Thread: Halium Project
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Community Council | Posts: 4,920 | Thanked: 12,867 times | Joined on May 2012 @ Southerrn Finland
#10
Originally Posted by wicket View Post
Replicant is distributed without any proprietary code. Functionally is indeed incomplete but you have an operating system that is entirely free which still has many uses.
Well yes, but the point of these mobile devices is pretty often in these features enabled by the binary blobs.

Yes, I can probably use it for many things, just as I can use just about any device that I can load a linux kernel and basic userland on; provided it has a serial port that I can connect to.

However many people are not satisfied with a device that might be missing these features;
  • graphical display
  • touchscreen input (well if it has a physical keyboard then no problem)
  • sound output
  • microphone input
  • WLAN connectivity
  • Bluetooth connectivity
  • 2G/3G/4G/5G connectivity
  • USB connectivity
  • any sensors (compass, acceleration, orientation, ...)
  • NFC
  • haptic feedback
  • ...

Almost all of these require some kind of binary driver or loadable firmaware blob that you need to rip off from Android to enable and make use of.
 

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