Microsoft To Invest In Rogue Android Startup Cyanogen

An anonymous reader writes The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft plans to be a minority investor in a roughly $70 million round of equity financing for mobile startup Cyanogen Inc. Neither company is commenting on the plan but last week during a talk in San Francisco, Cyanogen's CEO said the company's goal was to "take Android away from Google." According to Bloomberg: "The talks illustrate how Microsoft is trying to get its applications and services on rival operating systems, which has been a tenet of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."

Comments

A good thing.

[BarbaraHudson]

Waiting for your carrier for an upgrade? One that might never come? Competition is a good thing in this case.

Re:A good thing.

[gl4ss]

you know what's fucking bizarre? the part of nokia that microsoft bought had several android based models on the market(not in usa/euro are athough, in the markets they're available they're outselling windows phones..). but microsoft killed further developments of that line of devices.

so what the fuck are they meddling with cyanogen? I wouldn't mind having cyanogen for my nokia X though.

why google keeps microsoft away

[Anonymous Coward]

microsoft - we don't want your programs on Android because they suck

Re:why google keeps microsoft away

[Miamicanes]

More specifically, because lots of Android's fundamental architecture was dictated by a perceived need to work on slow CPUs (as in, 400MHz ARMv6) with absurdly low-res displays (remember 240x360?). Literally NOBODY involved with Android's genesis would have believed you if you told them that 5 years after the HTC G-phone's arrival on T-mobile, a phone with 1280x800 display, 1Ghz dualcore CPU, a gig of RAM, and at least 4-8 gigs of flash would be considered uselessly ghetto and hopelessly obsolete.

Remember, the whole reason why Google made the Nexus One was its frustration with the wimpy hardware of the second-gen Android phones, and hints that the third-generation phones were only going to be another half-step better. On the day of its release, the Nexus One was literally leaps and bounds beyond any competing phone, and its popularity forced HTC and Samsung to throw away their roadmaps and race back to the drawing board to come up with the Evo4G and Galaxy S family.

Current things that make Android feel laggy:

* 30hz touchscreen drivers and screen update rates are still the norm. 1/30th of a second is long enough to be perceptible as "lag", and when you factor triple-buffering into the equation, the lag is more like 1/15 second.

* The resolution and color depths of high-end Android phones have completely outstripped the dumb-framebuffer 3Dfx-heritage architecture behind most current hardware. Most video chipsets were optimized for 16-bit color at 1280x800 (more or less), but some high-end Android phones now ship with 2560x1600 displays running at 24-bit color and can barely sustain 30fps, let alone 60fps or faster. Basically, they're optimized for (and accelerate) the wrong thing. They might have great 3D graphics for games, but those capabilities are unusable and useless at higher-res/color. That's why some Android homescreen-replacement apps use 3D acceleration, but become fuzzy during transitions... they drop the resolution and color depth down to what the chips can handle, and don't go back to full-resolution until the transition completes. You can see it for yourself... do the "rotating cube" effect (or whatever you want to use), and notice that the moment the gesture begins, the resolution gets fuzzed in half, then snaps back into focus when you stop.

* Android's primitive (compared to Java since 1.4) garbage collection, which practically forces the OS to constantly kill off apps running in the background to reclaim their RAM, coupled by the real-world problems of trying to use a phone's flash to do Linux-style virtual memory (if you aren't careful, you can literally burn through an eMMC's lifetime write count in a few months. MicroSD is even worse... more than a few guys at XDA have destroyed expensive Sandisk microSD cards with a few days of hard benchmarking and intensive swapping. That's why most Android ROMs no longer make it easy to enable swap, even though it can be a HUGE performance boost. Too many users were destroying flash cards too quickly. Cyanogen with a large swapfile that's tweaked to abstain from killing off idle tasks will nuke a brand new class-10 microSD card in about 3-8 months of normal daily use... and if you did a swapfile with the phone's INTERNAL flash, your phone would essentially get bricked once the counter tripped and the eMMC write-protected itself (because Android can't deal with booting into an environment where it literally can't write ANYTHING to disk).

Re:why google keeps microsoft away

[swillden]

the real-world problems of trying to use a phone's flash to do Linux-style virtual memory

No Android device I'm aware of uses flash for swap. There are a small handful that swap to compressed RAM, the fast majority have no swap at all; when physical memory is exhausted something has to die.

(I work for Google, on the Android OS.)

