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[Q] How Android Works - OS and Versions

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?
Click to expand...
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
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?
Click to expand...
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.

[Q] a smartphone with open source drivers

Which smartphone has the source for the drivers availbale at the moment?
To know what to choose in case i want to port tizen to it...

frullewulle said:
Which smartphone has the source for the drivers availbale at the moment?
To know what to choose in case i want to port tizen to it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just wanted to post a new thread with the same question.
Also, which are the phones with the best reverse-engineered drivers? And is there much difference between this and open drivers?
If you have open drivers you should pretty easily be able to port every system to it that supports the same specs as screen resolution, etc, right?

Unrelashade said:
I just wanted to post a new thread with the same question.
Also, which are the phones with the best reverse-engineered drivers? And is there much difference between this and open drivers?
If you have open drivers you should pretty easily be able to port every system to it that supports the same specs as screen resolution, etc, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Although it would be reasonable for you to think so, you would also be incorrect. The reason why this isn't the case is because hardware manufacturers each have their own different firmware that they use, which causes a lot of the bifurcation of the Android ecosystem. Just because you have two phones that are identical in every hardware fashion doesn't mean that their firmware is the same, so there is no guarantee that one set of drivers would work on different devices.

syung said:
Although it would be reasonable for you to think so, you would also be incorrect. The reason why this isn't the case is because hardware manufacturers each have their own different firmware that they use, which causes a lot of the bifurcation of the Android ecosystem. Just because you have two phones that are identical in every hardware fashion doesn't mean that their firmware is the same, so there is no guarantee that one set of drivers would work on different devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ooohh, so underneath android and its Linux kernel lies a firmware that handles communication between the kernel/ Android and the drivers/ hardware? So I'd need open drivers and open firmware to be able to port anything with ease to this device (at least theoretically)?

Unrelashade said:
Ooohh, so underneath android and its Linux kernel lies a firmware that handles communication between the kernel/ Android and the drivers/ hardware? So I'd need open drivers and open firmware to be able to port anything with ease to this device (at least theoretically)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but practically this is impossible as firmware comes straight from the manufacturer, so even if you could develop some sort of open firmware (basically you would be making an open BIOS), you would have no way to install it onto the actual device, since they are hard coded into the chip. You would need specialized tools in order modify on that level.

syung said:
Yes, but practically this is impossible as firmware comes straight from the manufacturer, so even if you could develop some sort of open firmware (basically you would be making an open BIOS), you would have no way to install it onto the actual device, since they are hard coded into the chip. You would need specialized tools in order modify on that level.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome, I'm finally learning what I want to know!
So if there was a manufacturer who gave this firmware/ BIOS code away (because it's an old model or they have been convinced by the community or it's a dedicated device for developers or whatever) then it would be finally easy to port every system to it (that supports the hardware)?
And how come it is possible to port e.g. Linux to Android devices without having the sourcecode of the firmware/ BIOS? Because they reverse engineered it? And if you have a device with closed drivers you have to reverse engineer the drivers *and* the firmware/ BIOS? How come no manufacturer tried to build a developer device with open firmware/ BIOS since it would give them a lot of support from developers?

Theoretically yes, but then you would still face the issue of how you are going to interface with the hardware, as the chips were not designed to be interfaced with via usb devices. They tend to be programmed at production then never altered again.
Android is linux-based, so it would stand to reason that you could port a stripped-down version of linux onto the device. Using other tools, you can create a VM on the Android device to have a fully functioning version of linux, but this is all software-level, not physical level. And the reason why they don't make open BIOS is for the same reason textbook manufacturers keep making new versions of textbook that are almost exactly the same.

[Q] Touchscreen drivers for DIY tablet!

Hey
I'm taking on a new project and I have a few questions that are explained below, This is my first post here been a long reading member but never had any questions until now, so if this is in the wrong section, I'm sorry.
The project is basically converting a netbook into a tablet, being that the netbook lacks sufficient power to run Windows 7, but runs Android x86 really well. The only problem I have is that I need a touchscreen and I've decided to pick up a touchscreen kit, which on the fidohub website, its called the 10.2" Solderless touchscreen kit however they don't support Android and only provide drivers for Win7, OSX and Linux.
So what I'm asking you guys is how do i get past this problem and get myself an Android compatible screen.
Any help with this project will be a great help!
Thank you,
Rohan.

Maybe find the src and rewrite it?

And what would that require? Any guide available?

