[Bluenoser63]

Sailfish is Linux-based, like Android, so the same drivers work for both. So, Jolla doesn't really have driver costs, beyond possibly tweaking them a bit sometimes. BB has to pay for QNX-based drivers to be written (by the component manufacturers), and the manufacturers charge a lot for that because they can - alternative drivers are a profit center for them.

Not the case. Chipset manufactures provide documents for the chipsets. If you have developers on staff that can do the work, they can write the drivers. That is why open source projects can write their own drivers. The specifications are out there for developers to use.

[Bluenoser63]

Unless you got a good source for this, I am highly skeptical of this claim. First, probably most of the drivers for Linux/Android are open source. People are free to peep at the code. Any engineer worth his/her salt could then re-create the drivers for QNX.
Secondly, most silicon manufacturers make money off the silicon. They may not write the drivers for you, but they're not gonna stop you from trying to roll your own especially if you plan to ship over 100k units. They'll be happy to release the device datasheets to you so you can do your own drivers. Cause if you don't, then the next guy will and he will secure that design win.
In fact if you use a popular OS, more than likely they will just give you reference drivers in order to move silicon.

Have you ever worked in the IC industry???

This is exactly what I have been saying and what experience I had had in the early Linux days. You can also go over to the chipset manufactures website and get the documentation for the chipset.

[Troy Tiscareno]

If you aren't going to believe Chen about BB10's situation, then who ARE you going to believe?

[kvndoom]

If you aren't going to believe Chen about BB10's situation, then who ARE you going to believe?

Anonymous forum posters, of course! One thing I've learned from the Internet is that anonymous forum posters (believe they) are always right!

Passport SE, "The BlockBerry" - Cricket Wireless

[ppeters914]

If you aren't going to believe Chen about BB10's situation, then who ARE you going to believe?

Anonymous forum posters, of course! One thing I've learned from the Internet is that anonymous forum posters (believe they) are always right!

Like that French model guy!

Posted via CB10 / AT&T /Z10 STL100-3 /10.3.2.2813

[co4nd]

Jolla best chance of making a profit is if some moron buys it and pays far to much money for it. HP we're looking at you.

[Ment]

Jolla best chance of making a profit is if some moron buys it and pays far to much money for it. HP we're looking at you.

That could actually happen. They could probably sell it off to some VC as an IoT platform. I don't see many takers for mobile as its not a huge growth opportunity for hardware.

[Troy Tiscareno]

Like that French model guy!

Bonjour!

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[StephanieMaks]

This is exactly what I have been saying and what experience I had had in the early Linux days. You can also go over to the chipset manufactures website and get the documentation for the chipset.

Not always. Mobile chipsets are not all public knowledge / published specs.

Broadcom for example doesn't release all their driver/specs to the public. If you want to use their chips you have to pay them for the drivers. Eg. the Raspberry Pi runs Broadcom SoCs but you can't boot your Pi without using a proprietary closed-source binary that Broadcom provides the RPi foundation.

I don't know about Qualcom, if they have similar restrictions. IIRC some of the display driver chips don't publish their specs either, requiring proprietary drivers.

I'm not saying all mobile phone chipsets are proprietary, but maybe just the most modern / most desirable are.

On the other hand, stuff like the various sensors, (GPS, barometer, accellerometer, gyro, temp, etc etc) and other components like flash, ram, etc, I've always been able to find fully published specs.

[Superdupont 2_0]

If you aren't going to believe Chen about BB10's situation, then who ARE you going to believe?

My thought exactly when I bought the PlayBook in 2013 ("CEO said PlayBook will get BB10, yeah!").
After the PlayBook disaster everybody here was able to explain why the idea was rubbish.

However, the driver discussion is just business speak, when you can't say "A" for any reason then you just say "B" and your audience will know everything about "A".

Let's assume for example you are BBRY CEO and you don't want say in public that devices sales figures are horrible.
Well, than you just say that drivers are expensive, because everybody will know these costs are normally smallish.

I may translate:
Bluenoser and others firmly believe that a Z50 would sell well enough to justify the developing costs.
John Chen firmly believes that a Z50 would be another sales disaster, and the sharpest (and actually smartest) reply to Bluenoser is mentioning the driver costs... just to make the situation clear for everybody.

Anyways, Chen is wrong... a Z50 would sell better than the Priv! (imho)

[Bluenoser63]

If you aren't going to believe Chen about BB10's situation, then who ARE you going to believe?

So every single one of Chen's statement should be believed? He has already made statements that trued out not to be true. I guess you just trust everyone, even when the facts say different.

[JulesDB]

My thought exactly when I bought the PlayBook in 2013 ("CEO said PlayBook will get BB10, yeah!").
After the PlayBook disaster everybody here was able to explain why the idea was rubbish.

However, the driver discussion is just business speak, when you can't say "A" for any reason then you just say "B" and your audience will know everything about "A".

Let's assume for example you are BBRY CEO and you don't want say in public that devices sales figures are horrible.
Well, than you just say that drivers are expensive, because everybody will know these costs are normally smallish.

I may translate:
Bluenoser and others firmly believe that a Z50 would sell well enough to justify the developing costs.
John Chen firmly believes that a Z50 would be another sales disaster, and the sharpest (and actually smartest) reply to Bluenoser is mentioning the driver costs... just to make the situation clear for everybody.

Anyways, Chen is wrong... a Z50 would sell better than the Priv! (imho)

I agree with you.

