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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @10:16AM
The problems any project that intend to put a free OS and applications on a computerphone ("smart"-phone) are:
(0) The microcontroller chip is usually some ARM Cortex-Ax that have their bootloader locked with a cryptographic key.
(1) Hardware lacks any documentation for things like 3D-acceleration so usually there will be no video or animation = dull.
(2) It takes too long time to develop any working software before the hardware becomes seriously outdated.
Another problem with time is that when your hardware breaks. The hardware that works with your software is no longer available and you may need to find a another computerphone of a different model which uses a different chip. Which means another development cycle. Which becomes hard if you have other obligations. One way around this would be a community to pool resources and target a specific model available internationally and cooperate on software.
Two solutions:
(0) Really clever reverse engineering tools for binary code. A paradigm shift is needed in efficiency.
(1) Computer phones at a low price that are designed to actually designed with chips that are publicly documented.
I think AI could be a match for (0) and setting up a phone with a computer that can brute test (not force) coding sequences and get efficiency by injecting code and evaluating results in a automated way.
There has been some attempts at (1) but they are not widespread and are hard to get (McAfee [soylentnews.org] and others [wikipedia.org]). They tend to be pricey too or very dull on features. Compatibility with over the desk accessories like heat cameras etc is also an issue.