But
Love the idea, but then I liked Windows Phone - same problem too - lack of apps will stop this gaining many users.
The GNOME Foundation has backed efforts to create a "freedom-oriented" smartphone that protects users' privacy and runs only open-source software. The Librem 5 promises to run privacy-centric Debian derivative PureOS by default and to support "most GNU+Linux distributions". Purism, a maker of laptops running PureOS for the …
Love the idea, but then I liked Windows Phone
If you liked Windows phone, this one is probably not for you but otherwise I agree :).
There's also the little fact that the Matrix has a serious funding problem so it may not even be around that much longer. It would have been better if they left that out, it now looks like necrosis has already set in before it's even funded. That is admittedly an entirely new approach to incentivise people to part with their money, but I can tell you it doesn't work for me..
"only runs open source"
I've seen that kind of thing tried before, and it didn't work very well. Example, Debian Linux and the 'non-free' repo that you have to manually add to the package manager. Not quite so heavy-handed but same idea.
That goes along with the 'tainted kernel' thing for Linux kernel drivers that don't explicitly have that "I am GPL'd" macro someplace in the code.
Stallman must be behind this...
[pirate icon because I want REAL freedom, not just freedom to do what "they" want you to do]
For existing alternatives not focussed on data-mining, there's Sailfish OS, and there was Ubuntu Phone and Firefox OS, but, sadly, I agree, without reasonable app support, nowadays, it's hard, if not impossible, to build up a user base.
That would be the ARM chip from FreeScale, recently acquired by NXP who were in turn recently acquired by QualCom? I would be very wary of treading that path. Not only is future support in question, it's expensive compared to an AllWinner A64 or similar. Also, Matrix Network? That would be the outfit who recently posted: "Matrix needs you! We are facing a funding crisis."?
Normally I would be all over something like this, except... yeah, except.
- with Android spec/price ratios being what they are (and my needs being as modest as they are) these days, I just can't justify spending $600 on a phone;
- while I love Open Source I really, really don't like HTML5 _anything_ (as opposed to native code), and they distinctly sound like they intend to provide calling software and not much else any time soon; now, I'd be perfectly fine without native Facebook and Twitter apps but ultimately a desktop Linux duct taped to a feature phone is not what I'm having in mind for a phone in 2017.
- last but not least the past is littered with glorious attempts to create a phone that finally breaks away from The Man, pretty much all of which are either paperweight or still running their original software today, all of them being dead ends now; and as far as dead ends in technology go, I've been there, many times, got the t-shirt, and these days I'm just a bit tired of having to abandon ship and start everything from scratch yet again, especially if it can be avoided.
Oh, and I love Gnome/GTK dearly, but hate the whole Gnome 3 thing. So, yeah...
> - last but not least the past is littered with glorious attempts to create a phone that finally breaks away from The Man
That was my first thought. I wish them well, but I hear past names on the wind, like SailFish, FireFox, Ubuntu Phone, Palm, BlackPhone... I haven't clicked through the link, so I don't know if this Gnome Phone has addressed why they think they will succeed where others have failed.
If the GNOME foundation wanted a system that was completely free from proprietary software (and firmware) then (ideally) it should be running on a RISC-V processor (MIPS-like open instruction set architecture licensed under BSD license) - but obviously that is not an option - yet. gcc 7.1 will have full RISC-V support and RISC-V support is planned for the 4.15 release of the Linux. Obviously way in the future but it could be something that a freedom oriented smart phone should encourage.
The Gemini did crowd-funding in March and more than hit the target of $500k and is on target to deliver phones by the end of the year — all crowd-funding projects carry a degree of risk. It is aiming to do this by using as much off-the-shelf equipment and software as possible, and this will undoubtedly include BLOBs for some stuff.
This phone will be more expensive and without the USP of a real keyboard and will take much longer to develop (nothing due before 2019). In summary something for the true believers: unimpressive hardware at a premium price at some point in the future. Good luck with that!
