Slashdot Asks: Does the World Need a Third Mobile OS? 304
Now that it is evident that Microsoft doesn't see any future with Windows Phone (or Windows 10 Mobile), it has become clear that there is no real, or potential competitor left to fight Android and iOS for a slice of the mobile operating system market. Mozilla tried Firefox OS, but that didn't work out either. BlackBerry's BBOS also couldn't find enough taker. Ideally, the market is more consumer friendly when there are more than one or two dominant forces. Do you think some company, or individual, should attempt to create their own mobile operating system?
sailfish (Score:2)
how is sailfish doing? I haven't heard much about them since they went software only.
Re: (Score:3)
https://blog.jolla.com/sailfishx_sales/ [jolla.com]
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SFOS is doing fine. I've been using it as my daily driver all year on my Nexus 4. I occasionally boot LineageOS nightlies, just to see how things are coming along. Android feels hostile, clunky, and slow by comparison.
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It’s got fewer users than either BB10 or Windows Phone. Take that as you will.
TempleOS (Score:5, Funny)
It's time for TempleOS Mobile!
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Nah, it's time for MovieOS Mobile
Branch Tizen or Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are / has a mobile version of their OS. Someone should branch it and get it working on commodity hardware. We need truly open source devices. Its ridiculous that Android phone I bought a year ago will never get a security update. Or that I have to basically pay for a security update from Apple.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure what you mean by paying for a security update. If you bought an iPhone a year ago you'll certainly get updates. You don't even have to beg your carrier.
Re:Branch Tizen or Ubuntu (Score:4)
Umm, did you read the next two sentences:
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It's ridiculous that the discount 3rd-party Android phone you bought ago will never get a security update. All my Nexuses and now Pixels get updates immediately and for years.
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Why? The reason the third party phones are so cheap is because they will invest zero money into updates that would eat up the razor thin margins. If you want a phone maker to give you updates you’re going to have to give them an economic incentive.
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You have to pay Apple for updates? How so? On my iPhone I just hit the update button and I get them for free.
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It's worth noting that the next version of Android is trying to fix some of these issues, by providing stable kernel interfaces for device drivers, allowing the kernel to be updated independently of the device vendor. That doesn't help when there's a security vulnerability in a device driver that the vendor won't fix, but it does help when there's an issue elsewhere in the kernel. I suspect that part of the motivation for this is to allow Google to use Android device drivers with Magenta.
The big proble
It may not come from the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing we have seen is that it is a tremendously expensive undertaking. The Android example shows how difficult it is to handle the unruly mob of independent manufacturers, so I think we will see such an OS one day, but that it will follow the Apple model of integrated hardware and software.
The market demand in the US and Europe is not terribly high for such a beast, but I could easily see, say, China or Korea deciding that having a new platform was of strategic value. Samsung has even tried it already.
In China, for example, if it were announced today that Android and iOS were going to be forbidden starting in 2021, you would have a pretty complete alternative ecosystem by then.
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The Windows Phone worst enemy was Microsoft itself. It wasn't a bad UI, what feels stupid on a desktop computer works well on a phone. But Microsoft added a burden to it that it must be Windows compatible, and vice versa. No one liked those Windows Metro apps, they were of very low quality, and overall the whole feel is about trying to copy and catchup to the competition instead of being its own concept. The reason Windows became popular was the amount of backwards compatibility it had; you could run olde
Re:It may not come from the USA (Score:5, Informative)
The Windows Phone worst enemy was Microsoft itself. It wasn't a bad UI, what feels stupid on a desktop computer works well on a phone.
Speak for yourself on that one; the only people I've met that at actually like the metro interface on phones are all big fans of Microsoft. People who are indifferent towards Microsoft have never liked it in my experience.
Think about it:
- The tiles just flip around at set intervals, and when they do, you may well not have a hint as to what application that tile was for unless it happened to be fresh on your mind, because there aren't really any good hints to that end.
- Some tiles don't offer any hints at all, at any time. Think about the tile in WP8 that just showed a zero-depth picture of a trophy...how is the user supposed to know what the hell it is for? Xbox achievements when you don't own an xbox?
