Hardware-software compatibility on handhelds
It would be good if one could go to a store, buy any smartphone or a tablet, and later choose what OS to run on it. Like what happens with desktop and laptop computers, you buy any one of any brand (even Apple!) and you can almost certainly run a OS other than the default on it – some things are taken for granted on a PC, which allows for this kind of freedom of choice.
Sure, you can install custom ROMs on smartphones… now go ahead and buy any one that isn’t popular and see what happens. If there is not a big enough user base most likely there isn’t anyone to develop custom ROMs. And unlike what happens with PCs, there doesn’t seem to be some list of assured features and standards. On personal computers, even on the ones built from OEM parts and no recognizable brand, it’s as simple as setting a boot device that is an OS installation disk. Sure, you need drivers to get the full potential of the hardware. Still, some things Just Work(tm), like PS/2 keyboard and mouse, serial ports, VGA video out (and I don’t mean graphics acceleration) and disk I/O.
Isn’t it about time some sort of standardization starts happening for mobile devices too, both at the hardware (charging connector/method) and software (system booting, basic elements)? The idea would be that simple things like storage I/O, screen (without GPU), touchscreen input (even in single-touch mode) and hardware keys Just Work(tm) because they are really easy to drive by the OS?
Look at something like KolibriOS. It is pretty limited on what it can do on a PC, because of a limited amount of drivers are included, and anyway everything is very simple. But as things are now, there’s no way one could write a KolibriOS that would run on all the phones and tablets the same way Kolibri runs on almost every PC, even with limited functionality.
It’s certainly a distant dream, seeing that even charging connectors are something we are yet to get quite right… all to make big brands happier at the cost of unhappier customers – even if they never noticed they were less happy because of that. </rant>