Re:why google keeps microsoft away

[Miamicanes]

No Android device running a stock carrier ROM ever used flash for swap (that I'm aware of), but ~2-3 years ago, just about everyone running Cyanogenmod (or some other AOSP-derived ROM) had swapfiles. And yes, we really DID destroy $80+ microSD cards. It caught almost everyone by surprise, because we all blindly believed the manufacturers' assertions that the flash would last "a lifetime of normal use", failing to note that manufacturers didn't consider paging virtual memory almost nonstop to be "normal use". It was literally a use case the manufacturers never designed for, that didn't even become *viable* until overclocked class 6 and class 10 microSD became fast enough to make swapping to it faster than killing & re-spawning activities.

"Rogue"?

[Nemyst]

What in the hell? Is Cyanogen "rogue" because they're using the Android Open-Source Project as it was designed? Because that also makes Samsung, Motorola, HTC and every other manufacturer who reskins/alters Android "rogue".

Re:"Rogue"?

[nine-times]

I think the idea is that Google, Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have all made themselves into a sort of cartel that don't allow the "open source project" to actually be a source of freedom for consumers. Cyanogen is "rogue" because it bucks that system and restores freedom to the project.

Re:"Rogue"?

[swillden]

I think the idea is that Google, Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have all made themselves into a sort of cartel that don't allow the "open source project" to actually be a source of freedom for consumers. Cyanogen is "rogue" because it bucks that system and restores freedom to the project.

Not really. That may be the perception, but it's not true. Google is quite happy to see CM and similar third party ROMs flourish; this is part of why all Nexus devices are unlockable.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, and I work on Android, but I'm not a Google spokesperson and this is my opinion, not an official statement.)

Re:"Rogue"?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Google is quite happy to see CM and similar third party ROMs flourish

Flourish or tolerate? Honest question. I've seen entire ROMs stymied by small things Google could/should have done as just a decent vendor, regardless of the ROM in question. For instance, a couple years ago the Droid3 port fizzed because the then-Google-owned Motorola wouldn't talk to anybody about releasing specs to turn on the camera.

Re:"Rogue"?

[nine-times]

My perception is that Google is fairly open, more so than the others, not locking down the Nexus devices. But on the other hand, their Android partners are really locking things down, and the most generous view of Google is that they're simply powerless to stop it. Often enough, it seems like there are people within Google who favor openness, but the company as a whole is happy to let users' freedoms be restricted so long as it pushes them farther into the Google ecosystem.

That's my perception, not that Microsoft or Apple, or even Blackberry are any better. Google is the most freedom-loving of the bunch, but still not exactly the rebel freedom-fighting bunch that their fans would sometimes like to paint them as.

That's my perception, anyway, as an outsider who follows things relatively well.

pot and kettle

[Monkey-Man2000]

Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."

Haha, cry us a river Microsoft. I'm all for an open platform but this investment is just step 1 of their embrace, extend, extinguish operating procedure. What's that quote about how smaller companies should NEVER work with MS?

Re:pot and kettle

[swillden]

Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."

MS has a bunch of apps in the Play store. https://play.google.com/store/...

AFAIK, the only MS app Google has blocked was Microsoft's YouTube app, which violated the YouTube terms of service.

Competition is good

[jgotts]

I'd like to see Cyanogen succeed because the more competition there is in the smartphone market, the more companies will be pressured to develop new, useful features.

I bought my first smartphone two years ago last month. It's a Samsung Galaxy S III. It still works great, despite some quirks. I felt like with the Galaxy S III, the smartphone was beginning to take a quantum leap forward in features. Especially for the last year, though, it seems like there isn't much to crow about except for some fingerprint functionality nobody uses. Phones are getting a bit more memory, somewhat faster CPUs, a bit better screens, and improved cameras but you would expect all of these things. In terms of new and interesting features, it seems like we're in a mature market where we've all decided upon what it means for a device to be a smartphone.

Perhaps Cyanogen will bring some excitement back. At worst, they'll come up with some new ideas that Samsung can license or copy. I'm using Samsung as an example, but I could be talking about HTC or one of the Chinese startups. I don't see a whole lot to distinguish current smartphones (except that Samsung does not permanently glue batteries inside of its products).

Re:Competition is good

[fustakrakich]

Success via Microsoft will not produce 'competition'. They're not getting 'free money'. It always comes with lots of strings.

Re:Competition is good

[hughbar]

As a bit of an eco-nazi, I don't see any of this as 'good', more 'features' every year, none of them particularly useful [do you really want to watch crappy music videos on a tiny screen, judging by my commute people do though] and more phones made/destroyed/in landfill.

