Yea, SMS and phone apps are quite numerous. I don't think it's a problem, the subsystems all the apps use is open enough and not hard to build against.
Except for RCS, that's completely locked down and is pretty solidly becoming literally just Google. Fuck RCS.
Not just Google is the problem, the entire industry is the problem. Almost all of the cell-based standards are locked away and purely depend on the operators, major infrastructure companies like Motorola, Ericsson and Huawei and modem implementors like Qualcomm, Apple or Broadcom.
Implementing them independently is extremely difficult and even if you manage to do it you cannot have them commercially available due to radio regulation and patents. Even academic research can only be done with collaboration of those huge companies.
It is impossible to make a phone that is LTE capable completely independently (or even without nation state support). You cannot implement VoLTE or RCS without support from the carriers. They all have their own proprietary protocol on top of the standards.
Google has basically infinite money and their own patents and industry relationships and government support so they can figure out RCS. An indie company, even with infinitely motivated engineers and good funding do not have any of it.
For purely data, sure, that works. I have actually done it for multiple projects but for industrial purposes. It is slower than what a phone can achieve with an integrated baseband and SoC but would be good enough
For VoLTE, it is possible to get very basics with external modules but it is also very time and operator dependent. You need to have the profiles of each and every single operator you may support. If the phone would be globally available, this means thousands of profiles. Your module needs to be configurable after deployment. You still carry the risk of operator changing their profile or switching to a different encoding that your module doesn't support.
RCS is completely proprietary to the specific operator. There are currently no external modules that supports it, nor I beleive will be due to the complete proprietary nature. Google and Apple internally handle their pairing with the ones that support it.
On top of these two, you have actually a significantly bigger problem. The reason companies like Qualcomm integrate baseband chips with the main SoC die is the power efficiency. With external modules you will never reach an integrated circuit efficiency. Moreover you are sacrificing valuable battery space to the extenal module.
This is all true, and my phone (from the link) is not very energy efficient and doesn't support all mobile bands. But it exists and is usable.
Calls work for me, too.
> You still carry the risk of operator changing their profile or switching to a different encoding that your module doesn't support.
Got to say, I like the current Android versions.
In the early days I flashed my Motorola Defy every second month with some cool new ROM.
Always rooted and Xposed, always enabling something new.
Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need.
OneUI 8.0 and Android 16.
For work (app de) I also have a Pixel 7a, always with the newest Android Beta.
Also works well.
Even the entry level phones work OK to pretty good now.
My Samsung A16 5G (also for work) functions surprisingly well for 150€.
> Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need.
Maybe, but it is fully under Google and Samsung's control, and is choke full of spyware. You couldn't pay me to use a stock (Googled) Android phone for this reason alone.
Back when I used Android phones, tweaking was pretty important to me too. I still remember when I installed CyanogenMod on a Motorola XT1565, those were the days... Eventually, LineageOS, and then some new phones happened, not all of which were rootable, though I eventually ended up with a OnePlus 7 Pro which was pretty tweakable and even opened the possibility of bootloader re-locking, until a TWRP bug wiped my device and I pretty much stopped tweaking. Was never quite able to get EdXposed working right again...
How well is rooting supported on these newer Android versions/devices? If I install LineageOS on my device, for example, I can be reasonably sure that Magisk will work fine. But how well does it work on a stock, locked-down ROM?
Most devices doesn't have unlockable bootloaders now thus you can't even root them unless it was a popular device and a temporary /finicky hack was found.
I am asking out of curiosity and nothing else: what use cases do you have that motivate you to get a new phone every year? Do iPhones get notably better with every release? I'm guessing camera or storage would be big ones?
Well, with this last one they finally made the telephoto 48MP. Also, vapor chamber is nice. I don't know if the 18 will have enough for me to upgrade, and it might even have a reason for me not to upgrade (removing gestures from Camera Control). But so far it's been every year, because I've only been using iPhone for a couple years, and my first was a refurbished 15 Pro Max.
The 17 Pro (non-Max) only comes with up to 1TB of storage, but that's still more than my 15 of before.
I'm not parent but a counter perspective - the only three motivations I have are:
phone dies
camera vastly improves (imo it's been on a decline since the Nexus 6)
phone is too slow to use
I'm on year 5 of my Samsung s21u that I can replace the Samsung ux slop with asop ports
It is not for anyone but Apple, because they control the source code and full remote code execution access to your device at a higher privilege level than you as the supposed owner have.
Including custom ROM devs like the GrapheneOS team or the LineageOS team? That's a lot of trust you're putting in a company that only has their own profit at heart.
So you believe dictatorships are a good idea when it comes to technology control.
My question is then the same of anyone who prefer to give up freedoms to centralized seemingly benevolent dictators: What happens when you are told you can no longer do something you were previously allowed to do, that is only in the interest of the centralized power?
The linux ecosystem is a peaceful and effective system of anarchy with no central authority. Pretty much the exact opposite of the Apple dictatorship.
I am a Linux distro maintainer and my team and I do whatever we think is best in our distro, even including patches and defaults Torvalds did not approve of, because our goal is security first and his is compatibility first. That is what we mean when we say "free" in free open source software. Torvalds can do whatever he wants in his branch, and we can do whatever we want in ours, selectively taking the bits we want.
Want to modify the operating system on your iPhone? Want to use Tor globally for privacy? Want to use an external NFC/USB smartcard for secret management or authentication? Want to use a browser with an engine other than last gen crippled webkit? Good luck. Apple did not extend those freedoms to you.
You have no freedom on that device but to install binaries Apple blesses and use it the way they intend. Apple does not produce free software or give their users freedom over their devices because they want maximum profit and control.
After Trump's re-election, I figured that there's not much difference between using a cheap Android from Chinese OEM, or an iPhone. Both will give away my information if the totalitarian government (Chinese or American) requests so. I don't really have particular preference on whether it's the Chinese or Americans spying on me, so in the end it all boils down to price. Chinese Android devices deliver same level of performance and features as Apple for 1/4 of the price.
Of course if I really cared about privacy, I would just install GrapheneOS or LineageOS on supported Android device, so no Apple in that case either.
This is them trying to strangle Graphene and LineageOs. We desperately need an ecosystem where manufacturers are legally compelled to publish the source code for their drivers and similar so as to make it easier for alternative Oses to exist.
Android will soon become fully closed source. The writing is on the wall.
Plenty of drivers are proprietary. There are many ways of doing so, like much of it can exist in userspace, or in firmware, or using a shim in the kernel.