- Unless you continue to stare at a given tile, you could very well be missing something important, like an important email for example, because the tile is probably flipped to something uninteresting, like Amazon telling you about cameras they sell.
(Microsoft told Windows Phone users for a long time that there's no need to rip off Android's notification system, until they realized exactly how terrible the tile system was for notifications.)
This was NOT a user friendly OS. The tile system was a really horrible idea to begin with. Windows Phone fans love to chat up a storm about how lame static icons are...well, at least static icons give users a good idea about what they're for, at all times. There's a very good reason that static icons have been a thing since Xerox invented them 44 years ago. If they really wanted to do away with static icons, they should have adopted Android's widget system where they can be interactive, real-time, have text that makes sense of what you're looking at, and have unlimited dimensions.
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Integration of hardware will probably happen at first, but if a true cross-OS market develops then you'll see smartphones follow the path of the PC market in the '90s. Dominant positions, license sales, and compatibility issues.
About the only thing I trust less than Silicon Valley is China or Russia, however. So if the new platforms start there then I'll be sitting them out...
Eventually (Score:4, Insightful)
When the two major offerings are not serving the whole market an opportunity will develop... but I don't think that time is right now. At some point, Apple will do something more dramatically stupid than removing the headphone jack, and maybe then an alternative will make sense.
Elon's MuskOS (Score:5, Funny)
because... why not?
In decades of developing and promoting tech (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never met a customer who knows what he wants until he sees it.
So I don't think the question can be answered; the only thing we know for sure is that, at this time, not enough people want something like FireFox or BB OS to make them viable; or at least if there are enough people nobody has figured out a way to get it to the people who want it.
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My favorite customer is related to yours. This customer knows exactly what he wants, in detail, and you deliver it to him exactly as he asked for it, and they don't like it. Mind you, you make lots of helpful suggestions along the way, which they hate. Then they go to another vendor, and they get exactly what you pitched them.
Re:In decades of developing and promoting tech (Score:4, Funny)
This customer knows exactly what he wants, in detail, and you deliver it to him exactly as he asked for it, and they don't like it.
My new girlfriend is just like my mother--looks like her, dresses like her. So I took her home to meet my parents. My father hates her!
I'll be here all week. Try the veal!
Re:In decades of developing and promoting tech (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never met a customer who knows what he wants until he sees it.
I'm getting really tired of hearing that. It may be true (in fact, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't), but in the last few years it only ever seems to be uttered by developers and companies who want to foist whatever they make onto people because that's what they invested in, not because customers unknowingly want it.
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"Foisting" implies just getting to the sale and moving on. What I'm talking about is more like a long journey into the unknown you're take with someone.
People usually have a pretty good understanding of what they do every day. But there's no inherent reason that they would understand how what they do could be done differently.
Re:In decades of developing and promoting tech (Score:4, Insightful)
"Foisting" implies just getting to the sale and moving on.
What I mean by "foisting" is when you are given the "choice" between their way or nothing, regardless of whether or not their way is actually good for you.
Also, developers who talk this way are often wrong about what people want, but in their arrogance (that is an incredibly arrogant attitude, after all), are unable to even see their error. The tech industry has gone backwards in several ways as a direct result of this.
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I don't doubt it. But it's also true that it's hard to imagine things different from what they are when you're familiar with the way they are. Lack of perspective is the human condition. Often if you talk to several people who work together, their understanding of what's going on is radically different.
Now it sounds like you've probably been on the receiving end of some high handed treatment. Let me assure you that this runs both ways. It's just something you have to get over. People underestimate the
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But it's also true that it's hard to imagine things different from what they are when you're familiar with the way they are.
True. I'm not arguing against innovation or trying out new solutions to problems. I am arguing against the way that the tech industry has apparently settled on how those new solutions are introduced: through force rather than demonstrating value.
Now it sounds like you've probably been on the receiving end of some high handed treatment.
