VR and AR are often considered the next big thing. Google and Apple are racing towards best platform support. I do not think it is a good decision, just that I think that old devices left behind is more like collateral damage to them, in fact, the more devices would have support Android 7 with the new APIs, the better for AR and VR efforts.
I can understand a and b, but c is pure speculation and I disagree with d. I know of no hardware platform that provides sufficient features and performance and is 100% libre.
Regarding c: Yes, pure speculation. I guess most costs went into engineering the modular design, not into manufacturing the devices.
As mentioned, A20 could have been a good candidate, and using the old Exynos SoC from the Galaxy S3 might have even been a better choice (less libre but more powerful). And I am not talking about 100% libre. Following the âone step at a timeâ approach it would be sufficient to have something more libre than the old SoC. Instead, the FP2 platform is even worse - 180MB of blobs is a pure nightmare.
Too many cheap Android devices that were giving Android a bad name (because they could barely run some of the feature that people were expecting), driving people to iOS as the âonly usable mobile OSâ. The only way to change that is by guaranteeing a certain android experience.
OT: As for the other chipsets:
For the FP1 they werenât really in the market to design their own device, so the licensed an existing design in which large changes to the chipset may not have been supported. Iâm going by the FP1 comparison, as the chipsets you mention all seem to be FP1-era specs. And people are already complaining the FP2 spec is stale.
Iâm not saying it isnât a good choice, but out of interest: was that ever updated beyond 4.2.2? I thought only A31 and upwards got enough support to support lollipop. Do community ROMs exist (I honestly donât know!)?
If you could get it licensed - there was a whole spat about IP restrictions (see for example this report).
Yeah, but FP2 for sure wonât convey that impression. It is far beyond being âbarelyâ able to run âsome of the features that people are expectingâ. What Iâm saying is that it artificially speeds up the device cycles if Google says that any phone that wants Google Services on Android 7 needs to have support for 3D graphics. I do think that most of the people are not expecting to play heavy 3D games on their phones.
It has mainline support in the linux kernel - only because nobody provides a ROM beyond 4.x for it doesnât mean itâs not able to run it. The only caveat could be the 3d driver part, but the Mali 400 MP2 was also used e.g. in the MT6572 chipset for which a port at least to of LineAge 13 is available: