't these drivers publicly available?
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Do you mean sources? Manufacturers rarely release sources of drivers, even on a PC. This is the reason, why there are problems with some devices on linux systems.
Culverin said:
How else would small companies be able to develop low volume items such as these?
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I'm not sure, but they have to buy a license to use these components in their devices anyway, so I guess they get sources of drivers too, but they can't release them.
Culverin said:
How "custom" are the "motherboard bios"?
Is that what you are saying by the manufacturers add protection?
Like at the "bios" level?
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Click to collapse
"BIOS" or just "boot phase software" is usually 100% custom - there are no standard solutions I know of.
Let's imagine you have bought a new PC with some preinstalled OS. You don't have administrator rights on it, you can't boot from other device than HDD and if you want to update your system, you have to use special software, which has administrator rights, but it checks whether updates were created by device manufacturer. This is more or less how most of phones work.
Culverin said:
Does that mean Sony is banking on Google making it more standardized?
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Click to collapse
I'm not sure what do you mean?
Culverin said:
I know this is an incredibly newbish question, but I'd flipped through various forums and articles and googled it and still don't quite seem to understand it.
My question is why is android dependent upon manufacturer's release?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because individual makers add their own hardware.
Can you help me understand how the android phone architecture is so different that it's no longer
OS <-> Driver <-> Hardware?
Sorry for not getting it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It still is. Android OS is JUST THE BIOS, in your example. The VXDs/drivers are made by different manufacturers (hardware level drivers) and loaded at system time.
You can load a plain Android OS, but it won't be able to talk to the phone's hardware except in a very general sense. You can touch screen, launch apps, but no phone, and only generic camera without special resolution support and such. It won't be able to do data or phone at all. That requires special VXDs (or their linux equivalent, I'm a Windows guy). Not all phones have the same buttons, or the same screen rez, or the same keyboard, and so on.
That's why there are various experimental Gingerbread ROMs out there already, but they don't work that well, because nobody had debugged the "drivers" for the hardware yet.
And if nobody release the source of the drivers (even for the earlier versions) nobody can use that to figure out if they are compatible with the next OS rev. Binary hacking is way too difficult.
i know much fuss is always made about devices getting or not getting updates to newer versions of android. but i don't understand why it's as big of a (technical) issue as it is.
android is based on linux, correct? anyone with a linux-based desktop regularly updates the kernel and various system packages without thinking twice. and the devices continue to work fine. i can run any version of ubuntu i want on my laptop, and they all work fine.
the problem with building the android osp for an arbitrary device is drivers, correct? is it because manufacturers don't release the source code for drivers? i can understand it isn't possible to reverse engineer or transfer a binary blob from one system to another.
but, manufacturers have these drivers (of course); why is it so difficult to package their drivers with newer versions of android? the kernel can't change so much that drivers need to be re-written with every version, or it would have died a long time ago.
this isn't meant to inspire flaming, i'm just curious what it really takes to build android for a device (and have it 100% working). if a device existed with 100% open source drivers, would it be trivial to build android for that device? how many proprietary drivers does an average device have? are they standardized at all beyond the ARM ISA?
Hi guys, is there a clean generic windows phone 7 os? just like desktops were we get a retail os, is there one for phones? and is it flash-able with all phone?
No
No.
It would certainly be interesting to get hold of the OS as Microsoft delivers it to OEMs to begin the process of adapting it to a certain phone model, writing or modifying device drivers, etc., but it seems nothing like that was ever leaked.
WP is closed, as is iOS; for the reasonably open Android there is of course something like a "generic" version; you could even compile and produce one yourself.
There isn't really any such thing as a "clean generic" phone OS, anyhow. Unlike desktop OSes, phone OSes don't ship with support for the massive array of hardware configurations that are found in the wild. Instead, phone OSes rely on a Board Support Package, commonly simply called the firmware, which has the various drivers needed to interface with that specific model's hardware. This is why, for example, even though the source code is available for the Android Open Source Project upon which CyanogenMod is based, it still takes a long time to get fully functional CM ports to each individual device. On things like WP7, where the source code isn't available (except for the kernel and some core libraries), it's even harder.