Not all Gemini devices will have SIMs. Without having even a monochrome display on its outer lid I'm not sure how practical it will be as a phone - it seems pitched more as a companion to a phone, a laptop replacement but not a phone replacement. Various small Bluetooth headset devices with screens and call buttons exist - these could help.
Gemini can run Linux or Android.
We've been down this road many times before with WebOS, FirefoxOS, MeeGo, Tizen etc.
People care about the general usability of the device as a phone, planner, messaging platform etc. as well as the availability of the apps they want to use on it - maps, Youtube, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter etc.
It's an issue of little importance if the kernel or the software over the top is free as in libre or not. What matters is that the device does the stuff they bought it for.
If this "freedom oriented" smartphone expects to go anywhere it had better remember that. Even in the absence of apps, the most important part is getting the user experience right. It's great that Debian is underneath it and all but if the gui sucks then it sucks regardless.
"webOS got the user experience _very_ right"
I don't agree. Maybe for a lot of content-consumption-only users, but not everyone. Otherwise, I'd change my desktop to look like that...
and the screenshots I've seen remind me of the XBox panel-based interfaced [which irritates me] and Windows "Ape" and have the 2D FLATSO etc..
Maybe ok for a tiny phone screen from the noughties (or 00-ties, whatever), but 'modern' gear has better resolution and speed, and can at LEAST be 3D skeuomorphic...
(yeah I'm trying to start a rebellion here - pirate icon)
I'm completely lost by the price point. The hardware seems ... not quite right either. The apps? Also a likely problem. The world of independent and/or secure phones with their new innovative OSes is literally littered with totally dead projects, one-off phones, and OSes that no one could update today if they still had the phone and wanted to. And I'm really not a fan of the latest Gnome interfaces. But uh ... yeah. Sounds like a real winner. I can't even begin to imagine why there's a crowdfunding shortfall...
I would love to see someone identify the issues and actually address them with a real plan for how to make a secure non-Apple non-Google phone with a lifespan longer than a pet hamster. Such a survival plan document would be way more interesting than phantomware specs for an overpriced piece of kit.
The big problem behind trying to get around The Man is that The Man controls the airwaves (and that's true everywhere it counts). If you want to have a wireless device, you have to submit to The Man eventually or face radio cops chasing you.
And all they really need is a radio chip to pwn you.
I think the problem they're trying to solve "phones free from corporate control" isn't going to be solved by hardware; as others have posted, it's just too expensive to develop and market a phone, and the list of would-be phone makers gets longer every year.
Linux succeeded because it didn't try to sell you a new computer, instead it made it possible to free existing hardware from proprietary operating systems, often giving them better performance than the original software. As Linux became more accepted, some manufacturers even started offering it as a supported OS.
What I'd like is a phone operating system that I can install on existing hardware (get rid of Bixby on my S8+ for a start!). Obviously this is not an easy trick, and there are some issues with getting around built-in blocks that manufacturers put into phones, but having something that could be installed on old iPhones or Samsung Galaxy 6s would allow the project to get started and make it possible for developers all over the world to contribute - just like Linux.
Tying the software to a specific hardware platform will just make it a short lived, niche product.
If you're gonna go that route, though, you might as well stick with AOSP since that's (1) supported by a Linux kernel anyway, and (2) was built from the outset for phones.
If you're saying it's not possible to build a phone using unencumbered COTS hardware, then there's simply no hope for an unencumbered phone (and there may well be no hope because radio access requires government permission with all that entails).
I'm going to give this a humongous +1. Doing hardware is a huuuuge distraction from building an open platform/eco system, etc. Learn from FirefoxOS, Ubuntu, and Jolla/SailfishOS. When you (eventually, if ever) get something out of the door, you're a generation behind (if you're lucky), with no benefits of scale, distribution or price.
