Hi there,
I was reading this topic about the future of our phones. So, looking around in the internet for information about the mt6589 drivers’ availability I came into this post. I actually don’t know if it could be reliable, but it seems that our chipset is KK compatible since april.
Does it means something to us? Are there any complications I’m not able to see/understand?
Thanks in advance for any explanation!
The (new) drivers may be compatible, but I think they also need to be made compatible with the specific device, and Fairphone isn’t exactly on top of their list with an install base of less than 50,000 phones. And with the source code not being released to the public, this is something no one else can do.
Also, if I understand correctly, the binary drivers that are present on your phone cannot be legally redistributed by 3rd parties like Cyanogenmod or others.
I still have not seen any official source regarding KitKat and MTK6589. I would not be to hopeful until Fairphone tells us source and drivers are available, eg. Mediatek releases a Android development kit for MTK6589 and Kitkat and makes that accesible to Guohong and Fairphone.
The Fairphone is based on a so called “china phone” from Guohong and the internal hardware should be quite similar. It is almost impossible to guess the install base of that phone, but i guess it is larger. [Edit: The i thought to be quite similar is from ChangHong and called HONPhone v9. However as @Jerry pointed out, the differences are greater then i assumend.]
Ok, so we need to wait our turn. Hoping the point of view at Mediatek will change in the next months. Are there some ways the company/community could request the drivers from MTK?
There already is an online petition going on somewhere, but I doubt MediaTek cares about that.
@ben, the FairPhone is based on the ChangHong HONPhone v9, but its internal hardware differs. FairPhone has a quad core CPU instead of dual core and 1GB of memory instead of 512mb. It also has 16gb of storage compared to the HONPhone’s 4gb.
So there are some tangible differences that might make it a platform on its own from the perspective of the chipset maker.
There is the online petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/aosp-support-for-mediatek-devices/
They seek for 100,000 signitures. If every Fairphone User would sign, we would be a lot further. Maybe it’s time to promote the petition (maybe even from the Fairphone team itself, by raising awareness through the newsletter!?).
EDIT: I already signed.
@Stefan This is great. I already signed and I hope that at Fairphone will consider the possibility to involve the entire community.
Wondering if MTK cares about his users…
Just a cross link to the more recent disussion: