Unfortunately, it’s again one of these “FP and transparency” issues. But maybe if someone would ask, they would be willing to license it. Of course I understand that they don’t open it since they invested a lot of development effort into it, but at least they could say what is open and what is not.
No they are not the same, but lowRISC can run linux and therefore also probably Android, but as I said - this is all far from being mature. There are other more open platforms (than QC) which already run Android, but I don’t have an overview about that. I am just asking FP to put higher emphasis on evaluating these options for FP2.x / FP3.
I agree. I guess this time going “modular” was the main focus, so they took the rest “from the shelve” … But there is not enough info to really understand the decision-making process. I assume the CEO just decided
Well, the modularity is a big pro-argument for the fairphone. If you look at various open hardware projects like the Goldelico/Openmoko they had quite a hard time with designing the hole hardware. Thanks to FP, such efforts could just focus on the logic board and use the rest from FP - provided the design is not IP or they would give away licenses.
Edit: I watched the webinar now, and Miguel said that the design is all their IP. So I guess this point is clear now.
Nope, they never explained what they want to do with the “IP”. Or?
They never explained how the whole phone business works and how they want to change it. OEM, ODM, OBM … I’m also missing someone that explains all this for the FP project …
Unfortunately it says “Content unavailable. Please check back later.”… (I’m trying to watch this from Austria.)
I have to defend the CEO Bas van Abel. I’ve met Bas on two occasions (one in A’dam and one in Vienna) and would vouch that he does not “just decide”. I know him as a person, who has a feeling for assigning tasks to employees based on their talents (imagine, there is a trained urban planner, who works at FP’s law department now!), and I do not think that Bas would let all this expert’s knowledge in “his” enterprise unheard.
I agree. It seems to me that we are entering a ‘good enough’ phase with smartphone hardware, like started years back on desktop and laptop systems. It’s the phase where the CPU is not the main bottleneck anymore for running your software (nowadays, upgrading to SSD is the best bet to keep your PC. Just had the experience with a friend where we did this for a mid-2010 iMac. It made a HUGE difference for him).
It seems to me that the CPU on smartphones is good enough for most people … if you can get rid of the bloatware of the big shots.
Therefore, I’m a bit surprised by how many people even on this forum are stressing that a snapdragon 801 is not good enough anymore. My FP2 feels snappy enough to me. Where is then the need to have a 810 or higher SoC ?
There are other things which would outdate a FP2. USB3, higher resolution camera’s (although that is starting to slow down as well), bigger screens (also a trend I feel that is slowly slowing down), NFC.
Other things will also come in the future: more efficient screen technology (the biggest power drainer), binocular camera’s (allowing 3D phone calls and kinect-like motion detection), …
The modular design of FP2 will make some of these things possible without having to buy a completely new phone (e.g. USB3 connectors but without the speed increase) and other would warrant a new case (binocular camera’s e.g.) and thus a completely new phone.
Fairphone as a company will need to follow these trends. It would be a huge win if they could keep the current modular design for a couple of iterations. That way, even users of FP2 could upgrade piece-meal to a FP3 or higher by swapping out the relevant modules. That alone would be a trend breaker in this industry and a huge win for everyone currently owning a FP2.
I think that the development of smartphones should now focus on stronger batteries. Because I think that is the most important wish of the users. You often see smartphones connected to a charger. Fairphone 2 is here in a good position as the battery is replaceable.
Future Fairphones should use modules which are compatible with the Fairphone 2 modules. So future Fairphones may are just Fairphone 2s with upgraded modules (better camera, more RAM, USB-C connector, NFC, …). Fairphone then can supply the same spare parts for many Fairphone generations. You can even upgrade your Fairphone 2. And Fairphone can take back the “old” parts and build some “cheap Fairphones” from them.
Screen size: I don’t think bigger screen sizes are useful. Bigger screens result in bigger smartphones. This is contrary to the idea that a smartphone should fit in a pocket. I also think that most smartphone owners have a device with bigger screen (like a tablet, laptop, PC). But I like the idea to connect the smartphone to a bigger screen.
Support by the component manufacturers: I think that this could be the factor why the Fairphone 2 would outdate. If the component manufacturers are not developing drivers for newer OSs, Fairphone can’t supply upgrades to Fairphone OS anymore which would render the Fairphone 2 unusable some years later as seen on the Fairphone 1. So Fairphone should switch to open hardware or at least hardware with open source drivers.
