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Why don't cell phones have BIOS? (lemmy.eco.br)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Why, instead of safely entering a BIOS setup, does the cell phone brick when installing the Custom ROM wrongly? Wouldn't this protection be better for users? I mean, this could be done through ADB.

Also, do you think it's possible that this way of doing things will come to the computer, with ARM hoping to gain a good share of the market and all?

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There is a BIOS - a Basic Input Output System, usually made by the SoC manufacturer that acts as a bootloader shim to get the Android bootloader going (fastboot/recovery menu level here) which then loads the Android kernel. It's the same as UEFI or the legacy BIOS, but it does not come with a configuration utility which is the menu that most people think of when they think of "BIOS" I.e. "going into the bios".

A BIOS does not inherently have to have a configuration utility.

Unlike an UEFI implementation on modern AMD64 systems, the typical ARM bootrom is a masked rom written to flash-once memory.

This bootrom performs the same vital functions as a bios though, i.e. sending key instructions and data (including setup of requirements) to the processor for it to start executing the bootloader program off of memory, in this case the android bootloader.

Contrary to popular belief and the top comment ITT at the time of initially writing this, android does not use the Linux kernel, it's based on an LTS Linux kernel, but highly modified with patches to form the ACKs. https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel

Without the config utility the ARM SoC BIOS is largely hidden from the user, but the veil is lifted when it fails in spectacular ways: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_EDL_mode

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

A BIOS does not inherently have to have a configuration utility.

This right here.

My first PC (a 386 circa 1989) did not have a built-in config utility. It had a bootable floppy disk that could configure the BIOS settings. I think all it could change was the system time and the CHS values of the hard drive(s).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Kinda funny how we’ve somewhat returned to that. Modern EFIs typically let you change settings from within your OS. I remember having a motherboard in like 2011 or 2012 with a great GUI that let me tweak everything. I’d set an overclock in the OS and just reboot for it to take effect.

Not sure why more boards don’t offer this anymore other than maybe security. But like with cryptic ass programs I can still change bios settings.