However, if what you really mean is you want a "clean" ROM that has no carrier customizations in it, there are "open market" ROMs available for many WP7 devices. These ROMs are still specific to the device whose BSP they contain, but are not specific to any mobile operator and usually not to any region.
thanks for the info guys, but it looks like there are no open market roms for the omnia w yet, well, not yet anyway, will keep an eye out now that i know what to look for,
thanks again guys
Answer is yes and no. No oem device created by Microsoft, but there is Nokia. As you know Nokia is part of Microsoft Windows Phone hardware partner. More options etc has Nokia.
Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express
Updates for Android devices are always rolled by the gadget manufacturer, so every time Google introduces a new update we have to wait till the manufacturer of the device decides to roll it out, this obviously takes a lot of time and puts Android at a disadvantage against Apple and Microsoft.
For a Windows device irrespective of the manufacturer if Microsoft rolls out an update all can avail of that update through windows update. Android also being an open platform like Windows should be able to do the same.
If I have a software CD of Windows 7 I can install the software in any manufacturers PC and use it. I may just need to do some additional driver installation if required.
Why can't Android develop their platform to function in a similar manner so that once a new version of Android is released I can install it it any device and o fcourse put in the specific drivers to make it work if required.
With the approach of Microsoft looking very prominent now for both Smartphones and Tablets, this may just be a warning bell for Android, I hope they have their eyes and ears open.
Would be nice to know the views of others. As an Android user do you feel this would be a good step for Google?
kaus1108 said:
I may just need to do some additional driver installation if required.
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The above is the key sentence in your post. The problem is that without the correct hardware drivers for your specific phone the OS may not be able to boot at all and will certainly have limited functionality - just look at the issues there are with trying to run leaded ICS / JB ROMs on phones that don't have an official version of the ROM available with the correct drivers yet.
The reason that Microsoft is able to push out a new OS and have it (mostly) work on any manufacturers PC, with any hardware, is that all the hardware manufacturers are given alpha/beta copies of Windows to test their hardware on and to allow them to build the drivers well in advance of the OS being released by the guys in Redmond.
Google don't do that. They release the OS immediately they have hardware support and compatibility for their devices - and let everybody else deal with the aftermath
windows is the opposite from open platform!
android is an open platform.
the phone makers are free to use android as they wish, they can decide if to upgrade or not.
google only realeses the source code.
XDA is there for providing the latest update.
My phone was supported by Samsung till Gingerbread. But I got jelly bean from XDA devs just after a week after the source code release.
But it does have some bugs which cannot be solved without Samsung's help.
But if you wanted the fastest OEM updates, buy a Nexus.
But 50% of the people are normal users who do not care about updates and new android versions.
Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk 2
SimonTS said:
The above is the key sentence in your post. The problem is that without the correct hardware drivers for your specific phone the OS may not be able to boot at all and will certainly have limited functionality - just look at the issues there are with trying to run leaded ICS / JB ROMs on phones that don't have an official version of the ROM available with the correct drivers yet.
The reason that Microsoft is able to push out a new OS and have it (mostly) work on any manufacturers PC, with any hardware, is that all the hardware manufacturers are given alpha/beta copies of Windows to test their hardware on and to allow them to build the drivers well in advance of the OS being released by the guys in Redmond.
Google don't do that. They release the OS immediately they have hardware support and compatibility for their devices - and let everybody else deal with the aftermath
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Thank you for the response and I do agree with what you say and the key to it is that there are certain things that Microsoft do and Google don't and how it is going to impact users in the future.
