Are handsets really that different?

[jleebiker]

Or "Why can't we put any OS on any handset?"

Seriously, you look at WHY we have different OS's, do we still have those same restrictions? Back even before the days of handset OS's. EVERY manuf did something different. That drove different paths in the OS's. We had fragmentation due to these "evolutionary trees". Does that have to be the case today?

You look at what CPU's, memory, architecture that distinguishes one handset from another, are they all so radically different? From a handset maker, wouldn't you get more market if you could say "You want to run Droid? Sure! You want to run Windows? Sure! You want to run iOS? Sure! You want to run your own version of Linux? Sure" You might have different versions based on the CPU, but over time, maybe the CPU's would standardize into ONE CPU. You might have diff handset makers have diff sensors, but that would come down to just a driver that you need to install.

I know this won't happen even in 5 years, but maybe in 10?

 

[mase123987]

Drivers, patents and deals between companies will not allow this to happen on any wide scale.

 

[jleebiker]

Drivers, patents and deals between companies will not allow this to happen on any wide scale.

You DO realize how much money Microsoft makes from the sale of each Droid phone right? Samsung uses tech from Apple and vice versa. There's so much cross pollination going on NOW, why not just remove those barriers anyway?

 

[trwrt]

Some companies are doing it a little bit today, for example the ATIV SE is pretty much the same phone as the Galaxy S4. Many of the newer OSes like Firefox OS or Ubuntu are written in such a way as to use the Android kernel and drivers (see the Hybris project for example), so in theory that may ease the ability to port them to a variety of phones.