That depends on what you mean by "high handed treatment". If you mean having good solutions removed and replaced with substandard solutions, then yes, I have. We all have.
Let me assure you that this runs both ways. It's just something you have to get over.
I have no idea what you mean here... what runs both ways? What do I have to get over?
Answer precedes the question (Score:4, Insightful)
> Microsoft tried, people preferred to choose between the OSes that are more popular. Mozilla tried Firefox OS, but that didn't work out either. BlackBerry's BBOS also couldn't find enough takers
> Do you think some company, or individual, should attempt to create their own mobile operating system?
Lots of people and companies DID try. Big companies and small.
> Ideally, the market is more consumer friendly when there are more than one or two dominant forces.
Apparently not in this instance, in which consumers are served by having a wide range of apps to choose from, on a wide range of hardware. Android offers hardware from $50 to $1,500, with millions of apps. Apparently that's what consumers want. They could have chosen Windows Mobile, or Firefox OS, or Blackberry, or several others. They prefer the well-known platforms with millions of apps and a wide choice of hardware.
There IS a third player - Samsung. Samsung's phones are "Android based" in the same way that Android is "Linux based".
Re:Answer precedes the question (Score:4, Insightful)
More like, Microsoft tried to hijack Nokia's rabidly loyal fanbase. As it turns out, killing the system they already used (Symbian) and the system they wanted to use (MeeGo) in favor of someone else's unproven new system was not the way to win them over.
Re: Answer precedes the question (Score:2)
Re: Answer precedes the question (Score:4, Interesting)
Not denying Nokia's internal mess, but ultimately they did release a MeeGo device, two months before their first WP device. So they didn't need someone else's system after all. MeeGo was ready on time! And it got stellar reviews! If they had pushed it with all their might, it could have been a strong contender against Android.
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There IS a third player - Samsung. Samsung's phones are "Android based" in the same way that Android is "Linux based".
Can you clarify a little bit on this? I've had plenty of smartphones, but they've all been either LG or HTC based on Verizon. What is Samsung doing on its software releases that's markedly different from other device manufacturers?
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What is Samsung doing on its software releases that's markedly different from other device manufacturers?
They're shoveling a lot more apps, and they have a much fancier launcher. But they're still just Android devices, albeit with more eye candy.
Purism (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully Purism, with their Librem phone and PureOS, will survive, if only as a niche product. Designed to be a super secure phone based on Debian.
https://puri.sm/ [puri.sm]
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Hopefully Purism, with their Librem phone and PureOS, will survive, if only as a niche product. Designed to be a super secure phone based on Debian.
https://puri.sm/ [puri.sm]
But if there aren't many apps for it not many people will adopt it. If not many people adopt it, no one will write apps for it.
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Definitely (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of people here will post very specific solutions that they have been following. Each will advocate this, that or the other and each is admirable in its own way. I am a longtime user of iOS but before that I had a Palm, starting with the Pilot and going through a number of devices. But I have a different focus.
We need a third, perhaps a fourth, fifth and sixth mobile operating system because it is vital. It is very important to note that Apple and Alphabet will definitely stop innovating and will reach a point of stasis if there is no alternative. Big corporations will tend to want to rest on laurels and allow the hardware people to carry the load. We saw that with Microsoft in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s under Steve Ballmer. They simply quit innovating on all fronts and assumed that Intel and the other chip makers would carry things forward. The result was Windows XP, which became the least secure thing you could run on a computer and the most fraught with irrelevance.
Were I a multimillionaire, I would look at this particular discussion and I would support upstarts with venture capital—not because I hate iOS or Android but because you need innovation. You have to have real competition and two companies trying to outdo each other are just not enough.
And here is a real-life example: Try to book a flight now that we are, essentially, down to three major airlines. These three have whittled down competition and ceded certain aspects of innovation in a manner that exactly re-creates a monopoly. Oh, they'll tell you that they're competing, but they are simply not doing it. You can bet that Alphabet and Apple will do exactly the same.
Two software companies is not enough to keep innovation fired up. We need more than three, actually.