Actually cell phones are a nuisance anyway, people can't walk and text or phone and text, so they bump into you. On bicycles, they risk life and limb [theirs and unhappily others] in London by using headphones [though admittedly a walkman or ipod is just as 'good' for this].

Despite what you see above, I love tech, having been in/around it for 40 years, but I really, really believe we need to step back from our current destructive and rather purposeless [except for making cash, of course] product cycles. Fat chance.

Plan B

[Citizen of Earth]

Is Microsoft preparing a Plan B for when they finally give up on Windows Mobile?

Re:Plan B

[nine-times]

I think this is right. They're making more investments in getting their apps on iOS and Android. I think this investment is an indication that they're interested in having their own Android distribution (or one that they can at least partner with) which will allow them control while maintaining application compatibility.

And if so, I'd say that's a smart move. It's probably not a full plan yet, but more of a hedge while they try to push mobile application development by decreasing the barriers between development for Windows desktop, Windows Tablet, and Windows Phone. One way or another, they need a mobile platform with apps.

Re:Godzilla v. Mothra

[ColdWetDog]

Balmer isn't head of Microsoft anymore....

Microsoft has never played nice

[Required Snark]

Why should things be any different this time?

Not always a good thing.

[freeze128]

Not always. Even cyanogenmod has abandoned many devices that could still be viable phones today. CM seems to focus mainly on the most popular phones for the latest releases, and in some cases, the devs for a particular make/model of device have just gone MIA, and development stagnates.

Re:Not always a good thing.

[erice]

Not always. Even cyanogenmod has abandoned many devices that could still be viable phones today. CM seems to focus mainly on the most popular phones for the latest releases, and in some cases, the devs for a particular make/model of device have just gone MIA, and development stagnates.

Yes, it seems like most phones are abandoned by cyanogenmod at about the same time the manufacturer does. Certainly, this was the case Mytouch 4G/HTC Glacier. The last manufacturer release (less than a year after I bought the phone) was Gingerbread. The last Cyanogenmod: also Gingerbread.

They're good with Google's phones and the most popular Samsung phones but anything else is a gamble even if it is supported at the time you buy the phone.

Re:Not always a good thing.

[complete loony]

Cyanogen mod don't have access to the source code for all of the drivers required to run the hardware. So they have to copy the binaries from the manufacturer.

If the manufacturer doesn't support new versions of android, with newer linux kernels, there's not much they can do.

Re:Not always a good thing.

[drinkypoo]

Yes, it seems like most phones are abandoned by cyanogenmod at about the same time the manufacturer does.

The sticking point is drivers. Most SoCs are abandoned at about the same time and virtually none of the drivers are Open, let alone Free. If some influential manufacturer keeps using a particular SoC past the usual sunset, then odds are good that they will release a newer version of Android, and then the drivers can be taken from their image and used to roll a newer version of CM for other devices based on the same SoC.

AFAIK the only GPU with credible OSS drivers is still Mali 400, which is an antique by modern standards. Still works, though. It works well enough to play Q3, IIRC. Most of the rest of the hardware is less well supported than that...

Re:Not always a good thing.

[theshowmecanuck]

The issue is, per this post on Cyanogenmod Forums:

CM devs are consumers first. What this means is that they do not divide up devices among other developers, or assign devices like one would at a job. Developers work in their spare time without monetary compensation. Because of this, the developers are free to work on any device they choose to purchase.

Now, what does this mean to you? First off, requesting anywhere in the CM forum, the CM Blog, or the Facebook/Google+/Twitter accounts for device XX to be supported is probably a waste of your time and anybody who reads said request. CyanogenMod does not work on device requests as there is no guaranteeing that a current CM maintainer is even interested in the device. Additionally, its not as simple as 'porting' code, the device trees must be coded from scratch and made to work with the AOSP sourced code and CM enhancements. This takes a large amount of time and effort, especially when the device's OEM fails to release the latest version of Android for it. Second, in hoping a worthy developer sees the post and decides to take up the project... well, that is probably just wishful thinking. Many developers do not like interacting with end users (too much finger pointing between both devs and users or anger directed at the devs for something working other than how the user expects - it happens far too often); because of that, many developers don't frequent the forum (or if they do, they only view the forums for the devices they maintain). The best way to get a device official support is not requesting it from the CM team, but learning how to do it yourself or encouraging a maintainer of an unofficial build to submit their code for review.

So, Cyanogenmod devs will support what strikes their fancy. And if they are no longer interested in a device, it won't be supported any longer. Now if they get financing, maybe this will change as most consumers want some stability and continued support. It is one of the things that could differentiate itself from the phone makers... if they care to. If not, in this regard they won't be any different. And it would be a shame since it is nice to get rid of bloatware.