Try the linux drivers. Android is based on the linux kernel so it should work. If not youll have to mod the drivers up yourself
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

spam
This is exactly what I am just about to start! By the looks of it I am a few months behind you!
I have been searching around and have found little info... did you have and luck with the linux drivers or did you try them? would be great to hear how you got on?
many thanks to all,
Sam

Tablet Drivers
In the search all forums box in the upper right corner type in "tablet drivers" There is a list of options that maybe you can put to use.

adlakeche said:
In the search all forums box in the upper right corner type in "tablet drivers" There is a list of options that maybe you can put to use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am doing something very similar, I am basically using a MK802 unit in the car. The car already had a VGA USB touchscreen from my PC install. I connected my 4-wire touchscreen to it and nothing. Funny thing is, I connected a different screen from another manufacturer and it worked, with the exception that up and down were inverted. But the brand in the car is the one that doesnt work. I know that when I use this device in Windows, it uses drivers from the touchkit.com website. This side also have Linux drivers, but unsure what to look at. I have no experience with root, or anything Android as far as code and stuff. The have drivers for 32bit or 64bit. The have it for Linux, Red Hat, Fedora Core, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Yellow Dog, Mandrake. All of which is alien to me. Is there a driver that will work closest to Android?

Windows RT USB drivers may never arrive

There's already a great thread where people are reporting what USB/Bluetooth items will and won't work on the Surface RT.
According to Pluggable, a manufacturer of USB peripherals, the problem lies much deeper: Windows RT doesn't support any USB device requiring a driver, and support may never come. It says:
"Windows RT does not have a Device Driver Development Kit and does not support or allow the installation of drivers. There is currently no Windows Update for Windows RT from which to match and download newly approved drivers for new device types from 3rd parties."
In short, the only devices which will work are devices which have traditionally had in-box support in Windows and never require a 3rd party driver to be installed: USB hubs, USB Mass Storage (USB hard drives and flash drives), USB Audio (headsets and mics), some USB printers, most USB video (webcams), USB HID (keyboards and mice), and a few other special cases.
I knew RT drivers would be a problem; this article implies that the drivers may never be coming at all.

AndyRathbone said:
There's already a great thread where people are reporting what USB/Bluetooth items will and won't work on the Surface RT.
According to Pluggable, a manufacturer of USB peripherals, the problem lies much deeper: Windows RT doesn't support any USB device requiring a driver, and support may never come. It says:
"Windows RT does not have a Device Driver Development Kit and does not support or allow the installation of drivers. There is currently no Windows Update for Windows RT from which to match and download newly approved drivers for new device types from 3rd parties."
In short, the only devices which will work are devices which have traditionally had in-box support in Windows and never require a 3rd party driver to be installed: USB hubs, USB Mass Storage (USB hard drives and flash drives), USB Audio (headsets and mics), some USB printers, most USB video (webcams), USB HID (keyboards and mice), and a few other special cases.
I knew RT drivers would be a problem; this article implies that the drivers may never be coming at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think they just have to submit drivers to microsoft to have them work, my canon 5d mk 3 worked out of the box and i've had to install drivers for all my dslr's in windows before

When you plug in an unsupported device, does it at least attempt to search windows update for a driver? Or are all supported drivers included in the device?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Skitals said:
When you plug in an unsupported device, does it at least attempt to search windows update for a driver? Or are all supported drivers included in the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a good question. To control things, I turned on Airplane Mode. Then I plugged in an Easy Transfer Cable.
Surface RT recognized the cable, and USB Transfer Device appeared in Device Manager, but with the yellow exclamation point.
I turned off Airplane Mode, opened the Device Manager's Properties window for the USB Transfer Device, and told it to search automatically for updated driver software.
After visiting Windows Update, it gave me this message: "Windows was unable to find driver software for your device. If you know the manufacturer of your device, you can visit its website and check the support section for driver software."
I'm thinking Windows RT only accepts USB items that the OS natively recognizes: cameras, external storage devices, mice/keyboards, and a few other things. It won't accept anything requiring a third-party driver because Microsoft doesn't want to introduce that as a possible security hole.

