Comment on EU considers tariffs on digital services Big Tech
486@lemmy.world 2 days agoNo, unlock as in: You can install whatever operating system you want. No need for “jailbreaking” on Google phones. They officially support unlocking the bootloader (and re-locking it later as well!). There are many things not to like about Google, but how they handle their phones when it comes to openness is certainly not one of them. Pretty much all other phone vendors are much worse than that (except for maybe a few small ones like Fairphone).
The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 2 days ago
You are talking about phones made by Google. I am talking about ALL the phones using Android and how difficult or sometimes impossible it is to use anything but Android. I am talking about (oranges) a monopoly on phone operating systems. And you are saying what great (apples) phones Google produces.
486@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s not what you were saying. You were explicitly talking about Google. Also, implying it is Google’s fault that other manufacturers don’t let you install other operating systems easily is pretty bizarre. If you want to complain about that, at least complain about the right companies. Those are usually the phone manufacturers and/or the SoC manufacturers. The SoC manufacturers often times are particularily problematic, since they often do not publish open source drivers at all or in a very limited fashion.
The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 2 days ago
The manufacturers don’t have to provide open source drivers, They could offer the drivers to other companies besides Google though. Why do you suppose they don’t?
486@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’m not sure why you think manufactuers of SoCs - which aren’t used by Google directly - provide drivers to Google. They don’t, because there is no point in doing that. This is not how the Android eco-system works or the business of selling those SoCs for that matter. SoC manufactuers sell their SoCs to companies who want to build Android phones (or they build their own like Samsung). With those SoCs they provide a BSP (board support package) that includes all the bits needed to bring up a system running on that partricular SoC. Google has pretty much nothing to do with this, except that Google recommends a certain Linux kernel version (with a bunch of Android-specific patches) for a given Android version, which SoC makers often (but not always) use as the base for their customized kernels.
It is not like Google provides the operating system including all device specific drivers to the device manufacturers. They don’t care about that at all. They provide AOSP (which is open source, so anyone can get that) as well as their proprietary stuff like Google Play etc. That’s pretty much it.