Most of the chips in a smartphone are made by Qualcomm, both processors and peripheral chips like 5G modem, LTE modem, WiFi, and Bluetooth. Qualcomm chips require proprietary binary blobs to function, and usually only have a support lifetime of about 2 years. They also only supply those blobs to the manufacturer of the device.
Qualcomm being what they are is the reason Apple was able to provide a better lifespan for their phones for like a decade (you’d get 5-6 years of iOS major version upgrades compared to 0-2 on Android phones).
Google actually pushed the Android ecosystem to do better by creating its’ own Tensor SoCs which they support for longer… But they don’t really make the drivers for those open source either. So we’re still not doing better in that regard.
Why is that? (Genuine curiosity)
Most of the chips in a smartphone are made by Qualcomm, both processors and peripheral chips like 5G modem, LTE modem, WiFi, and Bluetooth. Qualcomm chips require proprietary binary blobs to function, and usually only have a support lifetime of about 2 years. They also only supply those blobs to the manufacturer of the device.
Now I wish we had riscV mobile phones too…
Pine64 I think said they’re making the next Pinephone when they can make it RISC-V.
Which either means they’re enthusiastic about the pace of RISC-V development, or they don’t want to make a new phone anytime soon.
Ah that makes sense. Thanks.
Qualcomm being what they are is the reason Apple was able to provide a better lifespan for their phones for like a decade (you’d get 5-6 years of iOS major version upgrades compared to 0-2 on Android phones).
Google actually pushed the Android ecosystem to do better by creating its’ own Tensor SoCs which they support for longer… But they don’t really make the drivers for those open source either. So we’re still not doing better in that regard.