grate

main processor IC rather than separate chips) like nVidia, Qualcomm, Arm Inc (mali), and Broadcom (to a lesser degree lately) refuse to release the documentation necessary for open source hackers to write drivers, tons of unnecessary effort is wasted in attempts to reverse engineer the binary blob drivers so open source drivers can be written. There are quite a few efforts under way to produce open source drivers for various graphics "chips" on various types of ARM systems. Here are a few links I've collected: http://freedreno.github.io/ http://bloggingthemonkey.blogspot.com/ http://limadriver.org/ https://gitorious.org/lima https://github.com/grate-driver/grate/wiki https://github.com/laanwj/etna_viv/wiki http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-birthday-present-from-broadcom/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7320828 I haven't seen anyone succeed in making a fully open source blob-free phone yet, but people are working towards that goal. Unfortunately, even if open source devs eventually solve all of the blob driver (and chip documentation!) problems, there will still be an unknown, untested, and unaudited chunk of code running on phones that cannot be legally altered; it's the baseband processor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor Since the baseband processor controls the radio(s), it's actually against the law (FCC in the US) to modify the broadcast/receive power levels or frequencies. As such, each baseband processor has to be tested and certified by the FCC, and any change means it has to be tested and recertified again.