Why cell phones don't get generic OS installers?

[Catsrules]

I have always wondered why is it that phones need a special image/build version of an OS? Where as a normal PC you can just download a generic installer and it will install it onto the PC?

 

For example to download LineageOS I need to download the build for my exact device. Compared to the PC side of thing that all I need to do is download the installer that matches the computers architecture and I am basically done. Sure I  may have some driver issues, but the OS installer it will work on basically any x86 PC made in the last 20+ years. Why can't we do this on phones and tablets?

 

 

 

[TetraSky]

Drivers for your specific device.

They don't all use the same touchscreen, the same fingerprint reader, the same audio chipset, etc... Some may use the same, but then use a device specific toggle to enable some feature that isn't available in another...

 

A PC can look for these online.

 

On mobile... The OS just isn't built to look for device drivers online. I wish it were, since that would increase the longevity of our phones a HELL of a lot more... But I'm sure you can guess why no manufacturer wants that. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

7 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

OS installer it will work on basically any x86 PC made in the last 20+ years.

id like to see you try to run the win 10 installer on a pc from 2000. the installer might need more system rescources to start up then the poor pc has. 

[Catsrules]

2 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Drivers for your specific device.

They don't all use the same touchscreen, the same fingerprint reader, the same audio chipset, etc...

 

A PC can look for these online.

 

On mobile... The OS just isn't built to look for device drivers online.

On mobile... The OS just isn't built to look for device drivers online.

 

Why not? Seams like a very useful feature honestly. Wouldn't that basically solve the device support limit issues if Google for example would just host a giant driver database similar to how Microsoft does it.  Google could push out full OS updates for any device as long as the OEMs submitted there drivers for the new OS.

 

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

5 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

On mobile... The OS just isn't built to look for device drivers online.

 

Why not? Seams like a very useful feature honestly. Wouldn't that basically solve the device support limit issues if Google for example would just host a giant driver database similar to how Microsoft does it.  Google could push out full OS updates for any device as long as the OEMs submitted there drivers for the new OS.

Modular phones aren't a mainstream thing yet (if they ever will be) and the number of people who would benefit from something like this would be miniscule. The number of people installing custom ROMs is already small enough. Not worth the effort for these companies and develop and maintain such a service. 

[Catsrules]

13 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Modular phones aren't a mainstream thing yet (if they ever will be) and the number of people who would benefit from something like this would be miniscule. The number of people installing custom ROMs is already small enough. Not worth the effort for these companies and develop and maintain such a service. 

How many people install OS on their computers?  Normally people buy their computer from the Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Yet none of them really provided OS updates. It is all handled by Microsoft.  It doesn't matter if Dell doesn't support my laptop anymore because Microsoft fully supported windows 7 and then was nice enough to provide a free upgrade to Windows 10.

 

I am just wondering why we don't have this same type of partnership with Google and Phone OEMs.

 

Edit I should mention I do think Google pushes out some security updates via the play store. But it is nothing like was Microsoft has with Windows. 

[NZKshatriya]

4 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

How many people install OS on their computers?  Normally people buy their computer from the Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

A lot of people install their own OS on their systems.  Whether it be doing a clean reinstall, switching to a new OS, deciding to dual boot to another OS, etc.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Catsrules said:

I have always wondered why is it that phones need a special image/build version of an OS?

Simple. There are several companies who produce ARM CPU's that work in phones. The add to the fact that each device might have different features and capabilities. Did you know that SD card support is not actually in Android? Companies like Samsung have their software devs add the support in. Android being open source allows them to do that. The other side of the coin is carrier support. Mostly seen in the US id imagine, you will have carrier specific models, that might have different features as well. Not to mention that some capabilities or hardware might be region specific. A good example here in the use of Snapdraggon ARM chips in Samsung phones in NA, but in other parts of the world they use their own in house chips. As far as iOS is concerned, its only designed to run on Apple's hardware. 

