Stop Android

20th post of my Stop Google serie.

What is it?

Android is an operating system mostly for phones and tablets. It's more like a Linux distribution, based on the Linux kernel and other open source softwares and libraries.

Android is supposed to be open source but most of it is developed secretly by Google, releasing only the source code with an open source license when a new version is released. Some optional components of Android are still proprietary software from Google.

Alternatives

There are some real open source operating systems for mobile phones, most of them are still very young.

Firefox OS

Firefox OS is the mobile operating system developed by Mozilla (the guys making the Firefox web browser). So far they are mainly focusing on low budget phones and phones with Firefox OS started being sold last year in different countries.

You can see my quick review of the development phone GeeksPhone's Peak with Firefox OS. On that review I was running an early version of Firefox OS, now I'm using version 1.3 and it's way much better, they are making a lot of progress. I think the only thing that still prevents me from using it as an everyday mobile operating system for my phone is that the contact application does not handle CardDAV protocol.

Ubuntu Touch

Ubuntu Touch is the mobile operating system developed by Canonical (the guys behind the Ubuntu operating system). This is a mobile version of their desktop operating system, Canonical wants to build a full ecosystem mobile/desktop/cloud.

The first stable release of Ubuntu Touch is planned for this year and some phone makers are interested by using it.

Tizen

Tizen is an other Linux based mobile operating system mainly developed by Samsung targeting phones, tablets, TVs, satnavs…

Mass market phones with Tizen should start being sold this year.

Mer

Mer is more a platform for building mobile operating system. For instance Sailfish OS is based on Mer. Mer and Tizen share some common ancestors.

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