[HN Gopher] End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at PostmarketOS aim...
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End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at PostmarketOS aim to revive it
Author : rntn
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-06-15 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > The project's own wiki currently lists over 200 supported
| devices... Most of them can can boot, many have Wi-Fi support,
| but currently just two actual phones work as phones
|
| Dealbreaker. I guess that using a phone for its intended use (for
| making phone calls) makes me a boomer.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've never met someone who needs at least three types of phones
| at a time.
| ur-whale wrote:
| mmh.
|
| given then number of phone that reach "end of life" only because
| the battery dies and is not (easily) replaceable, not sure what
| good this will do.
| afandian wrote:
| I have two BlackBerry phones in a drawer with perfectly good
| hardware that I reluctantly stopped using because of software
| issues (Passport and KeyOne). PostmarketOS isn't relevant for
| these specificaly, but to your point, the hardware would have
| been fine for probably double their actual lifetime.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| To add to this, Google itself just dropped the security
| updates for Pixel 3a (their own phone not OEM) after just 3
| years of launch.
|
| 3 years of use from a piece of complex hardware that could
| keep going easily for 7/8 years.
|
| This kind of narrow planned obsolescence should be an
| environmental crime.
| eric__cartman wrote:
| I have a OnePlus 5 (a device from 2017) that's suffering
| the same fate. The hardware itself is fine. It has 6
| gigabytes of RAM and a SoC that's fast enough that I don't
| notice any slowdowns in day to day usage. Yet the
| officially supported software by the manufacturer has been
| abandoned two years ago. I'm currently running LineageOS,
| and the phone is working as good as ever. Running a modern
| version of Android with monthly security patches.
|
| It's a shame that expensive devices nowadays are made to be
| disposable. After getting a battery replacement, this phone
| is ready to go for a few more years at least. SoCs have
| gotten so good that even a half a decade old chip will
| perform well for the vast majority of users that don't play
| big games on their phones. It's not like you need a
| supercomputer to browse social media, websites and use maps
| for navigation.
| ansible wrote:
| (Owner of Pixel 3a) Yeah, that's a bummer. There's not
| something else I'd rather own right now, so I'll likely
| keep running it for a while.
|
| But most other Android phones don't have a long support
| lifetime either. Heck, there are a lot of new phones you
| can buy today that have outdated OS versions, and you're
| not likely to get much in the way of updates either.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Google's horrible support might turn out to be an opening
| for Linux. There are a lot of Pixel owners who hate
| iPhones with a passion that are currently, against all of
| their instincts and values, considering buying iPhones
| because they get double or triple the functional life of
| an Android. They would even switch to something more
| difficult to use if they both could avoid buying Apple,
| and either extend the life of their current phone
| (unlikely at this point, but maybe in the future) or have
| confidence that the next phone that they buy would last
| as long as an iPhone.
|
| If they could run Android apps on it with reasonable
| performance, it would be an easy switch.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Indeed my example was just to point out the insanity of 3
| years support on your _own_ products not some external
| third party. Truly a waste.
| ancientsofmumu wrote:
| > (Owner of Pixel 3a) Yeah, that's a bummer. There's not
| something else I'd rather own right now, so I'll likely
| keep running it for a while.
|
| I have the 3a and 4a (non-5G), if you can find a 4a
| someone is trying to give away on the cheap it's
| basically a nicer version of the 3a IMHO. It's going to
| EOL in a year so I wouldn't spend much on it, but if one
| crosses your path for $100, well...
| cge wrote:
| I have a Pixel 2XL. It's in perfect condition, works well,
| and still has decent battery life on the original battery.
| It has no problems running everything I use, and there
| would be little benefit I would gain from getting a new
| phone. Yet Google dropped security updates at the end of
| 2020, as with the 3a, three years after launch, and around
| a year after they stopped selling them. My phone now nags
| me to buy a new one in the settings.
|
| Now, it might be argued that Google has no obligation to
| produce updates for their products, but... if I try to
| improve security on the phone by using third-party
| distributions that are updated, rather than buying a new
| phone, then thanks to Google's SafetyNet, the phone will be
| crippled and have difficulty running many banking, payment,
| and other apps that are at this point a requirement in many
| situations. Thus, the reason the phone is problematic at
| this point is because of Google's _working_ to make the
| phone unusable, not just the lack of updates.
|
| It is bizarre that SafetyNet will vouch for the security of
| an OS Google itself argues to me is unsafe because of lack
| of updates, while not allowing a third-party distribution.