 

4 hours ago, Catsrules said:

t doesn't matter if Dell doesn't support my laptop anymore because Microsoft fully supported windows 7 and then was nice enough to provide a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Yes and no. Dell may no longer support driver updates. And some times the default Microsoft ones dont work well. So if the default Windows drivers dont work, your screwed. 

[Craftyawesome]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Did you know that SD card support is not actually in Android?

No?

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Craftyawesome said:

No?

Must be new. I know for a fact that it wasn't in Android by default at one time. Ever notice why Google phones never had SD card slots? 

[LAwLz]

There are several reasons.

 

1) Unstable ABI and lack of code portability

This one partially has to do with why you can't boot a generic image but it has more to do with why it takes so long to get updates.

You might have heard of "stable ABI" before. GNU/Linux do not have a stable ABI. What this means is that the way drivers integrate into the kernel can (and usually does) change from version to version. So if you write a driver for one version of Android, it might not work on the next version, and has to be partially rewritten. 

 

Project Treble fixed this to some degree by offering a stable ABI (which is to say, Google limited themselves with what changes they can make to the driver interfaces to ensure that one driver can work on multiple versions). Windows has a very stable ABI. That's why you can still sometimes install XP drivers on Windows 10. Here is an explanation on why GNU/Linux does not have a stable ABI.

 

 

2) Device Tree and hardware specific code

This has to do with how ARM works. ARM devices are typically not designed to be able to detect which hardware is present on the device when they boot. You therefore have to code exactly which hardware is present and pass that info to the kernel with a "device tree". 

 

It is possible to design a device to look for hardware automatically at boot, if it's compliant with what's called ARM "Server Base Boot Requirements". Here is a great article about how it is being implemented in the Raspberry Pi.

Here is a page from ARM about it, and it goes over some of the things that needs to be done. As you can probably see, it requires collaboration from OS vendors, hardware vendors and OEMs, which is one of the reasons why it might be pretty hard to get working on phones.

Why does those articles mention "servers"? Because getting consumer electronics vendors like Qualcomm and Samsung to work with each other, to make their devices last longer so fewer devices are sold, is not exactly an easy task. It matters a lot for server vendors trying to sell to enterprise customers. So ARM has basically went "okay, we'll just focus on servers then". There is nothing technical preventing server base boot from working on phones though, if everyone worked together. Your device would still need some specific drivers though to function 100%. That brings me to...

 

 

3) Drivers

How do you install drivers on a phone? Usually, the drivers are baked into the Linux kernel on Android phones, so they are updated only when the OS is updated. Google has solved this limitation however by creating and implementing a way for drivers to be updated through the Play Store!

Here is an article about how it's now supported by some Snapdragons and some Mali GPUs. So this issue is slowly being solved, but I am not sure if drivers other than GPU drivers can be updated yet.

 

 

A side note about updates.

A new project called "project mainline" will help Android phones get updates quicker. What Google is doing is decoupling a lot of system modules from the OS itself and making them upgradable through the Play Store.

When it was first announced (Android 10) it was 12 different modules such as permission controller and media framework, and with Android 11 they are extending it to 20 modules.

These modules are delivered and updated with a new file format called APEX.

The reason why I bring this up is because APEX could be used for more than just updating some Google mandated core components. Google might be planning on making a generic Android OS, and then have vendors install their specific code through APEX modules.

 

 

 

 

 

Then there are a ton of other reasons why booting a generic OS image on a phone isn't possible today. Google is working on solving a lot of that but it takes time.

Please note that the article I just linked about AOSP being able to boot from mainline Linux 5.9 with just one patch has this rather big caveat:

Quote

For being able to boot the mainline kernel "to [user interface] on AOSP/Master", for devices with fully upstream hardware support there is just one patch required. 

That means that it only works on devices where the device makers have submitted drivers to the Linux kernel team and have them merged into the master branch. That's not an easy feat and I doubt many devices supports it. But with APEX modules that might not be a problem in the future!

[Loote]

40 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Must be new. I know for a fact that it wasn't in Android by default at one time. Ever notice why Google phones never had SD card slots? 

