It would be so much easier to support a device from one of the vendors publishing fully usable device support code. The time it takes them to switch over to new major releases is also a huge help to downstream variants of the public AOSP. Also, not adopting quarterly releases.
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You have said this but I have not seen this in any devices I have looked at (granted a couple years ago).
Can you point me to specific devices that are going to be less hellish to target than Pixels today for Android 11?
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Due to Treble, you don't need them to support Android 11 to use AOSP 11 with their device support code.
Most of the pain we have with Pixels is due to us not using Treble, because we want to build the vendor image, while from their perspective it's abstracted hardware details.
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The way that Treble works is that you build a system image from AOSP and can run that on any device. Building boot and vendor is separate, and you can update them independently. For Pixels, Google hasn't tried to publish code for building / assembling the vendor image.
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Yeah treble seems great on paper but... Point me at hardware to try it on.
If I can get latest vanilla AOSP on any device without weeks of hacking then suddenly my view of the future if android starts to shift substantially.
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BTW, the way android-prepare-vendor does things for Pixels is obsolete and based on the hassle we had with the Nexus 9, 5X and 6P. It's not how it would be approached now. You would start by just using their vendor image and would then transition to building it + listing files.
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Great. I'll try it.
What device are you most confident can support treble and secure boot properly with a oem provided set of blobs that actually works?
Any latest gen Xperia?
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I don't know which devices would allow you to chain verified boot to a custom OS. I think many of them would be well supported for using AOSP via Treble including having working VoLTE, etc. without extra effort. Glance over developer.sony.com/develop/open-d.
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Google doesn't really do this for Pixels. They don't treat support for building AOSP for Pixels as something that they are externally releasing. Pixels being used as the internal reference devices for development is misleading.
You're wrong to present it as an issue with AOSP.
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Also, if you start from relying on Treble and initially just use the official vendor image, it gives a different perspective. Building vendor wouldn't normally be part of the initial work. They can be developed (and shipped) separately.
It will be a couple months before I could pick this up but if between now and then you encounter a specific device you have reasonably high confidence will be a good AOSP11/treble/secure-boot target let me know and I'll buy, compile, and report back.
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I would very much prefer to have stable
secure booted and easy to maintain AOSP device again for the short term regardless of my long term feature phone aspirations.