I'm Calling It, Android Is Out Of Date

In recent developments, we have 2 things.

1: Google is privatizing android and locking it down. Future versions will have changes made that make it less open sauce more hey look at that glass thing you can't touch isn't it neat.

2: Ubuntu phone died, putting a lot of hopes of people like me and a lot of users, as well as devs that worked on it, out on the sidewalk while Canonical burned down the clubhouse.

With that, I don't think android will be as open of a platform as it has been. Soon it will be locked down pretty hard in comparison to what it was before. Now, I like mobility. I like linux and if I could I would have a netbook like a sony Vaio P with linux and a phone card and call that good. I would be happy. However, I'm not paying for the most bullshit Vaio ever and phones are more convenient. If I can't use android as a workstation when I get the chance to get back to it, what am I to use? Blackberry? Thats about whats left...

I think there needs to be a mobile workstation platform on ARM that can make a phone be more like a laptop. All the stuff I want to do on my laptop while I'm out doing shit, but in my pocket.

Long enough ago there was Debian Mobile. That shit was awesome and I burned it to a Motorola RAZR. Had phone service AND abiword! It was great, actually, even if typing was done T9 style. But, that project has since been either buried, and it was already difficult enough to find, or Debian has wiped it off the site just like FTP.

So......... Is there anything left?

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You could get an iPhone.

/s

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its coming down to the wire. there will be a fork soon enough but will be nothing because it will never catch up to any amount of work google manages to do to the offical port.

You know you can install standard linux on your phone and just have a hotspot with a VNC server

Android is becoming more locked down because they want it to go more the direction of Desktop Windows more than Desktop Linux. Desktop Linux is fractured between so many different distros and that really complicates things, and stunts linux growth because its so fractured. That's less of an issue on the server side but I'm only addressing desktop right now. Windows isn't fractured into a million different distros, and this very much aids it in staying dominant. Google can clearly look and see that the OS's that are not fractured are the OS's that are on top in the consumer space, so that's what they want to go more towards.

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What is google making proprietary?

Google Play Services has a bunch of the APIs now. That's all closed source. Plus Google hasn't updated the AOSP Launcher, SMS App, Gallery App, etc in favor of their closed source versions.

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KDE is still developing for mobile. Unlike Canonical, they immediately took the Wayland route. They don't have much manpower now, but with laptop restrictions on airplanes, I think that might change very soon. KDE is the ONLY desktop environment for the moment that offers working convergence functionality.

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I was already under the impression anything "Gapps" was closed source, which is why its not included with cyanogen/lineage/aosp.....

Last time I used a stock rom was, ... ... ... HTC HD2? It was the transition from froyo to gingerbread anyway.

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But if I'm not mistaken, Google is making things like the Calculator and Camera all closed source, which used to be AOSP.

I actually have an iphone. It cost 10X less than everything else and its a pile of trash.

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Do you realise how trash that is?

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I like that, but won't be interested until they get off of android as the base. They have looked at Debian and Arch as bases, which would be awesome.

OpenRC on a phone... Mmmm~ makes me happy, that.

Android is out of date cause OEM's make it out of date. Every Nexus and Pixel device gets updates faster than any other phone from the likes of Samsung, HTC and or Sony.

I don't mind the locking down of Android from a customization standpoint if we could get regular security updates.. everyone's skin is terrible anyways. I root the phone, delete all the excess crap, and just run a different launcher. I bought a 64GB Nexus 6P like 2 weeks for $280 and I'm on Android 7.1.2.

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LOL I'm not even talking about that. I mean like the way that its going, when I used it 4.4 was brand new. It was like a little like.... Ugh, a laptop in my pocket. I could do all my shit and have no worries. Even changed out some stuff, some busybox addons... Was great.

I use a modern one and its much.... Errrr, smaller. Lets say.

I mean we're supposed to be getting a ChromeOS / Android Fusion sometime soon, we've seen it from the likes of Jide with Remix OS. And we also have Samsung adding the feature to the S8 / S8+

The problem with the computer in the pocket is people want insanely and at the current moment unreasonable things for their phone to do. 'I want to code and do a whole project from muh phone, I want to run do x, x and x. At the current moment it's all a gimmick. And no one has really cared for it.

Ubuntu failing with the mobile thing was simply do to a support from a software perspective.. It suffered the same shit MS is currently going through with Windows 10 mobile, Give people incentive to Jump over. Ubuntu barely had any real support (from a software standpoint) anyways. And it didn't offer anyone a reason to use it besides oh, it can run the Linux desktop.. Okay that's it? We have the hardware to do these tasks people want to do. The software is not really there yet.

Google is taking advantage of Android to push it's own services and data, but that has been happening since Android 1.0. Android is the only chance of Google to be in the pocket of most of the people around the globe.
https://source.android.com/source/licenses

I agree with this... It all comes down to what people want with their smartphone... Google as a whole is a very clever enterprise, and with all the data that they have at their fingertips, they know more than most what their user base wants... And I have a feeling this direction is just Google getting what they want, while giving the vast majority what they want...

This development direction doesn't particularly worry me, as I'm the sort of person who carries (in the car anyway) any portable device I might need while I'm out... So if I need to do something while out and about, if my phone can't do it, I pull out the surface pro 4 or the lappy, and crack into it...

Not just faster, some most phones don't even get updates through warranty period, which should really be illegal to be honest. It just can't be happening that devices don't get any support for even the warranty period.

Even the Motorola stuff (which is now Lenovo), which used to be really fast with updates announced that they would no longer service minor releases in general, only major releases...
I'm still waiting for Nougat on my Play X for half a year now. They announced it would be coming soon™ shortly after Nougat launched (but hey, at least I got a security update for Marshmallow).

Could you give some examples of things you think you no longer can do on modern Android?

I recently fiddled with 6 and tried to do some of the terminal stuff I could do in 4. For one, I could install a package manager thats probably totally out of date now, but you could install stuff from your own server like Git, nano, whatever really. At the time I was doing a lot of stuff with trying to figure out what to do with my server, so I ported so server management stuff that made graphs, I think it was called cactus or something (at least thats the name I think of), and used that. In 6, that bit of code can't run. In fact its blocked. I tried installing from the base packages I have but I think the package manager has some bit of builder bob put in so that everything works.

The rest is rather minor things in comparison to that. Really Android 4.4 is a Leatherman where 6 is kinda.... Well its a pocket knife, but it isn't as expandable.