Why a European mobile operating system can’t challenge Android and iOS

https://gael-duval.medium.com/why-a-european-mobile-operating-system-cant-challenge-android-and-ios-86104e97b89e

by A4ET8a8uTh0 • 3 years ago

82 209 3 years ago

gael-duval.medium.com

McDev• 3 years ago

First of all, Stryjak should have been aware that /e/OS is compatible with any mobile application from the Android world

This is probably because /e/OS IS Android. It also contains microG, an open source framework that talks to Google Play Services.

VBprogrammer3• 3 years ago

The title is a bit misleading here. The article is actually arguing against the title.

Europe is so heterogeneous that any claims about it as a whole are misleading at best. Germans are probably the most privacy conscious people in the western world, for reasons which should probably be obvious given their history.

dkjaudyeqooe3• 3 years ago

Europe is so heterogeneous that any claims about it as a whole are misleading at best.

I don't think that's the case, especially among the younger generations which are largely English speaking and grew up with the internet.

Also, for example, if you looked at the US in detail you'd find just as many cultural difference between individuals states, it's likely true of any large country or federation.

aleph_minus_one8• 3 years ago

I don't think that's the case, especially among the younger generations which are largely English speaking and grew up with the internet.

In Germany and as far as I am aware also in France and Spain - all three are among the largest EU countries - the younger generation is hardly largely English-speaking. Only the more educated people (who studied at a university) are typically somewhat confident in their English, and at least in these three countries English is nevertheless only used as a second/"helper" language.

With UK having left the EU, the only EU countries where English is an official language are Ireland and Malta; in both of these countries English is only one of the official languages, not the only one.

justeleblanc8• 3 years ago

I don't think that's the case, especially among the younger generations which are largely English speaking and grew up with the internet.

Have you been to Europe outside of its big touristy capitals? To describe the younger generation as "largely English-speaking" is absurd. I'm from a medium-sized city in northern France. Go there and try speaking English to the young people in the street. See where that gets you.

ChuckNorris895• 3 years ago

Germans are probably the most privacy conscious people in the western world

Yeah, that's why every morning on the tram I see the average Germans texting on Tinder, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, and mindlessly scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, the most privacy focused apps on the planet. Sounds very privacy conscious, handing your most intimate data to US & Chinese companies.

Also, A lot of German are really into digital banks and brokers lately like N26, Scalable Capital, etc. which report everything to the Government authorities anyway, so I'm not buying the whole privacy angle. Cash usage at small businesses is mostly to enable tax fraud.

AlecSchueler2• 3 years ago

Their lack of privacy consciousness doesn't imply that they aren't the world's most privacy conscious people, in a world where almost no one seems to care at all about their privacy.

Germany is well known for giving support to political endeavors which help to ensure the privacy of citizens. Try looking around Munich on Street View.

postdb2• 3 years ago

May be true, but if you ever being to Berlin, and you want to go to a restaurant, you better bring cash. No body accepts cards or electronic payments there.

It is a breath of fresh air for privacy focused people.

VBprogrammer3• 3 years ago

I think complete abstinence from the modern internet in a pretty high bar.

aleph_minus_one8• 3 years ago

Yeah, that's why every morning on the tram I see the average Germans texting on Tinder, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, and mindlessly scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, the most privacy focused apps on the planet. Sounds very privacy conscious, handing your most intimate data to US & Chinese companies.

I know German people who will completely quit or at least strongly avoid contact to people who have an account at such services.

rpadovani2• 3 years ago

Germany is the second to last country for IM apps usage in EU, with a mere 60% [0]. It is also the second to last country for social network accounts, with 47.7% of the population being on a social network[1].

Cash is still king[2].

Germans care about their privacy - maybe not everybody has clear all the implications of modern applications, but you cannot dismiss the care of privacy with just saying that your experience on a bus doesn't match this.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ISOC_CI_AC_I_...

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ISOC_CI_AC_I_...

[2] https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/press-releases/payment-be...

BjoernKW3• 3 years ago

Germans in general are also highly reluctant towards digital payments, commonly citing "privacy" as a reason. However, the same people often have no qualms about using the - hilariously named - Payback loyalty programme, which keeps a record of individual consumer purchase behaviour.

BjoernKW3• 3 years ago

More often than not, "privacy" is merely used as an argument to avoid change and slow down progress, though.

During the pandemic, for example, remote work tools were routinely criticised or even banned in Germany due to their supposed privacy implications - with schools and public administration often having been the worst offenders.

There were civil servants who were "working from home", but in fact couldn't do any actual work because they were not allowed to access their department's intranet from home.

There were even teachers who refused to use video conferencing solutions for teaching their classes.

While some of that criticism regarding privacy issues with some of those tools might even have been valid, without suggesting a viable alternative, such criticism is pointless and detrimental, because all it achieves is to promote inertia and the status quo.

riffraff• 3 years ago

I am the creator of Mandrake Linux

oh that is where I knew the name from. I have very fond memories of Mandrake.

But why does this article has "— Gaël Duval — December 1st 2022" at the end, if it's supposedly published on March 27 2023?

pavlov2• 3 years ago

Maybe it‘s simply creation date vs. last modified.

dkjaudyeqooe3• 3 years ago

Yes it's impossible until it isn't. I'm sure people swore that Nokia was also unassailable in its time.

What the EU (or someone) needs to provide is a much better product, and personally I think iOS and Android are pretty bad. People are stuck in those ghettos but those with imagination can envisage something much better.

palata23• 3 years ago

Genuine question: do you think iOS and Android are pretty bad from looking at the UX, or from looking at the actual architecture in the underlying codebase?