Jolla's recent switch to porting to Sony's OpenDevices is much more sane approach. Sony gets to do the hardware, ensure the boot loader can be unlocked, do CE/UL/carrier certification, and sell into the general market. Jolla has a much more manageable task of occasionally porting to new hardware, but focusing primarily on the software.
Building a new eco system and app store is one serious uphill battle. I'd argue SailfishOS is only really usable as a daily driver due to Alien Dalvik support. A freedom phone won't/can't include that.
my grumbles with Android could be fixed by an improved UI toolkit that application designers could adopt...
you know, something that gives you 3D skeuomorphic without the difficulty of application-drawn controls, etc.
I don't expect GNOME devs, who "feel" that 2D FLATSO is a good thing [obviously], and "feel" that GNOME 3 is better than GNOME 2 was [I use MATE as a desktop], and "feel" that requiring 'special keys' without proper documentation to access the properties of the panel are a good thing [Linus _specifically_ bitched about that], and INTEGRATING! WITH! SYSTEMD! AND! DBUS! is a good thing [obviously NOT a good thing], would come up with a phone/slab OS that's any better than 'droid.
I think it would be WORSE for all of the things we do not like about 'droid.
I can't imagine what their "app store" would look like. And I doubt you'll be able to install un-approved applications, the way you can on 'droid (i.e. anybody can turn "that" off and load any APK file they download, if they want to).
I hope this succeeds in the long term but agree with the points about hardware. Hardware changes quickly and driver support is soon dropped. Software development usually overruns and can struggle to keep up. They should focus on creating a software foundation that is hardware-agnostic that others can build on. Open source hardware can be developed once the software is mature and there is established demand.
Regarding apps, why re-invent the wheel, can't Android apps run atop this and be sand-boxed if there are security issues with the APIs?
Given how Google are restricting access to the Play store for ideological reasons, and major phone makers dislike being dependent on Google, the time is nigh for the birth of a free (uncensored) Android app store, which could then be used by secure open source phones.
"They should focus on creating a software foundation that is hardware-agnostic that others can build on."
But given how cutthroat the SoC market is, how things are constantly shuffled to keep from Giving Information To The Enemy, you pretty much can't produce a hardware-agnostic system without their cooperation, and they're not in a position to cooperate. Either one of them has to gain true dominance to dictate terms, or they have to finally get tired of the war and start negotiating.
Google is to pay $90 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with US developers over alleged anti-competitive behavior regarding the Google Play Store.
Eligible for a share in the $90 million fund are US developers who earned two million dollars or less in annual revenue through Google Play between 2016 and 2021. "A vast majority of US developers who earned revenue through Google Play will be eligible to receive money from this fund," said Google.
Law firm Hagens Berman announced the settlement this morning, having been one of the first to file a class case. The legal firm was one of four that secured a $100 million settlement from Apple in 2021 for US iOS developers.
Arm has at least one of Intel's more capable mainstream laptop processors in mind with its Cortex-X3 CPU design.
The British outfit said the X3, revealed Tuesday alongside other CPU and GPU blueprints, is expected to provide an estimated 34 percent higher peak performance than a performance core in Intel's upper mid-range Core i7-1260P processor from this year.
Arm came to that conclusion, mind you, after running the SPECRate2017_int_base single-threaded benchmark in a simulation of its CPU core design clocked at an equivalent to 3.6GHz with 1MB of L2 and 16MB of L3 cache.
Arm is beefing up its role in the rapidly-evolving (yet long-standing) hardware-based real-time ray tracing arena.
The company revealed on Tuesday that it will introduce the feature in its new flagship Immortalis-G715 GPU design for smartphones, promising to deliver graphics in mobile games that realistically recreate the way light interacts with objects.
Arm is promoting the Immortalis-G715 as its best mobile GPU design yet, claiming that it will provide 15 percent faster performance and 15 percent better energy efficiency compared to the currently available Mali-G710.
Qualcomm knows that if it wants developers to build and optimize AI applications across its portfolio of silicon, the Snapdragon giant needs to make the experience simpler and, ideally, better than what its rivals have been cooking up in the software stack department.