Quote

Android 6.0 introduced the ability to adopt external storage media to act like internal storage.

https://source.android.com/devices/storage/traditional?hl=en
 

Quote

Starting in Android 4.2, devices can support multiple users, and external storage must meet the following constraints:

Android 4.2 is older than Pixel and it's just the lowest ver. number that I found, but it mentions quite interesting feature related to storage, not just the existence of it.

 

A popular theory is, you don't get SD card slots so you have to upgrade when your memory is full, also, not many people use it.

[WereCatf]

One thing I didn't see anyone mention is that ARM64 only received official UEFI-support in UEFI v2.4 - specs in October 2013, so there hasn't been an official, standardized bootloader for ARM64 for a long time. Manufacturers aren't particularly keen on switching from their own solutions to UEFI, since it doesn't provide them with pretty much any direct benefits.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Phones and Tablets

[Kilrah]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That means that it only works on devices where the device makers have submitted drivers to the Linux kernel team and have them merged into the master branch. That's not an easy feat

And even besides that the chip vendors tend to want to keep their drivers closed source which prevents it altogether, and as explained in your link it means that until the vendor supplies a driver for a particular kernel the phone manufacturers don't even have the option to upgrade.

[Catsrules]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

Thanks for the detailed response @LAwLz, that is exactly what I was looking for.  I will take a look at some of the links you posted.

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, Catsrules said:

Thanks for the detailed response @LAwLz, that is exactly what I was looking for.  I will take a look at some of the links you posted.

I think the most important take away is that Google is trying to make this a possibility. But because of ARM quirks, vendors like Qualcomm wanting to keep selling new SoCs, GNU/Linux working in certain ways, and a few other reasons the progress is slow. 

[Kilrah]

Note that on the PC side linux is also pretty slow to adopt the latest and greatest. For example current distros still don't support the PCIe webcam in my one year old 10th gen laptop, similarly (I haven't tried lately, but it's not new) NVMe RAID from intol mobos isn't supported either. These often take 1-2 years to get support, which is usually not a big deal since the PC platforms are pretty stable, there aren't many new groundbreaking things coming out that often and hardware refresh cycles are slow.

On the other hand on mobile devices every year you've got a new SoC and even if the arch of the CPU inside is the same the other modules they include change everytime and evolve very quickly.

[Nena Trinity]

On 10/7/2020 at 11:40 PM, TetraSky said:

Drivers for your specific device.

They don't all use the same touchscreen, the same fingerprint reader, the same audio chipset, etc... Some may use the same, but then use a device specific toggle to enable some feature that isn't available in another...

 

A PC can look for these online.

 

On mobile... The OS just isn't built to look for device drivers online. I wish it were, since that would increase the longevity of our phones a HELL of a lot more... But I'm sure you can guess why no manufacturer wants that. 

Also there is the supply of spare parts, especially batteries... Even if they could do like Windows and make anything just work maintaining devices would require factories to make obsolete parts longer...

[Rylyguy]

On 10/7/2020 at 4:48 PM, HelpfulTechWizard said:

id like to see you try to run the win 10 installer on a pc from 2000. the installer might need more system rescources to start up then the poor pc has. 

I actually got it running on a laptop from the late 90’s last week. All it took was an upgrade from one to two gbs of ram. No drivers are available so only the generic ones but it runs. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, Rylyguy said:

I actually got it running on a laptop from the late 90’s last week. All it took was an upgrade from one to two gbs of ram. No drivers are available so only the generic ones but it runs. 

A pc from the 90s with 2gbif ram? Wow. 

[Mateyyy]

7 hours ago, Rylyguy said:

I actually got it running on a laptop from the late 90’s last week. All it took was an upgrade from one to two gbs of ram. No drivers are available so only the generic ones but it runs. 

2GB of RAM and NX bit from the late 90s? Hm

[Kilrah]

Yup not buying that one, between NX, MMU and PAE... It usually isn't even possible, or sometimes but with lots of painful hacks on machines from the first half of the 2000s.

[Rylyguy]

I’ll send a picture later when I get home