The Surprisingly High Cost of Building a Mobile OS
It's wild to think about what goes into making the software that powers our phones. After watching a recent video, I'm struck by how expensive and complex it is to develop an operating system (OS) from scratch. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars!
The video breaks down the whole process, from the initial planning stages all the way to the final deployment. What I found particularly interesting is that building a custom OS can actually cost more than the hardware itself. If you think about the price of the components of a modern phone, it is incredible that creating the software can be a bigger investment!
It seems that the planning phase alone takes a couple of months, with senior teams carefully outlining every detail, from the core layout to visual elements. Then comes platform development, which can take around six months, involving everything from customizing the baseline OS. After that, quality assurance and testing are needed to verify the software and this last for another six months.
When it comes to money, engineering and design costs are absurd. The price also includes user testing and R&D tooling, not to mention essential things like licenses and testing equipment.
However, it's fascinating to understand why some companies, like Nothing, choose to build a full OS instead of just creating a custom launcher. Basically, a launcher only tweaks the surface, like icons and widgets, but it doesn't change how the system actually works. An OS, on the other hand, controls everything. Because of this difference, most companies prefer to adapt the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) instead of creating from zero. Starting from scratch, like Huawei did with HarmonyOS, can take years and cost a fortune.
As I see it, while hardware gets all the attention, software is the real budget killer. It is a huge reminder that real innovation comes at a very steep price.
Source: AndroidAuthority