I would be surprised if MS would not provide a driver development kit.
WinRT is basically a recompiled version of Win8 for the ARM. So in theory I would be able to take my C/C++ coded driver and run it through an ARM compiler to produce the correct dll.
Just made a quick look around, and I see the essential dll's required to implement a proper windows system driver. So it should work...

draftQ said:
I would be surprised if MS would not provide a driver development kit.
WinRT is basically a recompiled version of Win8 for the ARM. So in theory I would be able to take my C/C++ coded driver and run it through an ARM compiler to produce the correct dll.
Just made a quick look around, and I see the essential dll's required to implement a proper windows system driver. So it should work...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just like you should be able to take your C/C++ desktop app and run it through the ARM compiler and it should work (like Office RT), but it doesn't. MS has it locked down tight. They are going the completely closed ecosystem route... like Apple (iOS).
Its a shame, because it otherwise has the potential of full blown windows 8. No reason we shouldn't have recompiled ARM versions of VLC and other open source desktop apps, but MS is keeping developers in the metro sandbox.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

This was incorrect
AndyRathbone said:
There's already a great thread where people are reporting what USB/Bluetooth items will and won't work on the Surface RT.
According to Pluggable, a manufacturer of USB peripherals, the problem lies much deeper: Windows RT doesn't support any USB device requiring a driver, and support may never come. It says:
"Windows RT does not have a Device Driver Development Kit and does not support or allow the installation of drivers. There is currently no Windows Update for Windows RT from which to match and download newly approved drivers for new device types from 3rd parties."
In short, the only devices which will work are devices which have traditionally had in-box support in Windows and never require a 3rd party driver to be installed: USB hubs, USB Mass Storage (USB hard drives and flash drives), USB Audio (headsets and mics), some USB printers, most USB video (webcams), USB HID (keyboards and mice), and a few other special cases.
I knew RT drivers would be a problem; this article implies that the drivers may never be coming at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi gang-
I work for Plugable, not trying to advertise, but just want to share some news.
Then information we're quoted in above turned out to be wrong.
We've updated the post referenced above,
[Update: 11/16/2012] We had previously incorrectly written that device drivers aren’t installable on Windows RT. That’s not right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We've also added a follow up where we explain how to install a driver on a Windows RT device. Here's the new post.
We're very sorry about providing the misleading information, but we'll be working hard towards being open about news and developments.
I'm game to explain how we arrived at the bad findings if anyone's interested: essentially just that Windows Update hadn't found any drivers, and we'd not been able to find any drivers posted at http://catalog.update.microsoft.com, nor other important resources for development and distribution.

dharmapunk said:
Hi gang-
I work for Plugable, not trying to advertise, but just want to share some news.
Then information we're quoted in above turned out to be wrong.
We've updated the post referenced above,
We've also added a follow up where we explain how to install a driver on a Windows RT device. Here's the new post.
We're very sorry about providing the misleading information, but we'll be working hard towards being open about news and developments.
I'm game to explain how we arrived at the bad findings if anyone's interested: essentially just that Windows Update hadn't found any drivers, and we'd not been able to find any drivers posted at http://catalog.update.microsoft.com, nor other important resources for development and distribution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any ETA (possibility?) of RT drivers for your USB video adapters? Oh, and just bought that Ethernet adapter, thanks for letting us know!

Actually, it does work. You just have to sign the apps with the Microsoft code integrity key. This may give the impression that you can't do it at all, but that's not actually true.
Obviously, this isn't possible for a third-party developer to apply such a signature directly, and MS is generally not fond of signing third-party code. It happens on occasion, though. Consider the Flash Player in IE10 for RT; that's Adobe code, but it's signed with the MS key. Downloading suitably signed EXEs and running them works just fine; for example, the remote debugging server for Windows RT is distributed by MS exactly like any other downloadable EXE, and it works.
In fact, if you somehow manage to put your device in Testsigning mode (which exists in RT and also in x86 versions of Windows, and allows using any trusted signature instead of only the MS signature), you can install your own signing certificate and then run your own compiled and signed desktop apps. Unfortunately, testsigning mode is a bootloader option, and the bootloader for all currently released Windows RT devices prohibits its use (although development devices were found to support it).

@dharmapunk: Any chance this driver is going to show up in Windows Update soon? Since you've obviously already gotten the MS signature, hopefully it will be literally plug-and-play soon...

GoodDayToDie said:
@dharmapunk: Any chance this driver is going to show up in Windows Update soon? Since you've obviously already gotten the MS signature, hopefully it will be literally plug-and-play soon...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@GoodDayToDie Sorry, I'm not entirely sure on this- since it's an ASIX developed driver the info I have here is second hand. We anticipated this would be baked into RT's RTM, however for some unknown reason it wasn't.
Sorry I can't be more help here, I'm still looking for ANY WinRT drivers over on catalog.update.microsoft.com.
---------- Post added at 06:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:00 AM ----------
addictivepixels said:
Any ETA (possibility?) of RT drivers for your USB video adapters? Oh, and just bought that Ethernet adapter, thanks for letting us know!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry @addictivepixels, I've not heard any news that DisplayLink is close to releasing, or even working on, a WinRT usb graphics driver. I anticipate that will stay only x86/x64 for quite some time. Wish I had better news...