Said differently: do you have any kind of idea about the complexity of the system below the UI? When you imagine something much better, does it involve the security model/team, for instance? Because that's the first thing: you don't ship to billions of devices with a nicer UI: you need a solid system below.

The second thing is lock-in effect. Does your much better system require a brand new app store with brand new apps? Because that's how Windows phones failed. Or does your better system reuse Android apps (in which case how is it much better than Android)?

sampa2• 3 years ago

the answer is simple, it won't be allowed.

only the US can spy on everybody and secretly subpoena US companies

drstewart• 3 years ago

So why did the US allow GDPR to pass? Weird incongruity don't you think?

glogla2• 3 years ago

GDPR doesn't apply when "national security" is at stake, so the governments themselves are not restricted by it.

sampa2• 3 years ago

they know to choose their battles

can't control everything, who'll then believe they're the leader of free world?

Joker_vD• 3 years ago

That's the rules-based world order and them's the rules. The US's leadership of the world is very important for human rights and freedom.

GalenErso• 3 years ago

First mover advantage. Android and iOS are too entrenched. It would take one of those to lose its competitive edge, like Facebook did versus Tiktok. Or for Europe to borrow a page from China and force their citizens to use this European mobile operating system while shielding it from outside competition, until perhaps it gains enough traction worldwide to challenge the dominance of the other two.

It's the same story across industries. Europe missed the fifth generation fighter aircraft boat, so now everyone is buying F-35s. Even if FCAS and Tempest ever get off the ground, the F-35 will be too entrenched in allied air forces to be dislodged.

Rockets too. Europe missed the reusable rocket boat, and now SpaceX is eating the Ariane's lunch, for the most part, except for politically sensitive European projects for which they still use more expensive Ariane launchers. The rocket market is more prone to disruption however, because launches are a one-and-done kind of thing. Switching launch provider is easier than switching operating system or the composition of an air fleet.

makeitdouble4• 3 years ago

Neither android nor iOS are the first movers though. They both came after the other players were already struggling trying to make it happen without reaching critical mass.

dagw2• 3 years ago

First mover advantage.

Microsoft, BlackBerry, Symbian, Nokia, Palm. They all 'moved' before Android and iOS and at various points in time where the leading players in their market segments. Yet they all rested on their laurels and fell to Android and iOS.

postdb2• 3 years ago

iOS is really the game changer that brought a new paradigm of using a computer in your pocket. Andriod is a just copy of iPhone/iOS.

orthoxerox• 3 years ago

The EU is a big enough market to strong-arm manufacturers and developers into suppporting their OS:

- an extra import duty on phones not running EU OS unless an equal number of EU OS phones is imported - all EU-sponsored projects must run on EU OS - if you're a software dev in the EU making phone apps, you get a tax break if you support EU OS - and so on

glogla2• 3 years ago

I mthink realistically, as long as Google can abuse its market position to make any other mobile OSs nonviable by withholding access Gmail and Youtube and so on, nothing can challenge Android and iOS (which has the critical mass so that Google can't do this to get rid of it).

Even Microsoft with its infinite money failed when competing, because a monopoly to most of the Internet's email and video is just that powerful.

yosito3• 3 years ago

I think you overestimate the importance of Gmail and YouTube in Europe.

justeleblanc8• 3 years ago

I'm amazed at these posts. Where have you been in Europe? I live in France and near everyone's personal email is @gmail.com. Youtube is still king (though twitch and tiktok are killing it with the younger people).

acdha• 3 years ago

Windows Phone was more about Microsoft’s failure to execute - I remember users complaining that even Microsoft’s own apps were notably better on iOS.

These days I’d also think the bigger question would be availability of popular streaming music & video apps and Tik Tok.

phh5• 3 years ago

If I was making an OS in Europe, I definitely wouldn't mind shipping Google's gmail + youtube Android apps in a non-Google OS. I have very little doubt that the EU's anti-trust would side with me.

palata23• 3 years ago

I use a de-Googled Android system (/e/ OS) with NewPipe (instead of YouTube) and K-9 to fetch my gmail. I even fetch my Google calendar with CalDAV!

At least for the mail, that's perfectly fine. I could imagine that heavy users of YouTube don't like NewPipe, maybe? Works fine for me.

Really, the only thing is that I don't have Google Maps (but I love OSMAnd and Organic Maps). To me that's fine, but many people find it hard to move to OpenStreetMaps.

I have tried Cyanogen in the past, then Lineage, and always went back to the stock Android. I must say that /e/ OS is the very first one that I consider almost at the level (requires to accept NewPipe, K-9 and OSM, but no weird update flow or tuning or crashes or anything like that).

0xDEF• 3 years ago

Android is a mobile-specific middleware layer running on a European operating system.

yosito3• 3 years ago

And creating a Google-free fork of Android for the European market would be relatively easy. You'd basically just need a European Android App Store to replace Google Play. The rest is details.

em-bee4• 3 years ago

that's exactly what /e/OS-Murena is doing.

em500• 3 years ago

Which European operating system is that? Android is built on AOSP and the Linux kernel, neither is particularly European.

thepangolino• 3 years ago

Most alternative linux based operating systems such as Sailfish OS(0.) or PureOS(1.) are perfectly able to run Android apps. It is purely a licensing issue.

0. https://tuxphones.com/purism-librem-5-run-android-apps-anbox... 1. https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Help_Articles/Android_Ap...

makeitdouble4• 3 years ago

Let’s think of it this way: would you switch to a phone that didn’t have a native Gmail app? Or Twitter? TikTok? Instagram? It would take an inordinate amount of time just for those companies to port over their software — and they’re some of the best-resourced organisations in the world. “

The funny thing is, these services all have fully functional websites and have no specific elements that need to be native. A PWA would be enough, except perhaps for Instagram and the camera/movie filters, and TikTok for the movie editor which could need to be separate apps.

b112• 3 years ago

But then how would they get your contact list, geo-location, track you, and other things which generate profit?

