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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

Androids are less locked-down than iOS devices. The problem is that Google used to not have the ability to require long term support from device OEMs and now that it has the market power to demand long term support they seem reluctant to prioritize that in license agreements.

Then there are devices, like in China, where Google Mobile Services is not on many phones so Google has no leverage at all re supporting updates.

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There is nothing in principle requiring Android phones be locked down, but its a de facto reality that manufacturers of almost all phones have made them locked down and you have to research to even know beforehand if you can even do something as little as a bootloader unlock or a rooting. Why is os and phone model so tightly integrated and locked together, when in the pc world you can generally install any os on any computer? That's what I was saying.

Which is to say I think you are speaking in terms of what you can do within the android's playground itself, its certainly much more open than ios in that regard. But when it comes to the fact of being able to change the playground itself ie install whatever os you want on the hardware or upgrade the os on the phone then suddenly most phones aren't any better than iphones either. Some are slightly better in that you can at least unlock the bootloader or root it, but I don't know if much progress has been made beyond that in being able to reverse engineer or otherwise them to able to install anything you want on them. That was the point with respect to I was speaking.

> Why is os and phone model so tightly integrated and locked together, when in the pc world you can generally install any os on any computer?

Qualcomm is the reason. Qualcomm wants OEMs to buy new chips every year, and for that to happen, consumers have to buy new phones every year. To upgrade Android (across kernel versions), OEMs need Qualcomm to provide updated drivers, which Qualcomm has been reluctant to do, because their sales will be undercut by chips they sold years ago. Android phones are closer to Mac than PCs, as there's one hardware-maker who determines which models become obsolete, and when, based on the software they choose to update (or not).

That's something that I've found really notable about Linux, compared to Windows. Windows drivers seem to work across versions, whereas binary Linux drivers are typically specific to a kernel minor release.

Does Microsoft just maintain broad kernel backward compatibility, or are driver authors doing more work to support more Windows versions? Is it a fundamental architecture difference with how each OS implements their kernel APIs?

Linux intentionally has an unstable driver ABI in part to make life a living hell for vendors who don't want to upstream their drivers.

Windows on the other hand maintains a very stable interface and has no desire to maintain vendor drivers.

> There is nothing in principle requiring Android phones be locked down.

There is; it's called the Android Compatibility Commitment. If a phone manufacturer wants the Google Play Store, their phones need specific security requirements. Which includes measures to lock down the phone to prevent piracy of the store, which for most manufacturers is achieved through a locked bootloader.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61b794d6d3bf7...

And thats my point, you should not need OEM support for a pure software issue of operating system upgrades. I do not ask Dell or Lenovo before writing 'apt update && apt upgrade' when on my pc. I do not need to ask Dell or Lenovo before plugging in a flash drive with the iso of my favorite os or to upgrade the next version of the same and so on. These are things that if the device wasn't locked down, shouldn't have required the OEM's direct involvement in the first place.

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