Cat S22 Flip Phone

Re:Cat S22 Flip Phone by asddubs on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @05:08PM (#31497562)

I never fully understood that. Kernel drivers have to be open source, right? Maybe not mainlined, but the source should be available. So what prevents someone from taking that and then getting it into a shape to be upstreamable? Why exactly is support by qualcomm needed?

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Re:Cat S22 Flip Phone by ChikkaChiChi on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @05:27PM (#31497718)

I'm not an OEM but I'll hazard a guess: long term hardware support assures that field replacements will match the exact specifications your are expecting. Large scale implementations have historically relied on a reference device to make sure you don't have a thousand different profiles running around.

Combine this with a JIT supply chain, and nobody making phones is going to want to stockpile a bunch of old Qualcomm chips they aren't sure they'll ever need.

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Re:Cat S22 Flip Phone by theodric on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @05:20PM (#31497656)

Have to be, and are not. It's amazing what simply refusing can accomplish.

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