| Yet I suppose I wouldn't be surprised if Google eventually
| decides to have SafetyNet stop functioning entirely on
| older devices, in the name of security, to make them even
| less usable.
| 3np wrote:
| As an aside, Alpine is a really great distro and an excellent
| choice to base pmOS on.
|
| If I'd have been in the anti-systemd camp I'd consider it where I
| currently use other distros.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _They 're not all equally supported, though. Most of them can
| can boot, many have Wi-Fi support, but currently just two actual
| phones work as_ phones _: the open-source hardware PinePhone and
| the Purism Librem 5_.
|
| This seems like a very significant error. In
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices I see twelve more in
| the Community section with a Y in the "Calls" column (and they
| all have SMS and mobile data too), from various different brands
| --Lenovo, Motorola, Samsung, Wileyfox, Xiaomi. I get the
| impression from this that many in the Testing section will also
| support calls.
| csnover wrote:
| It's possible that both are true depending on the definition of
| "calls". It may be different with postmarketOS, but at least
| with LineageOS, there are phones where calls are supported over
| 3G but not VoLTE. So, while the phone and OS are technically
| capable of making calls, without VoLTE support they can't
| actually do it because mobile providers have decommissioned
| their 3G networks.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Ah, USA problems. I don't _think_ anywhere else has
| decommissioned 3G just yet, though some plan to next year or
| so;
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G#Decline_and_decommissions
| suggests the EU may even be planning to keep 2G alive as a
| fallback, which is an interesting decision.
|
| I have used at least three phones (two Android, one PinePhone
| on Arch) that allegedly support VoLTE, but I have never had a
| phone call do anything other than drop to 3G on the Optus
| network in Australia (through at least three different
| carriers). I'm not sure quite what's up with that, but I
| vaguely recall some kind of insanity about VoLTE not having
| any baseline codecs and carriers being able to operate a
| device whitelist and idiotic user-hostile things like that.
| I'm fuzzy on details, and have never tried asking the telco
| why it doesn't work. I really dislike how opaque everything
| is in mobile telephony.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Keeping 2G+4/5G alive looks like a good option to me - 2G
| is supported by any GSM phone and has long range, 4/5G -
| high bandwidth for modern phones. I would not miss 3G at
| all if 2G and 4G will be available, but 2G decommission
| will turn a lot of working dump/feature phones into e-waste
| (I myself use multiple SIM-cards and some of them are in
| 2G-only phones).
| giantrobot wrote:
| 2G isn't as spectrally efficient as 5G. It can't service
| nearly as many users in a cell so it ends up just being
| wasteful. Carriers do not want to waste their spectrum
| licenses on 2G service for some small minority of
| customers.
|
| Those old feature phones are generating e-waste already
| as they're on their _n_ th battery and have chargers with
| connectors not used by any other device.
| [deleted]
| Diris wrote:
| Man it'd be so great to be able to run a home server on an old
| phone, kinda like a raspberry pi but with a lot of accessories
| included.
| jancsika wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite. Here's what I want:
|
| 1. make phone calls with bog standard reliability with a Verizon
| account
|
| 2. receive and send texts
|
| 3. take pictures with the phone's camera
|
| 4. have a bog standard virtual keyboard
|
| 5. read Wikipedia
|
| Can PostmarketOS achieve this on some piece of ubiquitous
| hardware? If so, which one?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My understanding is the current state is "yes on 3G, but no on
| LTE" which means (depending on where you live) the actual
| answer may be "no."
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Unfortunately Verizon is disabling their 3G network at the
| end of the year.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > They're not all equally supported, though. Most of them can can
| boot, many have Wi-Fi support, but currently just two actual
| phones work as phones: the open-source hardware PinePhone and the
| Purism Librem 5.
|
| And very little will change until something is done at
| legislation level: companies declaring a device obsolete,
| withdrawing it from market, or ending its support, should be
| forced to publish at least the bare minimum information necessary
| to allow the creation of drivers and functioning software; nobody
| is asking them to surrender all their IP. PostMarketOS and other
| projects are a wonderful effort, but they can't keep the pace of
| the absurd number of perfectly good devices that are thrown away
| each year because their manufacturers didn't want them to be
| reused. This practice encourages bad habits from users
| contributing to pollution, and it's more a political issue than a
| technical one.
| rez9x wrote:
| My understanding is that the support is less about the device
| OEM and more about the SoC supplier (ie Qualcomm). Once
| Qualcomm decides they're not supporting the SoC anymore,
| there's not much the OEM can do in terms of security patching.