AlecSchueler2• 3 years ago

WhatsApp would be the only thing you couldn't replace with a web version, since you need to use WhatsApp on your phone to verify your session.

Sites like Instagram will also become increasingly aggressive in pushing you towards the app as you use the mobile web version until it eventually denies you new content. I believe Twitter and TikTok are the same.

phh5• 3 years ago

Whatsapp does have a PWA variant though, used in India for KaiOS (which is pretty much FirefoxOS)

gibspaulding• 3 years ago

I use Instagram mostly through the web interface (because uBlock Origin), and while it works pretty well on desktop, on mobile Firefox its super buggy and generally not a great experience. It's worth it for me to see what's going on without adds, but I can't imagine most people would accept the tradeoff.

makeitdouble4• 3 years ago

There's a bunch of other social media services (Line does something similar, mixi does too) that force some anchoring to a mobile phone, probably to guarantee access to the phone number and be sure to have you use the service on the go.

I think they care less about being native than having direct access to your phone and data. An alternative OS giving similar privileges to PWA could probably be rubber stamped by these services. (do we want that though ?)

ghusto3• 3 years ago

WhatsApp would be the only thing you couldn't replace with a web version

Well you _could_, they just don't want you to. I very rarely use Whatsapp on my phone. Then again, I very rarely use Whatsapp :P

seba_dos12• 3 years ago

would you switch to a phone that didn’t have (...)

Of course, I already did. I've been using GNU/Linux smartphones since 2008: first Neo FreeRunner, then Nokia N900, now Librem 5. I don't feel like I'm missing anything at all.

kwhitefoot2• 3 years ago

Will it run Android or Apple banking apps? Does it have a good camera? It's great that it suits you but I think it would not suit most people.

paganel• 3 years ago

Not included in the list but unfortunately the mobile-focused browser version of Google Maps does not have the same functionalities as the desktop-focused version of the same app. More exactly I cannot access the "Saved Maps" (or whatever it's called) menu/section on mobile via the browser, the same way as I can when using my desktop computer. I don't know why that happens.

Funnily enough, the functionality has recently stopped working for me on desktop, too, I get a "Server error" message whenever I try to access any of the maps from the "Saved Maps" menu.

justeleblanc8• 3 years ago

I don't know why that happens.

Surely Google wouldn't intentionally release a crippled mobile website to force you to use their app and lock you out of competitors' OSes.

everdrive• 3 years ago

I intentionally don’t use the gmail app on my iPhone because it’s terrible and never seems to work well. Their mobile website works better than their app.

tomcam2• 3 years ago

Interesting! Had always worked flawlessly for me. iPhone user FWIW

Neil44• 3 years ago

I think there might be room for a phone that only has those top 5-10 apps on it, out of the box, even if just a PWA at first. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone and adding a ton of complication that non-technical people don't like anyway.

JW_000002• 3 years ago

But everyone still wants their banking app, maybe a local public transport app, their favorite newspaper, a few simple games maybe, some local government apps if we're talking about the EU... (Looking at my non-technical family members.)

badrabbit• 3 years ago

Funny thing is, I haven't used any of those apps ever except gmail at least 5+ years ago. Maybe that's just me but in Europe I don't know if people are as dependent on these apps as the author suggests and europe is big and there are other popular social media

axo11• 3 years ago

would you switch to a phone that didn’t have a native Gmail app? Or Twitter? TikTok? Instagram?

There are people who would love that, but they are a very small minority. I for one would love to do that, but I need most of the popular apps to do my job.

JW_000002• 3 years ago

This is the approach that Windows Phone pushed. When they realized they were late to the party, pushing "standardized" PWAs made most sense. They even had quite a lot of tools to make it easy to encapsulate a normal website in a PWA and submit it to their store. But still it didn't catch on... I don't really see why this time would be different.

nephanth2• 3 years ago

Because this is not the approach they're taking? If you read the whole article, you learn this project is AOSP-based So it runs android apps

In the hypothetical situation that it was needed though, PWAs are probably more common now than when Microsoft tried that

golergka5• 3 years ago

Good performance, UI and other nice features don't "need" to be there, really. But an audience of real people will choose a product that has a lot of these pesky, not really necessary things.

watwut2• 3 years ago

I do not use any of those apps. I do use Gmail and used to use Twitter. There is and was zero reason to use Twitter app. Or youtube app, website is literally better.

And I don't use Gmail app, because it was taking too much space.

akho2• 3 years ago

Youtube apps can interact with TV Youtube apps, which are otherwise a pain to use. That’s the one reason I have it installed.

the_other• 3 years ago

would you switch to a phone that didn’t have a native Gmail app? Or Twitter? TikTok? Instagram?

Yes. I don't use any of those services. Occasionally friends link me to Twitter and I read the web version. The fact it makes that experience shit with pop-ups and limited message history is actually benefit.

I sometimes use G-suite apps, but they're also better as web apps on a desktop/laptop than phone apps.

benhurmarcel• 3 years ago

Yes. I don't use any of those services.

Same for me but that's missing the point. I don't use those particular services but I don 't have to look very far to find apps for which I wouldn't buy a phone lacking them. For me that's Spotify, Whatsapp, Google Maps, my banks, 1password, etc.

mid-kid• 3 years ago

The even funnier thing is, Gmail supports standard mail protocols, and can be interacted with using just about any mail client, and Twitter has a billion custom clients for it as well. The problem is that Google is hiding the SMTP/IMAP options deep behind needing a 2fa and "app passwords", and all the others are actively rejecting or working against letting people create custom apps for the services easily. There's no need for any of these companies to create any new software for any new OS, they choose to prevent people from doing so, and that's actively harmful in the current walled garden of an ecosystem we've created.