Re: Definitely (Score:2)
Also there's the inconvenient fact that Google earns money by getting to know the highest number of details about you.
It'd also be nice if there was a mobile OS where the user was in control (basically have root permissions) It's also ridiculous that smartphones being pretty powerful computers you can't run traditional desktop apps when in a dock or something
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Were I a multimillionaire, I would look at this particular discussion and I would support upstarts with venture capitalâ"not because I hate iOS or Android but because you need innovation. You have to have real competition and two companies trying to outdo each other are just not enough.
Well, here's the problem. Several different major players have tried and failed to start up a new mobile OS. The only success stories in quite some time now are iOS and Android. Now, I only wish I could be the first to point out that Microsoft sabotaged Windows Mobile by flushing any good will left down every possible toilet; Spyware in Windows, constantly abandoning whole systems of development for Mobile... But they spent quite a bit of money trying to promote their platform, and could attract neither use
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Sure ... it worked for Mark Shuttleworth. He made his multi million investment and now Ubuntu has 40% desktop market share.
Oops.
That's the wrong question. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the wrong question. The right question is this:
What fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes?
If you have an answer for that question, then clearly there's a need for a third OS. If the new OS is just going to be a knock-off of iOS and Android with nothing fundamentally different, then you might as well just use Android and avoid trifurcating the developer community.
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That's the wrong question. The right question is this:
What fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes?
If you have an answer for that question, then clearly there's a need for a third OS. If the new OS is just going to be a knock-off of iOS and Android with nothing fundamentally different, then you might as well just use Android and avoid trifurcating the developer community.
as much as i realize that the privacy horse has already left the barn, it'd be the problems of privacy and information mining. Google has gotten to the point of maliciousness. Apple isn't quite there yet but they're close. we need an OS that doesn't mine and share every bit of data.
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What fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes?
Freedom and control.
True, you can make Android give you a lot of this, but it takes quite a bit of work and technical knowledge.
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The problem with that plan is that the only people who care about freedom and control, by and large, are the people who have the technical knowledge to make Android do what they want. Unless and until you can convince the average grandparent to care about that issue, it won't be a sufficiently fundamental problem worthy of a separate OS... and if you can get Android to give you the functionality already, then it still won't be a sufficiently fundamental problem even if you convince everyone to care.
No, th
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Well, first, I answered the question you asked. That is indeed a "fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes". Whether or not it's a problem that the mass market has is a different question that you didn't ask.
The problem with that plan is that the only people who care about freedom and control, by and large, are the people who have the technical knowledge to make Android do what they want.
I actually think that's not true at all. When I talk with people about their smartphones, the problems and concerns they bring up are almost always centered around the lack of freedom and control. People do care. The problem is that people are resigned to
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The point is, unless there's a reason for users to switch, they won't, which means the new OS has to solve some fundamental user problem that the old OSes can't readily solve.
YES!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
If I could find a phone that had true security in mind (where updates come quickly) and a permissions model that would allow me, the user, to actually set the what permissions an app has versus it wanting to access every damn thing on my phone, I would buy it in a heart beat.
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You mean iPhone?
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You mean an Android device version 6+?
Free Software to the rescue again! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free Software to the rescue again! (Score:4, Informative)
They just hit 100%.
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Security through obscurity, via administrative dictate. Nice.
What would be the goal? (Score:2)
If you want there to be competition, the next question would be competition for who? Android & iOS are pretty competitive with one another in terms of features and support. The handset makers aren't going to be doing any more competing than they currently are. Samsung is half-heartedly working on their own mobile OS to make it look like they're not completely indebted to Google for their part of the market. Carriers in the US couldn't care less as long as they can continue to dictate bands & crapwar
Wayland/Linux based phone (Score:2)
Why not a device sold with a full featured standard Linux distribution with standard Window systems X11 and Wayland. There never was a need for Google to make yet another incompatable window system when it could have easily adapted X or Wayland to its needs. And please, I dont mean Ubuntus phone with Mir, which was a mistake since Canonical could have worked with Wayland folks to get whatever they needed added to Wayland for their phone project, Canonical coming up with Mir was sheer idiocy and threatened t
Maybe Palm WebOS (Score:2)
what about symbian comeing back? (Score:2)
what about symbian comeing back?