The saga continues...
Hi again-
The saga continues. We’ve been asked to take down the WinRT driver for our ASIX-based USB Ethernet adapter. Seems like it wasn’t supposed to have been released after all, so we’re taking the driver off our website soon- before month's end.
We’ll still be selling the adapter. We’ll still be supporting customers. We’re even keeping the installation instructions that we wrote up on our website.
I hope that this issue can be resolved soon. I want more devices to plug into Surface too!
Since I'm a noob I can't post a link to our new post, however the one the OP listed now has an update notice with a link to further details.

dharmapunk said:
Hi again-
The saga continues. We’ve been asked to take down the WinRT driver for our ASIX-based USB Ethernet adapter. Seems like it wasn’t supposed to have been released after all, so we’re taking the driver off our website soon- before month's end.
We’ll still be selling the adapter. We’ll still be supporting customers. We’re even keeping the installation instructions that we wrote up on our website.
I hope that this issue can be resolved soon. I want more devices to plug into Surface too!
Since I'm a noob I can't post a link to our new post, however the one the OP listed now has an update notice with a link to further details.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there any chance that we could get the source to said driver? I'd like to poke around it to see if it has any vulnerabilities that'd allow a kernel-mode exploit.
I understand if you can't/don't want to post it.

netham45 said:
Is there any chance that we could get the source to said driver? I'd like to poke around it to see if it has any vulnerabilities that'd allow a kernel-mode exploit.
I understand if you can't/don't want to post it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@netham Other than the driver package in the link in the original post, we haven nothing else to offer. Since I knew our blog post with the driver download was quoted in the original post in this thread, we wanted to warn any customers who might have purchased our USB2-E100 that the driver will be going away soon due to a takedown request.
To be clear, our concern is making certain any customers who purchased the USB2-E100 for use on Windows RT have a chance to download the driver before we take it down.
I'd post the link to our new blog post with details if I could, trying again: http://plugable.com/2012/12/11/windows-rt-surface-usb-ethernet-takedown

The RT driver situation has been odd to say the least - still trying to figure it all out. I've been able to yank some drivers out of my Windows 8 Pro box and manually install them onto the Surface. Outcomes:
I was able to get my Smart Card Reader half functional this way, although there is no current affordance for installing the necessary minidriver that allows the .NET card to fully interoperate with the Surface.
I had the same minidriver issue with my DisplayLink UV+.
I was also able to get my Lumia 900 to mount , but can't get the file system to read past the top level.
More research required...

That is... *very* interesting. Those must be .NET user-mode drivers, because the Surface RT uses the ARM instruction set and is completely incapable of running the typical written-in-C/C++-and-compiled-for-x86/x64 drivers used on "normal" Windows.
Alternatively, the driver may contain a firmware blob that is loaded into the microcontroller of the hardware even though the actual Windows driver code (which would be x86) wouldn't work. The firmware blob won't be x86, it'll be whatever instruction set the device's microcontroller executes.

Don't ever buy Windows RT again, it's a dead end operating system.

well, at a very low price,it's a good device. Kids like them for games and music. Youtube etc . play well on it . Not totally useless but I would of never paid the full price for it.

xgoldmon or MTK Catcher on a USB Modem ?

I'd like to begin using xgoldmon or perhaps the MTK Catcher (or MTK engineering/dev tools) to begin watching a modem for weird or bad behavior.
However, I'd prefer to not devote an entire phone to this project, and I don't currently own any of the xgold chipset phones.
So, I wonder, are there any USB modems that were produced that run the xgold chipset that could be used with xgoldmon ? I would love to just stick a USB dongle into my linux laptop and just run xgoldmon there ... no phone involved.
If not, what about a USB modem that would work with MTK Catcher ?
Any other comments or suggestions are appreciated. If there is another tool out there that would allow me to get debug/modem/status information from a USB modem (sierra, etc.) that would be fine as well.
THanks.

... I wonder, does anyone know of a forum or board that would be better to post a question like this on ?
I am having a hard time finding forums where these topics are being discussed.
THanks.