WirelessGigabit2• 3 years ago

No one wants to do POP3 in 2023. And Gmails IMAP set up is weird. A labeling system being represented as folders is not a great experience.

nephanth2• 3 years ago

Twitter has a billion custom clients for it as well

Not anymore

kyrra2• 3 years ago

My take on why a third mobile OS is hard is that phones don't have a standard BIOS type system that gets all basic I/O working on it. So having an OS that can install on existing phones is a bunch of work.

And there were previously other OSes. Microsoft has windows phone with its tiles. There was WebOS. And some others. At the commercial phone OS level, it seems it's hard to be profitable unless you have tons of users.

For the Linux like phone OS, I'd love to see one, but I feel like we get back to my original point, supporting existing hardware is hard due to device specific BSPs needed.

phh5• 3 years ago

My take on why a third mobile OS is hard is that phones don't have a standard BIOS type system that gets all basic I/O working on it. So having an OS that can install on existing phones is a bunch of work.

You can have AOSP-based OS (nowadays "smartphone OS" covers a whole bunch of stuff that isn't in AOSP so I don't consider that it's the same OS) that re-uses original Android OEM drivers. You can take pretty much any Android smartphone (assuming it doesn't prevent you from running your own software) and run an AOSP-based OS on it with literally 0 effort. That's called Project Treble, or GSI. You'll find dozens of ROMs (both Google Android, and Google-less) that will work on pretty much any modern (less than 4 yr old) Android smartphone.

Even better, it is possible to use those drivers meant for Android on GNU/Linux through Halium. There are even tech demos where you don't need original kernel source or anything, you just flash it, and it mostly works on any modern-ish Android smartphone that lets you flash your own software.

Really, the drivers and hardware support has no reason to be a blocker in the 2020s (I'm not saying it's totally free though) to make a new mobile OS, except that you're stuck to support a wide range of rather old vendor Linux kernels.

PS: The future is brighter, and in few years you'll probably be able to make a really brand new OS, that will run in a VM with drivers running in another VM alongside yours

palata23• 3 years ago

You can have AOSP-based OS

I call those Android flavours. Those are not separate OSes. Windows Mobile was a third mobile OS. /e/ OS is not.

Just like there are not tens of different browsers out there: all the Chromium-based are essentially Chrome with small changes (that people care about, but still small changes).

kyrra2• 3 years ago

Good to know that AOSP lets you just build ontop of it now. To me this means not really a different OS, but closer to something like a different window-manager (this is more akin to Gnome vs KDE, not Linux vs FreeBSD).

revelio5• 3 years ago

Third mobile OS is hard because people lack ideas.

Reality is, if you have some clear vision for an OS that's different to Android you can just take Android and fork it until it meets your vision. Toss out what gets in your way, keep the stuff that you don't disagree on. There's no need to build an entire new OS from scratch. You can deviate as far as you like that way.

People don't do this and Android forks are all pretty similar because, ultimately, these platforms are pretty good and Google/Apple don't miss many tricks. That's why this /e/ OS is trying to differentiate on vague promises like privacy or being European. They don't have any deep ideas for ways to make the end user's life better.

Not a criticism of them, by the way. I don't know what I'd change if I was given a big pile of money and told to make a new OS, fork of Android or not. But that's the point. Not many people do.

jagermo3• 3 years ago

i loved webos and the palm pearl. perfect device for its time. i still have it somewhere.

PaulHoule• 3 years ago

It sounds like it's basically an Android fork in which case it's arguable that it "challenges Android" although, like Amazon's Fire OS, it challenges parts of the ecosystem built on top of Android.

jansan• 3 years ago

THis isn't necessarily a contradiction. Microsoft Edge is basically a Chrome fork, and without doubt challenges Chrome.

tzs• 3 years ago

Microsoft has a big advantage though due to their size. Microsoft has the resources to fix bugs, implement new standards, and add new features themselves without using any new Google work. They've got the resources to make it so the relationship of Edge to Chromium is like the relationship of Chromium to Webkit, or of Webkit to KHTML.

Small companies making a fork of a big Google project like Chromium or Android are much less likely to be able to do that. They are likely to have to keep porting over much from Google to keep their project relevant.

That makes it a lot harder to really challenge the Google project.

zoobab2• 3 years ago

There is space for a new runtime, a Python phone.

Creating a simple app for iOS or Android is way too complicated.

And the EU DMA's legislation sucks at replacing the entire OS, it will just cement the existing oligopoly, without any right for the end user to have a app store where you can replace the OS, only the apps.

tiedieconderoga• 3 years ago

Sounds like a very cool idea, but isn't that the problem that Electron was trying to solve? Write your app once in easy-to-use JS, run it anywhere?

wizzwizz4• 3 years ago

It's also the problem that Microsoft's HTML Applications were trying to solve. Also the problem that Microsoft's VBScript was trying to solve. Also the problem that Chrome PWA were trying to solve. Also the problem that Apple HyperCard was trying to solve. Also the problem that Borderland Delphi was trying to solve. Also the problem that Bubble(.io) was trying to solve.

It's an old problem. Nobody's yet solved it for good.

justeleblanc8• 3 years ago

The problem isn't the tech stack. Claiming that switching to python or whatever would solve the problem is similar to claiming that switching to a different accounting tech would solve inflating healthcare costs. The problem is a social one and requires a social solution.

palata23• 3 years ago

There is space for a new runtime, a Python phone. Creating a simple app for iOS or Android is way too complicated.