Microsoft Android? (Score:2)
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Microsoft tried. One of their ideas was xamarin for code you can write once and push to all 3 platforms. Unfortunately, even if they managed to get
everyone to switch all their NEW applications to xamarin, they still likely would not be able to compete with the existing apps for quite some time.
If I was microsoft and wanted to create a third OS, I would make sure that on day one it could connect to both the iphone store and the google play
store and install anything on both stores without a recompile. Sure
Yes and it comes in about a year (Score:2)
https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ [puri.sm]
Security, integrity, user control. Libre software and hardware. That's why it is needed.
What's the question? (Score:2)
Do you think some company, or individual, should attempt to create their own mobile operating system?
What are you asking? As you yourself commented, people have attempted to create their own mobile operating systems.
Are you asking should someone try *and succeed* to create their own *commercially successful* mobile OS?
What is missing (for the masses)? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time I have seen a new application, service, etc get overtaken by a competitor is because the new thing filled a hole missing by the masses. The biggest complaints I hear from mobile device users is around their carrier and/or the hardware. IOS and Android are in heavy competition and feature development is at breakneck pace, no startup could compete with that.
And the biggest barrier to entry is app development, people don't care what the OS is as long as they can snapchat and play angry birds.
Ohh and the patent system, throw that in and it really is a fools errand.
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IOS and Android are in heavy competition and feature development is at breakneck pace, no startup could compete with that.
I'm not so sure.
That iOS and Android are locked into escalating feature creep could be an opportunity. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has not interest in the vast majority of the new features they keep piling on, and who might prefer that the quality of the existing stuff be improved instead of continuing to make that pile bigger.
Perhaps my segment of the market would never be the largest one, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't large enough for someone to make a profit with.
There is a third Mobile OS already (Score:5, Insightful)
Is called AOSP.
You see, Android and AOSP are different enough, that AOSP qualifies as a third OS all into itself. AOSP is a very fragmented third OS (API wise) and playing catchup with Google's Android Proper, since the only commonality (APP wise) is in some APIs that are delerict and whose advanced functionality migrated long ago to GooglePlayStore/Services APIs. Android can run most APPs that AOSP can run, but AOSP can not run some of android's APPs, due to the use of APIs and Services tied to propiertary parts of Android
But AOSP is very big in places Like South East Asia and LatAm (where the growth is baby!), also, in places where Google services and APPs are not available, or are not the most popular. Also, some big players (like Amazon in it's tablets) have embraces AOSP.
Currently, AOSP has a 26% market share (bigger than iOS'), iOS has a 18% market share and Google's Android has something like 55% of the 3223 Million Smartphones currently in active use worldwide...
If anything has a chance to suceed in the short and medium term to fight the duopoly of Android/iOS, is a broad agreement among players for a sort of universal API to challenge the GooglePlayStore/Services APIs that are present in android but not on AOSP.
This comment is brought you by a Cellular Operator Engineer, Manager and technical trainer in LatAm rocking a Blackberry Q10 with BBOS 10.3.3.
http://communities-dominate.bl... [blogs.com]
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Who seriously runs AOSP without gapps, which are trivial to download and install on any device with a functional recovery?
It could happen when the time is right ... (Score:2)
I think now is not the time. It's that simple. We're currently in a situation where Apple's iOS pleases a big segment of the population who like the relative ease of use, the compatibility with many other devices (from clock radios to car stereos supporting "CarPlay"), and like the App Store "walled garden" model where every submission is subject to review (higher confidence of no malware problems or non-functioning software).
