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Linux-Based postmarketOS Project Aims to Give Smartphones a 10-Year Lifecycle

posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 18 2017, @01:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the defeating-planned-obsolescence dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Buy an iPhone and you might get 4-5 years of official software updates. Android phones typically get 1-3 years of updates… if they get any updates at all. But there are ways to breathe new life into some older Android phones. If you can unlock the bootloader, you may be able to install a custom ROM like LineageOS and get unofficial software updates for a few more years.

The folks behind postmarketOS want to go even further: they're developing a Linux-based alternative to Android with the goal of providing up to 10 years of support for old smartphones.

That's the goal anyway. Right now the developers have only taken the first steps.

[...] At this point the developers behind postmarketOS are a long way from creating a fully functional OS that works on a single phone, let alone an operating system that will provide a decade of software updates for dozens of different devices. But it's a laudable goal that could help keep your aging phones useful (and secure) long after your phone maker stops pushing official updates.

Source: https://liliputing.com/2017/08/linux-based-postmarketos-project-aims-give-smartphones-10-year-lifecycle.html

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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday August 18 2017, @08:02AM (3 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Friday August 18 2017, @08:02AM (#555759)

    Heavy silicon isn't a service industry. SoC manufacturers want to keep selling new chips and are deliberately avoiding long-term support for consumer products by stopping blob releases after a couple of years. That means that even if you could maintain and secure a kernel and user-land for a decade, you'd still see security issues with the blobs themselves as the hardware EOLs.

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @09:34AM (2 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Friday August 18 2017, @09:34AM (#555790) Journal

    Obviously a need for AI powered reverse engineering.