I disagree. Just hire software devs who are not overwhelmed by languages other than Python, and that's it.

Then you seem to completely miss the point that Python is a programming language, not a mobile SDK. How do you plan to replace the Android SDK with Python? If you just call the same underlying libraries, then you just changed the language, but you did not change at all the complexity of writing an app.

Tommstein2• 3 years ago

There is space for a new runtime, a Python phone.

There's Kivy. Although I made an Android app with it years ago, then one day the build system I was using (Buildozer) was suddenly broken for no apparent reason (I assume something it was downloading changed and broke it), and that was the end of that.

favsq3• 3 years ago

The tech sector in Europe is really pathetic. The only arguments that European tech products use to support themselves are "it's European" and "protects your privacy" (as in, it follows the GDPR, as any other product from other countries would).

Just look at this article: it doesn't say "a third mobile OS can't challenge..." but "a European mobile OS can't challenge...". They aren't even shooting for "good" anymore, just "European"

the-smug-one• 3 years ago

Just look at this article: it doesn't say "a third mobile OS can't challenge..." but "a European mobile OS can't challenge...". They aren't even shooting for "good" anymore, just "European"

That's the original NextWeb article title.

aleph_minus_one8• 3 years ago

They aren't even shooting for "good" anymore, just "European"

This can also be interpreted differently: there is so much distrust with respect to the privacy that US or Chinese products provide that it does not have to be "good" to still get accepted.

rs999gti3• 3 years ago

with respect to the privacy that US or Chinese products provide

Does this mean that EU apps all charge subscriptions or are advertising heavy in order to provide their service and data privacy?

They are not charities so if they are not selling their data, they have to be making money some other way

favsq3• 3 years ago

No, there isn't, because if there was, people wouldn't use those apps. People may yak and yak about how they distrust the apps, but their actions say that they don't really distrust them.

palata23• 3 years ago

One could have similar arguments for the US: Huawei phones got banned because they were getting too big, DJI drones got banned because everyone else in the Western world (including the US) is 10 years behind... TikTok is eating Facebook's lunch...

favsq3• 3 years ago

And they are pathetic arguments too. Arguments for losers.

azubinski• 3 years ago

But it's not an "European mobile operating system", it's a “deGoogled” version of Android OS. How can Android OS challenge Android OS?

tbihl• 3 years ago

To me, the real question is how this differs from Graphene OS, which has the advantage of already working- so much, so, it seems, that they get security patches faster than almost any other Android phones. And then it's a game of re-Googling your de-Googled phone for most people, it seems.

Privacy-respecting phones already exist in the US market (I think it's pretty much illegal in Europe to get cell service without government ID, but that's not firsthand). If you think you care, buy https://inteltechniques.com/book7a.html, get a Pixel phone, and try for yourself.

Ironically, they're handicapped by Google's SoCs being quite bad (though seemingly not much worse than most recent Qualcomm flagship products, this most recent generation excepted).

Edit: this site suggests that there are quite a few countries in Europe where you don't have to register: https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_P...

palata23• 3 years ago

To me, the real question is how this differs from Graphene OS, which has the advantage of already working

/e/ OS already works, I've been using it for 2 years flawlessly.

What's the difference with GrapheneOS? They target a slightly different audience. GrapheneOS is really into security, and for that they only target Pixel phones. CalyxOS is based on Graphene and tries to make it more user-friendly (at the cost of being less secure: different users, different threat models). /e/ OS is based on Lineage (I believe), and also tries to make it more user-friendly.

They all have a focus on privacy (as in, not being tracked by Google & Co), but they do it differently. I would argue that they are all on the same side.

em-bee4• 3 years ago

as far as i understand the key difference is that /e/OS removes any connections made to google, whereas grapheneOS considers that in itself problematic because that changes the fingerprint of the phone, therefore grapheneOS has toggles to allow making a GrapheneOS device appear to be an AOSP device (from: https://grapheneos.org/features )

so it seems that /e/OS implements less security features than grapheneOS.

i haven't used grapheneOS so i don't know if there are any other differences.

/e/OS certainly is more userfriendly (compared to the lineageOS it is based on)

poisonborz• 3 years ago

Let's be honest here, European <any software tech> can't really challenge the global industry right now. We have a few Spotifys and SAPs as outliers, but due to the legal context, administrative hurdles and reasons much better explained in googleable articles there are ample reasons why the tech sector of the EU is severly challenged, despite still having quite a good amount of brain resources left.

Mobile - with its close integration needs with other high tech industries and cutthroat margins - is near the tip of that huge iceberg.

paulluuk• 3 years ago

It could be that legal requirements are a constraint, but I think that the lack of investors is the real issue. Because we're not really comparing Europe to "all of the US", we're comparing all of Europe to Silicon Valley -- I doubt Europe is a worse place to start a tech company than, say, Nebraska.

golergka5• 3 years ago

Nebraska is an at-will employment state. This means employees can be dismissed for any reason at any time and without notice when an employment contract or other governing principle is not in effect.

https://www.mightyrecruiter.com/recruiter-guide/at-will-empl...

Almost any american state is a vastly better place to start a company than almost any european country.

Quarrelsome• 3 years ago

You only have to look at Snapchat's slap on the wrist for wilfully mis-informing its customers about the ephemerality of messaging to show the difference between the two places.

The USA is a much more attractive environment for investment and hence startups and the EU would struggle to offer the same without losing its soul.

tormeh• 3 years ago

It is, though. The EU has a unified single market for goods, but not for services. And since most software tries to provide a service, or integrate with businesses that do, EU software companies often struggle to expand to other member states than their native one. There are legal and lingual differences, obviously, but also different ecosystems of private entities that you're expected to integrate with. The EU is really good at making stuff that goes in boxes, though.

danpalmer2• 3 years ago

US investors will invest in an idea to see if it works.

EU investors will invest in a working idea.

We have far fewer ridiculous startup ideas or companies that can't scale, but the flip side is that we have fewer winners too.

traveler012• 3 years ago

Yeah Europe it's facing an excessive taxation plus excessive regulation. Regulation it's good but it should be small and precise. The excess of regulation in Europe it's only being benefitial to huge corps, that have money to either pay the small fines, or an army of lawyers to either comply or circumvent regulations.

For example, they forced brands to switch to Type-C, everyone here cheered up the EU. This will come back to bite us in the a*. EU's actions were excessive and in the future will hurt innovation since brands will now have to ask permission to EU to come up with new standards if needed.

jwestbury• 3 years ago

Europe it's facing an excessive taxation plus excessive regulation.

Is there a compelling argument to be made that it's not the inverse of this? Perhaps other jurisdictions are facing destructively light regulations?

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

I am gonna have to strongly disagree, the major reason tech companies struggle in Europe is because of access to funding. Investors are way more risk averse and 'VCs' are closer to business angels than VC's in terms of level of funding rounds.

In the same way, for EU companies to really play ball and have access to US based VCs they at some point have to incorporate in Delaware or NY to be taken seriously.

The only exceptions to what I described that I have seen seem to gravitate around fintech.

pembrook• 3 years ago

Every time this topic comes up I like to point out that Europe’s inability to compete in tech has been true even since the personal computer.

Here’s an article from 30 years ago doing a postmortem: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/07/business/why-european-com...

It’s baffling to me why the entire world in the 1900s was eventually able to compete with Detroit in auto manufacturing…even after being decimated during WW2 (Europe, South Korea and Japan have no trouble competing in automotive)…why have they not been able to compete with Silicon Valley?

Manufacturing cars is far more capital intensive than anything in software, so I don’t think funding is at the heart of the issue.

Either there’s something fundamentally different about computers/software or the rest of the world is about to finally wake up and start competing.

schnitzelstoat• 3 years ago

The UK had quite a strong computing industry right up to the 90's - a lot of it got sold off or beaten by competitors though.

Although the UK still punches above its weight in computing.

revelio5• 3 years ago

It's partly the war dividend. Auto industry got well established prior to WW2, around the turn of the century. WW2 and the aftermath changed everything in Europe:

- Much of the continent was a hotbed of dictatorships and extremists well into the late 20th century. Large parts were locked behind the iron curtain; skilled but poor. No way for them to compete. Spain and Greece were dictatorships until ~1975. Italy experienced continuous political instability post-war and arguably still does. Germany was split in two with a giant razorwire wall down the middle. This situation is not conducive to establishing new successful companies.

- Netherlands and Norway became (to some extent) petro states.

- The British population had been subjected to years of wartime propaganda in which all government failures were covered up, so naturally concluded that governments must be pretty great at running things. Even now, previously unknown wartime disasters are still being declassified, one stopped being secret only a few years ago. The British economy became steadily more socialist from the 1940s to the 1980s, being changed only when the economy was on the brink of collapse and Thatcher came in. During the 1970s when HP and Intel were establishing themselves in Silicon Valley the UK government was being toppled by openly communist unions, there were rotating power outages, 3 day weeks, trash piling on the streets, an IMF bailout. Thatcher righted the ship but not before the UK lost most of its heavy industry including its auto industry to militant unionism, along with the drive to set up new industries. Even when a nascent domestic computing industry developed it was partly driven by the BBC wanting to educate kids, and came way late compared to the Valley firms who were by then already large and powerful.

- Europe decided that the best way to avoid a repeat of the war was to unify under a single government, but the form of that government was heavily influenced by the French and their love of protectionist big government subsidies and tariffs. That shapes everything and the EU doesn't hesitate to do things that are blatantly anti-industry or anti-innovation if they think it will advance their agenda of further "integration" i.e. movement of power away from national governments towards the EU institutions. That always takes priority. The US government doesn't have the same goal of abolishing the individual states, so Congress and the Supreme Court often rule in ways that enable local divergence and policy innovation. The EU in contrast sees those things as problems to be solved, not opportunities or constitutional rights.

- Elitist distrust of the population is sadly a long term feature of European culture. After the war Germany decided it needed strong anti-nazi/anti-holocaust speech related laws. Partly as a consequence Europe doesn't have the first amendment or strong free speech culture, and frequently doesn't have any concept of fair use in copyright law, but large parts of Silicon Valley since 2000 aren't really possible without these things. The animating values of early Facebook, Google, Twitter etc are populist in nature and these companies turn towards widespread speech control only came very recently in the grand scheme of things.

And a non-war factor: in some countries an pervasive problem with cultural elitism in which American things are crass and commercial, unlike the refined reasonableness of all things Euro. It's not true so causes people to search around for talking points to try and prop it up. In the tech world this is often privacy and you see the results in the article, where the author interprets criticism of a privacy focused OS nobody cares about (iOS and Android privacy is good enough) as a criticism of making a "European" phone OS.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

Its the people and what they will use capital for

Silicon Valley isn’t replicated because the investor culture isn’t replicated

Without an ethos of continuing to invest after getting liquidity, new companies don’t get funded

Speaking of liquidity, that’s also not prioritized across Europe, shareholdings are quite illiquid and companies are forever homes

HopenHeyHi• 3 years ago

"Europe" is not a cohesive social structure. You see even less entrepreneurship in Asian countries. These are cultural issues.

The simple truth is that dropping out and starting companies for example is not deemed as an acceptable path in life by most of polite society in these places.

And well, there must be a number two after Silicon Valley. Who would you say that is?

Yoric• 3 years ago

France had a strong computing industry until the 90s, at which point it attempted to expand into the US, borrowed heavily – and was killed by protectionism.

Since then, France has been very timid in the domain.

TMWNN• 3 years ago

The only successful rival to Apple's iOS came from Google, a planet-spanning company with almost infinite resources. In turn, even Microsoft—also world-girdling, also with Scrooge McDuck's coffers—couldn't compete against Android and iOS despite spending tens of billions including buying Nokia.[1] What other entity in the US—let alone Europe—is anywhere in the ballpark in terms of having the financial, technological, and brand-awareness resources to have a chance?

[1] Heck, might be tens of billions even excluding Nokia

A4ET8a8uTh05• 3 years ago

Sure, but have you tried using OS generated for MS phone? I remember looking at their phones and their one distinct advantage was an amazing ( for the time ) screen with crazy resolution and excel integration. That was it. Everything else was the same Windows, but more locked ( that at least was my first impression; after that I did not care enough to keep track of it. ).

It is almost like they failed, because this 'phone' project was an afterthought and it was more important to take down Nokia.

SubzeroCarnage3• 3 years ago

To answer the title: Maybe because they consistently go months without providing basic security updates to their users, phoning home to Google out of the box despite advertising otherwise, selling devices that are already end-of-life, and even leaking user-data to other users as I note in my list with cited sources here: https://divestos.org/misc/e.txt

Noting my bias as having my own Android fork.

A4ET8a8uTh05• 3 years ago

Thank you. I was not aware of DivestOS, but it will be on my radar now as a possible alternative.

palata23• 3 years ago

DivestOS seems like a nice project.

However, every single time I read about it, it is from the author. Not by explaining why I should like DivestOS, but by explaining over and over again why other Android alternatives are so very very very bad.

To me it's a bit like those people who keep telling everyone and their dog that "Signal is ridiculously insecure because they require your phone number". I guess in the hope of converting them to their own secure messaging app that nobody has ever heard about and that requires 17 steps to add a contact. But in reality, I'm pretty sure that they push people back to WhatsApp/Telegram. That is counter-productive IMHO, because they would benefit from people getting open to Signal (if people refuse to install Signal, they probably won't remotely consider those exotic super-secure apps).

Same thing here. If my parents can move to /e/ OS, that's great for all the alternative Android flavours, because it means that they moved away from Google/Samsung/etc. But if you go tell my parents that they need GrapheneOS, with a Pixel phone, and that their most important apps don't run there "for security", then my parents will just stay on the Android from Samsung.

I guess DivestOS is a nice idea, but honestly the behavior of the author (criticizing all efforts I can see out there) does not make me want to look into it.

SubzeroCarnage3• 3 years ago

Not by explaining why I should like DivestOS

Because I'm not trying to shill my project, but instead provide factual information about others in a thread about them.

because it means that they moved away from Google/Samsung/etc.

But they didn't as my link describes.

most important apps don't run there "for security"

But this is just wrong, GrapheneOS has superior compatibility compared to systems shipping microG.

criticizing all efforts I can see out there

Yet I have pages dedicated to recommendations of projects, thanking people who made it possible, along with many contributions back:

- https://divestos.org/pages/recommended_apps

- https://divestos.org/pages/patch_levels#secure

- https://divestos.org/pages/about

It only happens to seem that way because there are sadly a lot of companies portraying themself as helpful open source projects when they really just want to sell insecure devices to pad their pockets.

FrankyHollywood• 3 years ago

There is Sailfish OS, been using it for a couple of years now... works pretty great. Not free, but that's kind of the point, you pay for a product so they don't have to get your money in some hidden way.

There are native apps, and you can download Android apps from open app stores. I was surprised how many companies deploy to these open stores, like my own bank.

https://sailfishos.org/

"Sailfish OS is a European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems"

palata23• 3 years ago

Interesting, I have never seen a Sailfish phone.

With Sailfish OS you can run beautiful gesture-based native apps powered by Qt framework

I wonder how Qt mobile apps can remotely compete with iOS/Android ones. Like... do they actually have mobile devs willing to write mobile apps in Qt? That's a genuine question. I, for one, wouldn't want to.

mariusor• 3 years ago

The ecosystem is not great, I think Jolla doesn't really have the resources to promote good mobile applications, and none to dedicate to convince existing mobile developers to create QtQuick versions. Despite that, the hobbyists are making things, and they work decently well most of the time.

Yizahi• 3 years ago

I find it funny to see a GDPR banner on the privacy oriented website. It means that they are storing more PII and/or longer than is really needed, the question is why.

devsda• 3 years ago

Let’s think of it this way: would you switch to a phone that didn’t have a native Gmail app? Or Twitter? TikTok? Instagram? It would take an inordinate amount of time just for those companies to port over their software — and they’re some of the best-resourced organisations in the world

Another reason, many of these apps collect lots of user data to monetize it. Judging by the way they reacted to iOS privacy changes, we can guess how a more privacy focused OS will be treated.

Even if /e/OS has android app compatibility, there's no guarantee that these vendors will not cripple functionality when they detect that the OS is not android.

em-bee4• 3 years ago

/e/OS IS android (based on LineageOS) supporting google services through microg

palata23• 3 years ago

Even if /e/OS has android app compatibility, there's no guarantee that these vendors will not cripple functionality when they detect that the OS is not android.

/e/ OS is Android. Just without the Google & Co trackers. /e/ OS does not prevent apps from leaking your data: it removes the trackers from the system. Then you have to choose your apps wisely, like on any other OS.

A4ET8a8uTh05• 3 years ago

Yes, but, note for comparison how, firefox, chrome or its derivatives are treated when they try to use Origin, NoScript and the like. Websites don't like it. It used to be they would try to fail gracefully, but that is increasingly not the case. More often than not, I get an error suggesting I don't use firefox ( the error is not really about firefox since website works just fine with extensions turned off ).

lifeinthevoid• 3 years ago

sidenote: /e/OS is a horrible name imo, the slashes are just confusing.

marban• 3 years ago

I thought it was a typo referring to Reddit.

em-bee4• 3 years ago

unfortunate accident because the previous name had a trademark issue. so they used this temporary name until they could get a new name that is trademark safe. my guess is that they chose a horrible name intentionally, in order to avoid trademark risks and make it easier to change the name later.

that new name appears to be Murena, but it looks like they decided to use Murena only as a brand for the phones that they sell themselves, leaving /e/OS as the name of the actual software.

asow924• 3 years ago

As a mobile developer: The two primary OS ecosystems are already difficult to develop for. And we already kind of have a third if you count Amazon Fire, as they run Android without Google services, which creates all kinds of edge cases specific to this OS flavor.

What could end up happening is the smaller OS markets would end up getting a lower quality of service because it's hard for product teams to justify the dev and maintenance time investment for smaller user bases. Stretching us thiner than we are will mean a lower quality of service for all app users unless it becomes easier to develop for multiple OS flavors at once. And no, RN and Flutter are not silver bullets here: they come with their own tradeoffs that each team must assess for their product.

palata23• 3 years ago

And we already kind of have a third if you count Amazon Fire, as they run Android without Google services

Genuine question: how is that different than e.g. /e/ OS? It's not like there are tons of alternative Android SDKs. I essentially see this:

- iOS - Android with Google Services - Android without Google Services - others

Of course you need to support the first two. Apparently you do support the third, which is great. But then I would think that if it works on Amazon Fire without the Google Services, it will work on a de-Googled /e/OS, CalyxOS or GrapheneOS.

asow924• 3 years ago

Real world example: One of the app teams I work with has apps for iOS, Android with Google Services, and Android without Google Service (FireOS). The FireOS app is behind the Google app and here's what one of the Android devs had to say about it:

"There are a few libraries we use that aren't supported on Amazon, but the big ones are that it doesn't have access to the Google Play store or Google Play Services. Amazon has their own app store and subscription system, which isn't too bad conceptually, but it does require restructuring the subscription code to have a more generic store interface, and implementing that for the Amazon store

Google Play Services is more of a pain. They've become much more integral to Android apps generally since we last updated the Amazon app, and we've also become more heavily dependent on things like Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager. The native APIs for those rely on Google Play Services. The suggestion from Amazon seems to be to use the javascript versions, which I think means creating a dummy webview and invoking javascript through it."

So there is a time cost associated with maintaining this bifurcation which may not match up with the potential return.

Granted, this maintenance may be a one-time investment or can be thought of when designing a new app, but many apps have been around for years at this point and have plenty of baked in assumptions about the OS ecosystem that it's running on.

I'm not saying alternate OSs can't be done, but it will be a hard sell for many app product teams unless engineers add support out of love for the project on their own time.

35mm• 3 years ago

As a European - maybe try starting WhatsApp? Even the police use this for public facing communication in Spain.

The EU could put some cash into an open solution.

palata23• 3 years ago

The title is confusing, because it's a quote of yet another article. The linked article explains why they believe this is wrong.

That has the interesting side-effect of revealing who has been commenting here without reading the article, though :-). Which is kind of funny, because the original article that was criticizing /e/ OS did not actually really know what /e/ OS was... it seems like no one is interested in hearing the others, just sharing their uninformed opinion.

jagermo3• 3 years ago

my take: It's apps.

Windows mobile had decent hadware, but not enough relevant apps. Blackberry had a huge market share and a fantasic messenger, but not enough relevant apps. Huawei builds fantastic phones, but has no access to google play and is missing relevant apps.

if you want another vendor in the mobile space, you need to solve the app problem, especially around security. It doesn't help if you can sideload programs if they won't start because of security issues. I tried running a custom rom a few years back, but then my mobile banking app wouldn't run, neither did netflix or some of the carsharing apps I use.

I would love to see more openness and the ability to use whatever system I want. but I don't think it will work without government mandated access rules akin to net neutrality.

kdjfjxidj• 3 years ago

your take is bad.

bb had android phones with both infinitely better hardware than any google phone to date (it had a qwerty keyboard), and zero bloat, even less than google pixel! i just dumped my bb key2 for lack of updates and got a pixel 7 pro. what a downgrade on every single aspect.

bb key2 and priv models were literally everything hn crowd claims will throw money at. they failed.

so, everything in your take is wrong. real world suggest the correct answer is only: marketing.

consumers are dumb :(

jagermo3• 3 years ago

the bb android phones were horrible sluggish slow devices compared to their older bbos phones or a lot of other android phones. i had a passport and a priv. The passport was the best phone i ever had, the priv was meh. But again, BBOS was missing all the important apps, like sonos, banking or carsharing.

But, to be fair, bb made a lot of wrong decisions, from the playbook to Alicia Keys to their Music Streaming service. The phones were the tail end, especially after blackberry handed them over to TLC for production.

edit: But yes, agree with the consumer statement.

fomine3• 3 years ago

phys qwerty crowd are very small and vocal

AHOHA• 3 years ago

Because Europe is now mostly living on past’s legacy, the harsh truth is that without North America (software) and China/Taiwan (hardware), technology wouldn’t have progressed a thing in the past decade or so.

Why a European mobile operating system can’t challenge Android and iOS

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