The others fall pretty well into the category of being happy with various Android
most users don't care about the OS (Score:3)
the catch 22 problem Microsoft faced after they missed/messed up mobile was the "Apps gap"
e.g. no one wanted to write apps for Microsoft's mobile OS because there wasn't a big enough user base to make it worthwhile, no users wanted a Microsoft mobile device because there weren't any apps ...
which really illustrates the fact that users want to do "something" with their device (you know "use" the hardware), and the vast majority don't feel strongly about the Operating System
so the long held tradition of questions in the post title being obvious - "yes" the world needs additional mobile operating systems. then the question is "can they get a sizable market share from Android and/or Apple?" probably not.
eventually something will replace the smart phone type device and disrupt the computing industry. Of course I have no idea what that will be ...
if you are old enough to remember the 1990's - the same type question back then was some version of "does the world need operating systems other than Windows" - 20+ years later the question is "can Windows stay relevant"
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In the 1990s, I remember us all thinking that cross-platform development was getting so easy that we couldn't see why would anyone would write an application that wasn't cross platform. We thought OSs would become irrelevant. Yet, the problem only got worse!
Yes (Score:2)
Another viable mobile OS (or two or three) would be a very welcome thing.
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It seems really obvious to me, but here goes:
Competition is good. Variety is good. Right now, you pretty much have the choice between iOS and Android. If (like with me) neither really meets your needs as well as they could, it would be pretty sweet to be able to choose something else that might.
Having multiple viable operating systems would mean that no single one would dominate heavily, so companies wouldn't feel that if they don't have 50%+ of the market then they have failed. That would mean that even re
Diversity required for survival (Score:2)
We also need second and third intelligent species.
They would pull us back to our senses before we nuked or boiled ourselves out of existence.
Or take they could over where we failed.
No (Score:4, Informative)
You already have an open source OS or at least most of the building blocks for one, it even runs Linux.
1. Download AOSP
2. Find hardware manufacturers that'll give you open source drivers
3. Find open alternatives to the Google services
4. Point the phone to F-Droid or similar as the default/only repository
5. Ship
Why would you start to build another platform from scratch, do you think you can unseat Google? Do you think you can succeed where Microsoft, Canonical, Blackberry, Firefox etc. have failed? I think that at best you can be the free alternative, like what CentOS is to RHEL. And even that is an ambitious undertaking, because most likely the major component suppliers will say no to open drivers. But the point is that they'd probably say no with any other OS too, if you can't get a decent cell phone chipset, bluetooth chipset, wireless chipset, GPS chipset, camera, fingerprint reader etc. you're not getting anywhere. But sure, you can always pile more problems on top...
Google Apps (Score:2)
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Maps is the hardest one of those to replace well.
True. I don't have google apps installed on my phone, and was able to easily replace them all with third party apps of at least equal quality.
Except maps.
Although, there are several maps apps that are quite good. Not as feature-filled as Google's, but plenty good enough to perform the important functions of giving you maps and decent travelling directions.
How to answer your question: (Score:2)
Try it and see. If it survives the market, the world needed what you built. If it doesn't survive, the world didn't need what you built.
The world didn't need Windows on a phone or BlackBerry but they might like some other Operating System design....The issue will be what does your OS provide that the others don't do as well?
I wish you luck, IOS has a strangle hold on most of the market because it "just works" (usually) and Google has nearly all the rest wrapped up with Android. If you can do it better,
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Try it and see. If it survives the market, the world needed what you built. If it doesn't survive, the world didn't need what you built.
That's a very naive and simplistic view of the way in which the market works.
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Try it and see. If it survives the market, the world needed what you built. If it doesn't survive, the world didn't need what you built.
That's not really how it works. Products fail every day not because they weren't needed, but because they didn't fulfill that need well enough.
Yes. Android isn't everything (Score:3)
Elements within Google itself think there should be a third - hence Fuchsia.
Android (*bought* by Google, not home grown) was essentially a quick-and-dirty rollout for time-to-market reasons, and there will certainly be benefits if some deep-pocketed sponsor can roll out something built from the ground up for mobile and not desktop requirements.
Although I guess the question is essentially asking if "Blackberry should die"?
The greatest "what might have been" I think of is Palm/WebOS. Whatever you may think of his shenanigans, Mark Hurd was absolutely right when he ran HP and made the move to buy Palm - that could have been the start of something new. HP may not have much mindshare now but I think a lot of people underestimate how many units it can put out into the market, and get adopted simply because they're pushing it.
Steve Jobs was absolutely right when he fended off all those people arguing (during the "beleaguered" days) that Apple should licence MacOS out (or even just give up and switch to Windows) - an operating system is a core *asset*. Without it you're just an indentured servant to "other people's technology", at the mercy of the true power.
Buying Palm was a bold move to attempt to break HP out of that rut but it got shafted before it got started. I think it could have been done. Instead HP was stuck trying to peddle Windows phones, and ended up getting shafted by MS yet again https://www.theverge.com/2017/... [theverge.com]
It is already available: SailfishOS (Score:5, Informative)
Read more here [jolla.com], wikipedia here [wikipedia.org], the Toolkits here [sailfishos.org], and the Sony handsets here [sonymobile.com]. And if you are enough of a hardware hacker, there are numerous other handsets to try it on.
Is it 100% complete? Almost, just missing a few sensors and bluetooth, but its sure better than starting from scratch.
There are a few of you around that are anti-Sony or got burned on the Jolla tablet and won't consider this. So have fun with your spy gizmo from Apple or Google.
No No No & No (Score:2)
Too much money for the OS dev.
Too much programming anew for developers.
Too much for matching up with hardware.
Too much for any sane normal phone user to put up with.
WebOS (Score:2)
WebOS - like the old Palm Pre phones and the new LG TVs.
Microsoft kills Windows Phone (Score:2)
3 or 4? Yes! 10 or more? NO! (Score:2)
Time for IBM? (Score:2)
No: We need a more open platform (Score:2)
We don't need another "phone OS"... instead we need the hardware to mature to make porting existing OS to it feasible, there are plenty of OS out there already, the phone functionality is then mostly down to user level apps and touch UI (not saying that there isn't a lot of work that goes into that of course). The closest we are going to get to this in the immediate future is https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ [puri.sm]
The way I see it, smart phones are currently in the 1980's stage of personal computers, Amigas', Atari
Universal apps? (Score:2)
The year of Windows on mobile! (Score:2)
Just Open Source those (Score:2)
Just open-source Windows10 Mobile and BBOS and you will have one.
Re: (Score:2)
Also buggy as hell, I hear.
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Compared to what?
I heard it was pretty stable at this current state.
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Tell that to my refrigerator. Hotspots are buggy. Changes revert without reason. I got a firmware upgrade and everything choked. I ended up doing a factory reset on the built in tablet and starting over.
Not a Tizen problem but the fact that I can't use any of the accessory software on rooted Android devices. Really? I can't get a copy of the shopping list on my phone because I use LineageOS??
I wouldn't trust Samsung to build the OS core on a device I needed to be sane and/or stable.
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Their hard stand against root is why I quit buying Samsung. To take away functionality (like Samsung pay) FOREVER on my phone even if I unrooted it was pretty upsetting.
Thank you for reminding me why I quit buying Samsung mobile stuff.
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Stability is the least of your concerns:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/... [theverge.com]
Samsung has never been any good at all at writing OSes; even their Android implementations are always fucked up.
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That's why my appliances get to live on their own network segments, firewalled from everything else. I like some of these nifty features but I don't trust them to live near my systems.
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From what I hear, big chunks of Tizen were developed by someone who hates dynamic typing so they're passing everything around via typedef'ed void pointers.
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Hates static typing, even.
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It’s also a cesspool of shitty, insecure code.
Samsung code, you mean.
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Firefox OS was treated more like a project like NodeWebkit [nwjs.io] or Electron [electron.atom.io]: A sand-boxed browser that calls custom external components that could be more sand-boxed browsers. It was inefficient and a memory hog for the hardware it was being designed for. The failure (misrepresentation?) of Matchstick.tv [kickstarter.com] left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
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and we can put whatever OS we like on damn near any hardware.
... which is often the precise reason why we won't get such drivers or the data needed to write such drivers.