That's why on Wednesday the fabless chip designer introduced what it's calling the Qualcomm AI Stack, which aims to, among other things, let developers take AI models they've developed for one device type, let's say smartphones, and easily adapt them for another, like PCs. This stack is only for devices powered by Qualcomm's system-on-chips, be they in laptops, cellphones, car entertainment, or something else.
While Qualcomm is best known for its mobile Arm-based Snapdragon chips that power many Android phones, the chip house is hoping to grow into other markets, such as personal computers, the Internet of Things, and automotive. This expansion means Qualcomm is competing with the likes of Apple, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and others, on a much larger battlefield.
The UBPorts community is in the final stages of preparing its next release and it's calling for testers.
OTA-23 is getting close – the project's Github kanban looks quite good to us – and if you're lucky enough to have one of the project's supported devices lying around, then you can help.
Many of them are a few years old now, so there's a good chance that you've already replaced them and they sit unloved and neglected in a drawer. The starred entries in the list of devices are the best supported and should have no show-stopping problems. In order of seniority, that means: the LG-made Google Nexus 5 (2013); the original Oneplus One (2014); two models of Sony Xperia X, the F5121 and F5122 (2016); and Google's Pixel 3a and 3a XL (2019).
A Linux distro for smartphones abandoned by their manufacturers, postmarketOS, has introduced in-place upgrades.
Alpine Linux is a very minimal general-purpose distro that runs well on low-end kit, as The Reg FOSS desk found when we looked at version 3.16 last month. postmarketOS's – pmOS for short – version 22.06 is based on the same version.
This itself is distinctive. Most other third-party smartphone OSes, such as LineageOS or GrapheneOS, or the former CyanogenMod, are based on the core of Android itself.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have shown for the first time that Bluetooth signals each have an individual, trackable, fingerprint.
In a paper presented at the IEEE Security and Privacy Conference last month, the researchers wrote that Bluetooth signals can also be tracked, given the right tools.
However, there are technological and expertise hurdles that a miscreant would have to clear today to track a person through the Bluetooth signals in their devices, they wrote.
A critical flaw in the LTE firmware of the fourth-largest smartphone chip biz in the world could be exploited over the air to block people's communications and deny services.
The vulnerability in the baseband – or radio modem – of UNISOC's chipset was found by folks at Check Point Research who were looking for ways the silicon could be used to remotely attack devices. It turns out the flaw doesn't just apply to lower-end smartphones but some smart TVs, too.
Check Point found attackers could transmit a specially designed radio packet to a nearby device to crash the firmware, ending that equipment's cellular connectivity, at least, presumably until it's rebooted. This would be achieved by broadcasting non-access stratum (NAS) messages over the air that when picked up and processed by UNISOC's firmware would end in a heap memory overwrite.
There are lots of software keyboards for smartphones and tablets alike, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest… However you can't have it.
Last year, Microsoft bought Nuance for just shy of $20 billion, mainly for its voice-to-text tools. Nuance also owned Swype, which it killed off in 2018. Microsoft, meanwhile, also owns Swiftkey, which it still offers.
The Reg liked both. We called Swype "The world's fastest text entry system", and said that Swiftkey's predictive engine was so good it was a "psychic keyboard."
First Look The /e/ Foundation's de-Googled version of Android 10 has reached the market in a range of smartphones aimed at the privacy-conscious.
The idea of a privacy-centric version of Android is not new, and efforts to deliver are becoming friendlier all the time. The Register interviewed the founder of the /e/ Foundation in 2020, and reported on /e/ OS doing rather well in privacy tests the following year. Back then, the easiest way to get the OS was to buy a Fairphone, although there was also the option of reflashing one of a short list of supported devices.
Now there's another option: a range of brand-new Murena phones. The company supplied The Register with a Murena One for review, with a pre-release version of the /e/ OS installed.
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