I remember when I moved from Windows Vista to Windows 7 all the Vista drivers were functioning allright after installing Windows 7 and I have also faced situations where I did not have certain drivers but the PC still functioned on generic drivers provided in the Windows software.
Don't you feel it would be much better if Google just released a Jelly Bean OS and left it to us to install it and I am sure that based on devices already in the market those drivers can always be included in the OS and each phone would pick its own based on its hardware. Only the new devices would need new ones which Google may not be able to provide. If this were true today I would be installing JB in my Galaxy S3 and not have to wait for Sammy.
djbijo said:
windows is the opposite from open platform!
android is an open platform.
the phone makers are free to use android as they wish, they can decide if to upgrade or not.
google only realeses the source code.
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Click to collapse
No, Windows is quite open. Apple is the closed one.
Sent from my MB508 using xda premium
I am a retired programmer with too much time on my hands; as such, I wrote a complaint to a regulatory body about how I can't install the operating system I want on my device because it will render it unusable (if I can't call for help on a phone because of drivers, what good is it?). I received a response requesting an interview with an officer who specializes in anticompetition cases and I would like to make sure I have my eggs all in one basket.
The current mobile phone market I liken to the desktop OS market of the 90s, where you had companies like Xerox, Microsoft, IBM, and so on; in the 90s, there were antitrust lawsuits where a particular company was accused of intentionally creating barriers to customers seeking to install software by other companies on personal computers. Obviously, that was settled in the 2000s, but IMO it did appear to make a positive change even if we are still fighting against IE. This may not be relevant, but that's what my mind went to when I realized I couldn't uninstall the Play Store.
Nobody uses "cellular telephones" as telephones anymore; instead, they are mobile computers. Computers in the 80s/90s had plenty of OS options (you may recall using OS/2 or BSD), but you can't do that with mobile computers... is that a good thing?
In my retirement, I'd like to develop and build a mobile phone operating system that is not android (nor lineageOS); this would either be Linux or BSD-based with a simple package manager, but the user would have the option to compile their own software also. This would ideally *not* hinder the underlying function of the device (i.e. telephony), but I don't see how manufacturers could be compelled to provide binary drivers. The current mobile market makes it obviously a very high barrier to entry for any who want to develop new operating systems for mobile computers. Is this anticompetitive? Perhaps not, but I'd like to hear some opinions and if you would kindly point me towards some resources I would appreciate it.
IMO the OS is not the problem - a command line based OS can be written by any talented student nowadays - preferably in C++, yes there are enough templates on the Internet, it is the device drivers what have to fit the hardware that make the whole thing difficult. I know that some OEMs put their device drivers' source code to the public.
jwoegerbauer said:
IMO the OS is not the problem - a command line based OS can be written by any talented student nowadays - preferably in C++, yes there are enough templates on the Internet, it is the device drivers what have to fit the hardware that make the whole thing difficult. I know that some OEMs put their device drivers' source code to the public.
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To install a new OS on a phone, the phone must first be booted into a bootloader such that the 'image' of the OS can be loaded. The image for the OS should be built with the drivers present such that when booting, the OS kernel can load the relevant drivers as it probes the hardware in the phone, and then the software installed on the user layer can access that hardware through the relevant system calls. How possible is it for the bootloader to load a custom OS in the general sense? The majority of instructions I find are on enthusiast/developer websites with the actual manufacturers giving basically no input (that is to say, I haven't seen on manufacturer's websites or instruction manuals where they give instructions for booting your choice of OS).
Would it be fair to say that mobile developers, like Google/Samsung/LG/Amazon/etc are restricting users from being able to install their own OS on their device? Is driver access a reasonable thing to ask for?
Again, I'm retired, so I have time on my hands, but I'm old and there's realistically not a lot of that time left. I don't want to try developing my own BSD-based mobile OS if there's no way for me to install it on my own devices; that effort could go into another project if it is otherwise wasted. I suppose it is worth asking whether I should bother returning the bureau's request for an interview.