I'm not knowledgeable enough -- what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?

I'm imagining a future where you buy a smartphone and when you do the first configuration, it asks you which services provider you want to use. Google and Apple are probably at the top of the list, but at the bottom there is "custom..." where you can specify the IP or host.domain of your own self-hosted setup.

Then, when you download an app, the app informs the app provider of this configuration and so your notifications (messenger, social media, games, banking, whatever) get delivered to that services provider and your phone gets them from there accordingly.

Is there anything like that in the world today?

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JoshTriplett 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I'm not knowledgeable enough -- what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?

At this point? Reliable emulation that can run 99% of Android apps, to provide a bridge until the platform is interesting enough for people to develop for it "natively".

I think the easiest way to do that would be to run Android in a VM.

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charcircuit 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Why not run Android directly, such as using Graphene OS. It's decades ahead in both OS architecture, developer tools, and developers compared to non Android based Linux operating systems.

	▲	fsflover 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Graphene uses the Google codebase, so Google is choosing its long-term development strategy and standards it will support. It's like choosing Chromium to escape Chrome.

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gunalx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can go the waydroid style with namespacing, or native containers if using the linux kernel. No need to do a full vm

	▲	JoshTriplett an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You could, but using containers requires that your kernel directly provide and secure Android-compatible functionality, such as binder. A VM gives you more options for abstracting that functionality. If you expect to be "essentially android, but a little different", containers make sense. If you want to build an entirely different mobile OS, but provide Android compatibility, I think a VM is much more likely to give you the flexibility to not defer to Android design decisions.
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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lawn an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Similar to how Valve is managing the transition from Windows to Linux.

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immibis 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Any one of us here could learn the skills to design a smartphone. It won't necessarily be good, but I remember that years ago, someone made one with a touchscreen hat and GSM hat atop a Raspberry Pi, rubber-banded to a power bank. I'm sure any one of us HN users could do this. And it worked. Quality only goes up from there.

The problem is it won't run any apps, so you'll need to carry this open-source secure phone in addition to your normal phone.

	▲	zdc1 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Or use everything via the web browser; but yes, I think apps are the main reason we can't just have a generic Linux phone OS on an open hardware platform