The vast majority of people will not port their own devices. They either don't have the time or the technical know-how or nether. I will use the stock OS if it isn't available as a stable CM. In fact I do with my P600 Samsung Note. But even if they did, after reading that sticky from the forum, I am less willing to adopt CM and choose to just root the device instead.

Re:Not always a good thing.

[greenfruitsalad]

this is why i'm waiting for a phone with Intel CPU+GPU. for now, intel's phone cpus come with powervr gpu which is probably the most linux unfriendly gpu there is. anybody remember intel gma 500? i'm not stepping in that sh*t again.

Re:Not always a good thing.

[Andy Dodd]

The problem is that unlike on the desktop, the display subsystem on many devices is more than just the GPU. Also, the subcomponents of the display subsystem interact with other subcomponents in such a way that if an OEM makes changes, those changes ripple throughout the whole subsystem.

The end result is that if one component of the display subsystem (and this includes the camera, since it has hooks into the display subsystem to handle preview and such) is closed-source and deviates from the reference implementation for that platform, it's a nightmare of reverse engineering to get the other components open-sourced.

That's why, for example, most of the original CyanogenMod maintainers for Samsung Exynos4 devices ditched the platform. Samsung had reference source at Insignal, but it was vastly outdated (Their "ICS" source had significant architectural components that dated back to Gingerbread) and didn't even remotely match what ANY OEM used (Samsung's own handsets did NOT use the "gingerbready" components referenced previously). Getting that source usable with any real device was a nightmare. The kernel wasn't the issue, it was all of the HAL stuff - hwcomposer/gralloc/etc - especially hwcomposer.

Cyngn (the abbreviation I use to refer to Cyanogen Inc) does have access to all the proprietary goodies that should allow them to support a device very well, but so far, their track record has been to do no better than the OEMs they claim to be trying to provide an alternative.
Oppo N1 - didn't receive KitKat OTA until November 2014, 1 year after KK was released. Epic fail. Yeah, there were CM11 nightlies, but Cyngn staff will aggressively remind you that community builds (including CM nightlies) are NOT supported
OnePlus One - Their current state is "average" - many OEMs upated to Lollipop within a month of Google releasing it, Cyngn is at 3 months and counting.

Re:Not always a good thing.

[Rob Y.]

True. But how vital is the specific kernel version to the upgrade from, say, Kit-Kat to Jellybean? Google goes with a new kernel for support for new devices - and to otherwise keep up-to-date. But couldn't the AOSP source code to Kit-Kat or Lollipop be built against the kernel used in Jellybean to get a CM ROM that has all the features of the latest Android - but works on otherwise abandoned hardware, using the binary drivers that were produced for that hardware.

There might even be a cash business for such a service. OEM's abandoned your otherwise viable device? Pay us 10 bucks and we'll upgrade you. Beats having to buy a new phone.

Re:This is quite amusing....

[swillden]

Additionally, I personally would argue that from a OMG UNIX has conquered the world perspective that Android == Linux as little as Mac OS X == NetBSD since all the parts that people care about are derivative or proprietary.

That isn't true of Android. Sure, if you're writing in Java the *nix-ness is all abstracted away behind the JVM, but if you choose to write native code, you find yourself right back in Linux-land. There are some oddities, of course, like the assignment of UIDs to apps, rather than users. And starting with Lollipop, SELinux is used to block app native code access to many parts of the system (e.g. you can't go looking around in /proc to find out what else is running). But it's definitely still Linux.

It's not true of OS X, either. Again, there are lots of new APIs layered on top, but it's still very clearly Unix. Maybe you meant iOS, not OS X. In that case, I don't know if you're right or not because I've never worked in iOS.

Re:Well Shoot...

[Andy Dodd]

AOSP?
Omni? (I'm biased here - the history is that it was founded by a number of Cyanogenmod maintainers that left as a result of the Focal fiasco. However I'll be honest, a lot of the developers have burned out and as a result we're really behind on a lot of things...)
Some of the Omni guys along with people from EOS and Slim are talking about forming a project that is strictly limited in focus to hardware support. Some of the ex-Gummy guys already formed such a project (AOD) but a number of people (including myself) are holding back because they kind of rushed things - starting to code without planning the project, while the challenge of such a project is planning and organization/politics. Screw up the planning and organization/politics and best case is that you wind up "just another ROM".

AOKP is dead due to Cyngn hiring Roman
Same for ChameleonOS