It's actually massively soured me on Android (as well as several vendors, yes, specifically you, Samsung) as a result.
The Samsung hardware, fetters and chains excepted, is tolerable. The software is crap.
Yes, per Wikipedia:
"All Nexus devices feature an unlockable bootloader[3] to allow further development and end-user modification.[4]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nexus
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/12/its-not-rooti...
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/03/galaxy-nexus-gets-rooted-...
Note that this still does you comparatively little good if you don't have CyanogenMod to put on it. Mind, I didn't say "no good", I said "little good".
It's the CyanogenMod dev team at Cyanogen Inc who've been impacted by the layoffs. There's still the independent effort, but it's lost a major employer and investor.
Even if CyanogenMod suffers, there's plenty of other open-source Android versions out there. Unfortunately finding a clear, unbiased comparison of them is even harder than it is for different Linux distros. :(
I got there in the end, and I'm pretty sure most newer phones can be flashed in far easier ways.
However is it intrinsically hard? Could you imagine a software tool you would run which would ask a few questions, automate as much as possible over the OTG port, and guide the user for the rest?
That's the kind of tool Cyanogen Inc could write. Of course monetizing it is another thing.
I've been wanting to do something like that for a long time, get away from the recoveries and politics of the different factions. Make something a user can just pick up an old device, run an install process, and have a fast new OS.
Google of course doesn't make it easy, mostly due to carrier and manufacturer demands. But also due to the lack of a defined ABI between the user interactive parts and the libraries for talking to hardware.
There's really no reason an operating environment couldn't be compiled for ARM and run on the majority of devices if this specification was enforced. I'm looking to gonk and a new Google initiative as a possible solution.
These are not random examples - they ALL happened with the phone I am now typing on.
Its also not something a business could be built on top of, which is the original topic of this thread. Users expect single click installs.
The mobile phone market is massive. Even if you can capture a small subset of the users you can make money. Not everyone needs a one step install process.
[1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/05/this-is-what-androi...
Samsung is bad enough. Take a look here [2]. Click "Tablets" and then choose "Galaxy Tabs" as the product.
I'm sure a lot of the devices are similar at a hardware level, but still, the sheer volume of them is ridiculous.
They seemed to be considering partnering with advertisers to integrate ads into the base OS. Question is, who would voluntarily sign up for such a thing?
I would. I have a GalaxyTab 10 (the abandoned Google I/O edition) still running Honeycomb that I would happily pay $10 to easily update it to something vaguely more modern. It's been useless for years, not because the hardware is bad, but the software is useless. I still can't figure out how to get something more modern on it. It's been sitting in a drawer (plugged in, oddly) collecting dust forever.
* Care about the Android version on their devices
* Would pay reasonable rates
* Stick with an older phone / don't buy Nexuses
I think the real problem is that it is just turning out to be difficult to make a silky smooth upgrade process, the kind that is consumer-friendly enough to create a mass market. It all fundamentally starts with "hack the device" and most people can't. Maybe it's just a really hard problem because it varies from device to device and base OS version to base OS version.
You might have specific usage patterns where shows but I would say that there's anything wrong with Honeycomb but, rather, that the major problem is that the hardware itself doesn't really stretch enough to run newer Androids or newer websites/applications. I'd just keep the less resource-hungry Honeycomb installed until the hardware can no longer do modern content.
* add products/referral links to os search results (like ubuntu lenses)
* add ads to the base operating system (like kindle's sponsored homescreen)
* sell spots for default search providers (like bing for siri)
And you target old phones by providing them with an upgrade path to cyanogen mod based on a more modern android version. Many devices are technically fully capable of running modern android versions but have been abandoned by their manufacturers.
That's news to pretty much every *ix vendor except Apple, Red Hat, and maybe Canonical.
Does a new kernel version work? (Android will require it). Will the device drivers work on a new kernel version? Will driver blobs be compatible?
Chipset manufacturers will definitely not send you a new version of a driver if you're not the mobile manufacturer (and sometimes, not even if you are). You're on your own, updating the driver, or writing a shim that acts as a proxy between the driver, kernel, Android, etc. It's just not feasible.
It would be recommended to charge for Cyanogenmod instead of giving away the operating system for free.
Further it would be recommended from a revenue point of view to support the Android devices with the biggest user base. Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi. These devices should be super easy to upgrade.
Smartphone market share http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-market-share.jsp