[Community] Android 5 Lollipop and Nexus

[Paul Kocialkowski]

> What are your first impressions?

Well, so far, I haven't seen any source code for Lollipop, nor for the
new Nexus devices, so it's hard to know how good they are.

> Is it reasonable to make a Replicant version based on it?

The Replicant development cycle is very slow. We still stick to version
4.2 while upstream is 4.4 now and will be 5.0 in a few days/weeks. That
is because Replicant is based off CyanogenMod (a hard requirement for
supporting more than Nexus devices) and we don't want to take part in
the user-end features development, so we want something stable (hence,
the CyanogenMod stable releases). Those take time to arrive (not sure
there is any stable release of CM 11 yet) and usually comes close to the
release of the next upstream version by Google. After that, it takes me
a good six months to get it all working properly (think of graphics-only
rendering, removing the non-free parts, branding, getting the SDK to
build, porting our free replacements for each of the 11 devices, etc)

> What do you like/dislike with the new Nexus devices?

The Nexus 9 comes with a Tegra K1 that is supported by upstream nouveau,
so it may be *very* interesting. I know that there is U-Boot support for
that chip as well, so we have yet to find out whether it is signed or
not (there are apparently versions where it is not, unless U-Boot is
actually chainloaded by a proprietary piece).

The rest looks just as usual, crappy Qualcomm devices that have poor
privacy and free software support, signed bootloaders, etc.

> What else can we learn from them - and do better?

Well at this point, the difference between the GTA04 and such devices
(assuming that Replicant will be feature-complete soon) is:
* power management
* form factor (i.e. people want a certain case design, with a slim edge,
have the screen integrated in the front plastic, a bigger capacitive
screen, etc).

The latter mostly comes down to marketing bullsh*t while the first is an
important issue we still have to fix, as far as I can see.

-- 
Paul Kocialkowski, Replicant developer

Replicant is a fully free Android distribution

Website: http://www.replicant.us/
Redmine: http://redmine.replicant.us/
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