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Comment by squarefoot | Hacker News Reader

> They're not all equally supported, though. Most of them can can boot, many have Wi-Fi support, but currently just two actual phones work as phones: the open-source hardware PinePhone and the Purism Librem 5.

And very little will change until something is done at legislation level: companies declaring a device obsolete, withdrawing it from market, or ending its support, should be forced to publish at least the bare minimum information necessary to allow the creation of drivers and functioning software; nobody is asking them to surrender all their IP. PostMarketOS and other projects are a wonderful effort, but they can't keep the pace of the absurd number of perfectly good devices that are thrown away each year because their manufacturers didn't want them to be reused. This practice encourages bad habits from users contributing to pollution, and it's more a political issue than a technical one.

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>nobody is asking them to surrender all their IP

I agree with you, but that is how they'll see it. Some of the datasheets I've gotten for an NRND or EOL device are under NDA and still too spartan to write a driver without a lot of trail and error. Because this year's latest-and-greatest product is is 95% the same as the old perfectly-functional products they'll call trash.

For a lot of the more complicated communication chips I've used the data sheets are more aspirational than a reflection of reality anyways. I've often used registers in ways that are documented; it didn't work, and the response from the support was "oh just do it the way our example driver does it."

My understanding is that the support is less about the device OEM and more about the SoC supplier (ie Qualcomm). Once Qualcomm decides they're not supporting the SoC anymore, there's not much the OEM can do in terms of security patching. This is the understanding I've picked up from similar discussions over the years, but I very well may be wrong.

Many SoC's these days are well supported by the mainline kernel (and Qualcomm actually has way better support than, e.g. MediaTek) so some security fixes are still possible even after the hardware is out of support. Flaws in the embedded firmware could of course be problematic.

The non-cellular mediatek chips actually have decent mainline support (not just kernel, tf-a and coreboot as well). At least the ones they put in Chromebooks. The mediatek socs with modems in them seem to be a different story.

Thats what I have heard as well. You would think a giant company like Google or Samsung could go to Qualcomm and require much longer support but it does not seem like that is happening unfortunately

Qualcomm effectively has a near-monopoly on the concept of a cellular radio, especially on the high end, so they really don't have to bend for anyone, even a little.

And yet curiously no one has done an nVidia-like breach on them yet. Coming in the future?

That’s why you make it a legal requirement- if Qualcomm wants customers it has to comply.

So let's place a bet on what support on the pixel 6 generation will look like. Google has their own SOC there, right? No more excuses. I believe they promised a longer support cycle than with previous generations, which is a good start

Hell I just want them to let you unlock the bootloader.

Phone makers don't need to innovate if they can just stop supporting the devices you bought in order to support the "next-gen", even though the next gen is very similar to the last. That way you can pay more for the same thing.

Also, our wallets are the ultimate ballot. Convenience and perceived novelty clearly trump reusability and sustainability.

So long as companies have to show year over year growth in revenue, we will continue to see wasteful corporate practices and terrible designa meant to be thrown away. The incentives are all wrong, and trying to get companies to work more sustainably is akin to asking them to swim against the tide..what are they, salmon??

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