The Fairphone 2 Will Hit End-of-Life After 7 Years of Updates (arstechnica.com) 20
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It can be done. Android manufacturers can actually support a phone for a sizable amount of time. Fairphone has announced the end of life for the Fairphone 2, which will be March 2023. That phone was released in October 2015, so that's almost seven-and-a-half years of updates. Fairphone is a very small Dutch company with nowhere near as many resources as Google, Samsung, BBK, and the other Big-Tech juggernauts, yet it managed to outlast them with its support program. The whole goal of the company is sustainability, with easily repairable phones, available spare parts, and long update promises. The Fairphone 4 has a five-year hardware warranty and six years of updates, and the company's reputation says it can provide that. Sadly, the phones only ship in the UK and Europe. The Fairphone 2 only promised "three to five years" of updates, and it blew that out of the water.
The Fairphone 2 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, a chip that Qualcomm ended support for with Android 6.0. In what is probably an Android ecosystem first, that lack of chipset support didn't stop Fairphone, which teamed up with LineageOS and today ships Android 10 on the 7-year-old device. That's not the newest OS in the world, but it passes all of Google's Android compatibility tests. I'm sure there are newer amateur releases in the Android ROM community, but Fairphone's Android 10 build is up to the standard of an official release, as opposed to the "tell me what doesn't work" standard of many amateur ROM releases. Fairphone doesn't say why support is ending in March, but if it's staying on Android 10, it was going to have to kill support sometime this year. Google only supports security patches for the last four versions of Android, so even Google will be shutting down Android 10 support soon.
The Fairphone 2 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, a chip that Qualcomm ended support for with Android 6.0. In what is probably an Android ecosystem first, that lack of chipset support didn't stop Fairphone, which teamed up with LineageOS and today ships Android 10 on the 7-year-old device. That's not the newest OS in the world, but it passes all of Google's Android compatibility tests. I'm sure there are newer amateur releases in the Android ROM community, but Fairphone's Android 10 build is up to the standard of an official release, as opposed to the "tell me what doesn't work" standard of many amateur ROM releases. Fairphone doesn't say why support is ending in March, but if it's staying on Android 10, it was going to have to kill support sometime this year. Google only supports security patches for the last four versions of Android, so even Google will be shutting down Android 10 support soon.
seven years is good, but few parts were available (Score:3, Informative)
I looked into the Fairphone a while ago. It is marketed as a modular phone with easily repairable and upgradable modules.
This sounds great except they weren't committing to actually stock the modules for more than 3 years, and some (like the camera) were unavailable for a long time. These were replacement parts, there wasn't much by way of upgrades. There's also no aftermarket in parts because it's not popular enough for that.
And releasing the Fairphone 3 with modules that aren't backwards compatible with the 2 seems to go against the "upgradability" thing. To upgrade you need a new phone.
Re: (Score:2)
well, parts missing is not just their fault, they didn't had money to invest in big part stock (and is always a risky business) and part makers long stop producing those, their last big client for those was probably 6 years ago and after the stop finish, no one want to restart building a old component. fairphone isn't large enough to force restart production of those parts. The only way now is probably buy the components that may still exist and build the part.
This is probably also one reason why they are s
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that the whole point though of this thing? If you're ok with "components may or may not exist" then you can just go on aliexpress and look for parts for any old phones and have more luck because Samsung/Apple sold billions of them.
Re: (Score:2)
you got 7 year of support from fairphone 2 ... that is much longer than what you get from all big brands and WAY more than what you get from unknown brands.
Notice that there were parts to be sold, still much better than almost all other brands, that almost have no parts (most of the time just all complete boards, that cost almost as much as a brand new phone) but fairphone still don't have dimension to push parts production for this long. With the right to repair gaining traction, this can be more common a
Re:seven years is good, but few parts were availab (Score:4, Funny)
I used my $30 dumbphone (which had talk, text, calendar, alarm, etc.) for more than twice this Fairphone's life, and only ditched it when the cell companies took down all the 2g towers, thus ruining its use as a phone. I am expecting that my new dumbphone will last until 4g is rendered extinct.
If I can get that kind of longevity for under 50 bucks, I should be able to get something equivalent for over 500. Sheesh.
Re: (Score:2)
The software was quite poor too. For example the Fairphone 3 had a IMX363 camera sensor and I think the 2 was the same. That's the same sensor used in many Google Pixel phones, and which just won MKBHD's scientifically controlled camera test. Yet, the photos taken by the Fairphone 3 are only a little above potato quality.
Smartphones are a lot more than just the hardware, and for things like the camera you need a team of people working on it to get decent results. Other manufacturers with high end models can
Of course (Score:2)
Of course it can be done, Apple has been doing it for years.
iPhone5 (Score:2)
My iPhone 5S, which I retired a couple of years ago, stopped getting major releases at the end of 2021, and still gets occasional security updates. That's over 8 years of OS support.
Re: (Score:2)
How much are you using your modem chip in that 5S? Part of the upgrade cycle is to avoid filament burn outs.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it can be done, Apple has been doing it for years.
And it's not a question of "resources" as noted in TFS/A:
Fairphone is a very small Dutch company with nowhere near as many resources as Google, Samsung, BBK, and the other Big-Tech juggernauts, yet it managed to outlast them with its support program.
It's a matter of will/desire and, probably, the bottom-line. Manufactures would rather sell (force you to buy) new phones than maintain older ones for free-- duh, they're manufacturers. In addition, maintaining older hardware means older batteries, which, unfortunately, aren't easily replaced on many (most?) phones.
Re: Of course (Score:1)
Yep, that and parts availability was a big mess for Fairphone. Basically they promised that you wouldnâ(TM)t have to buy new parts, only upgrade the parts you need, but that didnâ(TM)t materialize, you canâ(TM)t transfer your FP2 modules to FP5 or even FP3, instead you get to mail them in and get like 4 euros back which they then resell as spares for 40. People complaining about weeks of delays on spare parts.
Youâ(TM)d think they would solve it in 5 generations, if their mission wasn
Meh, not open enough. (Score:2)
They don't share their EDL keys. Without that, you can still lock yourself out via an AFU flash.
They are also really hard to get in 'Murica.
It's a great attempt, but they fail to stick the landing.
My iPhone5s got 8 years of updates (Score:2)
So it can be done.
Not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Not enough (Score:3)
Like when buying a PC to run Linux, why not buy a phone that is well supported by LineageOS or /e/OS?
Those, like the Fairphone, support devices waaay beyond manufacturer's updates. As an added bonus, such OS is devoid of any of the tracking and analytics OEMs insist on. On top, either optionally or even by default, these AOSP-based OS's make it really easy to block tracking for PlayStore apps and when surfing the web. /e/OS still supports, for example, Samsung Tab2 or S3,4,5,7,9 up to S10, for now: https:// [doc.e.foundation]
Re: (Score:2)
Because they want devices that work good.
Camera, for example, is more than just writing the data the sensor gives you to disk - there's a lot of image processing and tuning and calibration that is done so the image captured accurately represents what you were trying to take a picture of.
It goes towards everything - from the lens driver to get accurate focusing to calibrating the bayer coefficients so you get perfect colors and white balance and
A real user hereu (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to have the FP 2 and I loaded it with Ubuntu Touch by ubports. I failed setting up any of the other options. About a year ago I ordered a pre-installed FP3+ from Murena. They have them loaded with their /e/os which is actually pretty wonderful. They redid android code to get rid of untrusted google libraries, so they wrote their own version. Most apps are open source. Only the maps program is closed source because no other solution. Advanced privacy features. One button and the IP address is hidden, so the whole phone is on TOR. Fake location. And you can use both aurora and f-droid store. They have their own cloud so you don't need google anymore.
"shutting down Android 10 support soon" (Score:2)
Say what now? Check out Project Treble, or just start up an Android device that's on Lollipop and watch how it can still use Google's Play Store. Last time I started up my Moto G, a couple of months ago, it was able to update all its apps. And it's on stock Android. I use a free version of a popular antivirus app on it, though I keep it just as a backup to my backup, and in case power goes out.
Though I had a sad when my HTC Flyer on Honeycomb could no longer use the store. There are custom ROMs, but afaik t
Ouch (Score:2)
sizable amount of time
Only 7 years? No wonder the planet is burning. Heaven forbid we alter the buy/junk/buy cycle.