| This is the understanding I've picked up from similar
| discussions over the years, but I very well may be wrong.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Many SoC's these days are well supported by the mainline
| kernel (and Qualcomm actually has way better support than,
| e.g. MediaTek) so some security fixes are still possible even
| after the hardware is out of support. Flaws in the embedded
| firmware could of course be problematic.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Thats what I have heard as well. You would think a giant
| company like Google or Samsung could go to Qualcomm and
| require much longer support but it does not seem like that is
| happening unfortunately
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Qualcomm effectively has a near-monopoly on the concept of
| a cellular radio, especially on the high end, so they
| really don't have to bend for anyone, even a little.
| dogleash wrote:
| >nobody is asking them to surrender all their IP
|
| I agree with you, but that is how they'll see it. Some of the
| datasheets I've gotten for an NRND or EOL device are under NDA
| and still too spartan to write a driver without a lot of trail
| and error. Because this year's latest-and-greatest product is
| is 95% the same as the old perfectly-functional products
| they'll call trash.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| For a lot of the more complicated communication chips I've
| used the data sheets are more aspirational than a reflection
| of reality anyways. I've often used registers in ways that
| are documented; it didn't work, and the response from the
| support was "oh just do it the way our example driver does
| it."
| causi wrote:
| Hell I just want them to let you unlock the bootloader.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| > The project is quite different. It uses the mainline Linux
| kernel, and a standard userland, to support a wide variety of
| devices. The theory is that not needing a manufacturer's outdated
| firmware or drivers means that pmOS can use more current
| components, direct from the various upstream Linux projects.
|
| This clarifies a lot for me. Regarding android app support on
| postmarketos - I haven't tried postmarketos yet but my
| understanding is some have been managing this via using
| 'waydroid'
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I have a few old Moto G1s that I'd love to put this on, but they
| have carrier-locked bootloaders, so that's out. I have a 2012
| Nexus 7 that's pretty well supported, but it won't charge (or
| recognize the USB connection in any way), so that's out, too.
| ansible wrote:
| In some cases, you can ask the carrier to give you the unlock
| code, if the device is out of contract.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| It seems like a lost cause because of the ever-escalating CPU
| demands of the present-day web. Keeping the phone running is one
| thing, making its browser able to keep up with the latest web
| bloat is another.
| BurningPenguin wrote:
| I still have a BQ E5 Ubuntu Edition laying around at home. Still
| waiting for any other distro to support it, despite Ubuntu Touch.
| HidyBush wrote:
| We will finally able to re-use old smartphones if open source
| drivers will be written for their hardware. There is literally no
| fundamental smartphone functionality that has been lacking from
| 2012 onwards, and as such there is absolutely no reason why a
| Galaxy S2 shouldn't at least have an up to date kernel that isn't
| limited by driver incompatibility
| ansible wrote:
| Unfortunately, the S2 has very limited 4G (LTE) support, and
| the 3G networks are being shut down. I believe, based on the
| supported bands, that it would only work with AT&T. The 1G of
| RAM is going to make things difficult moving forwards too.
|
| -------------------
|
| Ultimately, we need something even beyond Google's Fuchsia OS.
|
| First, we need hardware that is relatively standardized, and
| able to be identified at boot time. Just like how you aren't
| bothered by having an extra USB controller on your PC
| motherboard, or which PCIe slot you plug in your network card.
| We need a standardized means of identifying on-chip and off-
| chip peripherals available to the system, so that we can have a
| standard set of drivers loaded automatically.
|
| This is hampered by all the changes (over the last couple
| decades) in things like power management and security (secure
| boot).
|
| It is not all bad news. For example, there is relatively low
| diversity in USB host controllers, everyone tends to use the
| same standardized hardware interface.
|
| But there hasn't been much cooperation across the industry to
| standardize peripherals in the embedded world like there has
| been in the PC world.
| agentultra wrote:
| This is a really cool project!
|
| I decided a few years ago to never buy a new laptop/computer
| again and reuse as much as possible, repair, and buy refurbished
| if necessary.
|
| Maintaining a lean Linux distro for older generations of hardware
| is a great idea.
| Mildlypolite wrote:
| Great, I am trying to do the same thing because the rhythm of
| Change is unsustainable in every possible way (ecologically,
| but also, I want to master my skills on the instruments I use
| everyday and this is not possible when something change every
| year).
| sillycube wrote:
| leke wrote:
| This is a really neat idea, but their coverage is not that great.
| I would totally by a phone that gave over details that made it
| easy for projects like this to adopt.
| smm11 wrote:
| End-of-life? How about just the Samsung Galaxy line beyond one
| made 12 years ago. It's sort of popular in Android-land.
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