Hardware requirements: I don’t know how hardware requirements on smartphones will increase over the next years. So I cannot say how long the Fairphone 2 stays usable with the current configuration. But Fairphone can design future Fairphones with exchangeable CPU, RAM, flash memory, WiFi and mobile radio modules like a PC.
My Fairphone 1 still works like on the first day (it is 2 years old now). So it is everything else than unusable. I’m quite satisfied with Android 4.2.2 at the moment and there is not one app until now, I have not been able to use.
In my opinion it is most important for the next iterations of Fairphones that the company finally achieves to use conflict free tungsten and gold in their products and can pay a living wage to the workers in the supply chain. Everything else is secondary in my point of view.
The aftermarket for (libre) alternative phone OSs would also appreciate this step, since it gives the users the opportunity to have a completely transparent phone.
I wouldn’t want to start a discussion about this, so just in short:
It’s been known for years, that it is possible to produce some sorts of plastic via manipulating bacteria into producing it. Icronically enough, oil is still to cheap. so not many people or companies are interested to spent money in the development. It is going on, but much too slow (and personally I’m convinced, that with proper funding the research would be at a point of industrial application in years, being much much cheaper in the long term than anything based on oil).
I have not purchased the FP2 yet but may do so as soon as at least Cyanogenmod is available for it. However, while CM is an improvement over a Google infested android, it is still not free software. I would thus really appreciate seeing the FP3 being able to run Replicant, which is afaik the only FSF approved mobile operating system. No binary blobs please for FP3!
We had this discussion her a few times, just have a look around.
Sady, how the commercial SoC ecosystem works (there is not a lot known about it) a current (=attracts a lot of “normal” Android/Apple users) phone SoC (modem+cpu) without patents and tons of bin blobs is hard to find and technically nearly impossible. Also (this it what I guess, not know) the phone development process is strongly tied to the SoC manufacturer … you are not able to build a phone … the ODM and the SoC manufacturer build a phone for you. You just decide how it looks, more or less (just a guess of mine).
I don’t have any hopes for “libre” phones in the near future. Especially because phones becoming more and more data collecting and payment systems. They want the user out, not in and most “new” phone technologies are heavily patented as well.
A way out? Maybe a Chinese SoC phone clone that is not following the official patent/businesses rules. But you will not be able to develop or sell such a phone “in the west” and also here you will not really know what’s inside.
I asked a few times if multiboot on a FP2 would be possible. This is like booting Windows, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X on one computer. So instead of only Android & Google it should be possible for the user to choose if he wants to boot Android, Firefox OS or Sailfish OS on a phone without loosing any apps/user data.
Because if people want get rid of a walled garden that needs growth to exists and therefore needs to sell more hard- and software features more often, they users need to be able to test new stuff while keeping their used and “work for them” system around.
But after hearing @keesj’s talk, I fear this will not be possible. Therefore I ask my self … would it be possible to integrate the flash memory into a module – so that the flash (and the OS) as a whole could be exchanged or to add hardware that make this change “fakeable” so the user could switch ROMs (on the same hardware) without the hardware “knowing”?
There are recoveries that offer support for installing different operating systems and it is possible to run most of the operating system on an external SD card. Hence in theory is is possible (easy??) to run multiple operating systems without loosing your data. Making a solution that works for everybody/always however will require actual work and this is not our focus at present time.
Thanks. I know there is always this dilemma between making something that fits what the big market wants (and that got its own set of rules) and to support the other side that also got its own problems. But I’m against the “buy 2” solution and I also think that a modified recovery (“like grub”) would be the best way to go.
Not sure how one can make this “stable”, though. People and OSses are still able to mess up multiboot setups on standard PCs, especially if one OS wants to “own” the whole computer for “security reasons” or if crazy bios options get triggered. I wonder how crazy the smartphone side is.
In my opinion, future Fairphones should have 3G/LTE on BOTH sim slots.
Because more and more the phone calls will use 3G and 4G and in Switzerland it’s planned to deactivate 2G/GSM in 2020.
This is the only reason for having two mobile data-connections at one time.
But with the modems available on the market today, there is only one data connection possible at a time. You’ll have to have two modems for two connections.
I don’t think 2G will be disabled soon. They tell you, but I read just some weeks ago, that that wouldn’t work with any of the current phones, because they always first log into 2G and when they don’t find 2G, they think there is no net.
(I’m trying to watch this from Austria.)