Problem is: a Z50 without an updated ART, with no whatsapp and a decent Facebook app would not sell at all.

BlackBerry itself must re-difine what wants to do and to be, before trying just to make a choice ...

Posted via CB10

[Jerry A]

Not always. Mobile chipsets are not all public knowledge / published specs.

Broadcom for example doesn't release all their driver/specs to the public. If you want to use their chips you have to pay them for the drivers. Eg. the Raspberry Pi runs Broadcom SoCs but you can't boot your Pi without using a proprietary closed-source binary that Broadcom provides the RPi foundation.

I don't know about Qualcom, if they have similar restrictions. IIRC some of the display driver chips don't publish their specs either, requiring proprietary drivers.

I'm not saying all mobile phone chipsets are proprietary, but maybe just the most modern / most desirable are.

On the other hand, stuff like the various sensors, (GPS, barometer, accellerometer, gyro, temp, etc etc) and other components like flash, ram, etc, I've always been able to find fully published specs.

It's even worse than that. Many manufacturers only publish limited specs for the creation of open-source drivers. And those specs don't get into the proprietary optimization routines.

Heck, sometimes the specs are even incorrect.

There's a reason why the closed-source, binary-only drivers perform better than their open-source counterparts.

Feel free to troll through the LKML archives for references.

[thurask]

If you aren't going to believe Chen about BB10's situation, then who ARE you going to believe?

The voices in your head?

[keliew]

Since when large multinationals ever speak 100% truth and/or can 100% deliver what they said?

It's just pure business.

BlackBerry Passport via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

So every single one of Chen's statement should be believed? He has already made statements that trued out not to be true. I guess you just trust everyone, even when the facts say different.

Even I don't believe that... but over the years there have been many discussions about drivers for components preventing alternative OSs from being viable.

Still, no one answered my question: if not Chen, WHO?

[Bluenoser63]

Even I don't believe that... but over the years there have been many discussions about drivers for components preventing alternative OSs from being viable.

Still, no one answered my question: if not Chen, WHO?

BlackBerry doesn't have anyone who would truthfully answer anything.

[johnny_bravo72]

BlackBerry doesn't have anyone who would truthfully answer anything.

"Everybody lies."

*A3-A20

[Superdupont 2_0]

I agree with you.

Problem is: a Z50 without an updated ART, with no whatsapp and a decent Facebook app would not sell at all.

BlackBerry itself must re-difine what wants to do and to be, before trying just to make a choice ...

Posted via CB10

I see it only from the outside and have no particular knowledge about coding, but matter of fact there are still BB10 developers employed by BlackBerry and I can easily imagine that they are also working very slowly on a new BB10 device (whether it will be released in 2017 is a totally different question that will depend on the business case).

Anyways, the ART seems to be a diffcult topic.
BlackBerry had to fix stagefright security issues in the ART a few months ago.
And I speculate there could be many other security issues as well, so in the long term they must either upgrade or abandon the ART.

However, if they would change anything significantly in the ART, I would expect that some non-native (= Android ported) apps from BBW will no longer work.
At least that was the result of the ART update which I installed couple of weeks ago (and then had to reload the OS with an autoloader to fix this mess).

If I would be BlackBerry, I would just abandon the ART for the next BB10 device, if things would be getting too complicated (Google's OHA rules, BBW developers who don't want to code native etc etc ...).

As a result customers like me would lose some apps they have paid for,but on the other hand nobody forces me to buy a device without ART.

I personally would buy a Z50 without ART, because I use BB10 primarily for messaging and a lots of my BBW apps are native.
Whether the majority of the remaining BB10 users will be thinking like me...I don't know.
Or they may find a way to upgrade the ART without violating OHA rules... unlikely, but I don't know either.

[Ronindan]

Why do BB10 supporters just look at older crackberry posts on how BB shelved BBOS. There were no announcement that BBOS was being phased out. BB did announce lay off of BBOS developers. The ones that stayed did the usual bugfixes and security updates while being switched to BB10 development. And more importantly BB stopped development of BIS/BES and started with a new BES 10 (which by the name implies only works with BB10 phones and not BBOS devices)

Clearing up the confusion: BES and BlackBerry 10 | CrackBerry.com

And BBOS supporters said the same thing - that BB is still going to make BBOS phones. That BBOS will be the cheap phone for developing countries while BB10 will be focused on the rest of the global market, etc....
But it became clear that BBOS was being phased out and BBOS sales in the developing countries was more of BB getting rid of their existing BBOS inventory.

[TGIS]

I agree with you.

Problem is: a Z50 without an updated ART, with no whatsapp and a decent Facebook app would not sell at all.

BlackBerry itself must re-difine what wants to do and to be, before trying just to make a choice ...

Posted via CB10

Actually, a Z50 couldn't have an ART, since BlackBerry can't put non-Google certified Android code onto their future phones. This is also why there will be no more BB10 phones, because they wouldn't sell.

[thurask]

This is also why there will be no more BB10 phones, because they wouldn't sell.

Nuh uh! BB10 is the master race OS, all it needs is marketing! A Z10 on 10.0 was a million times better than any Android or iPhone from 2016!

[kvndoom]

Nuh uh! BB10 is the master race OS, all it needs is marketing! A Z10 on 10.0 was a million times better than any Android or iPhone from 2016!

And that's a FACT, not his opinion!