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Old 5th June 2014
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Carpetsmoker Carpetsmoker is offline
Real Name: Martin
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Netherlands
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Quote:
Originally Posted by censored View Post
Without the likes of Google Android, closed-system cell phones would be the dominant or only force in that arena. The "lock down" of the entire hardware ecosphere would likely have already happened by now
I don't think Android is "open" at all, it's just "less closed" than the competition.

For example:

- Large parts of the Android userland are not open source.
- Pretty much all Android code is made by Google. There are no public discussions on anything, really.
- Almost all Android drivers are closed-source (they're usually not provided by Google but by the phone vendors).
- Most Android phones are "locked", you need all sorts of stupid tricks ("hacks") to do stuff with them (like, install a different OS/ROM, unlock more features, etc).
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