My German is somewhat rusty, but from reading the heise.de article I would say that your summary, @aexl, is misleading and incorrect. What the article says about the FP2 is that it will have:
eine bessere Kamera (better camera);
ein höherauflösendes Display (HD display);
ein eingebautes LTE-Modul (LTE module);
ein hochwertiger Chipsatz von Qualcomm (Qualcomm chipset);
und das aktuelle Android 5 (no need to translate that).
Regarding the FP1(U) on the other hand, the article says that there will be no opportunities to update beyond Android 4.2. But we already knew that.
There are quite a few points coming up, and I just want to weigh in briefly:
Fairphone as a company is still very tiny in the electronics industry. Our volume of 60,000 phones makes up something like 0.017% of MediaTek’s sales last year. Source: eetimes.com.
"The company [MediaTek] said it expects to ship more than 450 million chips for smartphones in 2015, an increase of almost a third from the 350 million units that MediaTek forecast for 2014.”
My point being that Fairphone has very little leverage to make the case for upgrading to Android 4.4 or opening up the source code - but we are trying. We are still working to create a solution for ongoing software support. I wish there were more firm news to announce, but it’s a work in progress.
Community beta testing: This was done as a way to validate our own testing, and to engage our community more. I want to make it clear bringing in the community is not a replacement for our own professional development and testing. (Though if a community member wants to apply for a position, we have a job opening still in the software team, and always open to applications by writing jointheteam[at]fairphone.com
I’ve opened a new topic asking about the comments on that Heise article. I want to make clear, Fairphone is not a ‘business as usual’ phone company. We want to talk directly to our customers and community and be transparent about our operations.
My personal opinion: The frustration of not being able to deliver on Fairphone’s ambitions for open software may be the biggest learning point for us all (the company and the community), as it reveals how complex and bureaucratic this aspect of the industry is.
@aexl@anon90052001 I still think that choosing Android was the best choice at the point in time when the FP1 was planned because it is conform with the initial goals of Fairphone, namely rising awareness (also, and more importantly, with people who are not techies because these already know some of the problematic situation the phone industry is in).
By choosing Android, Fairphone had a far further outreach than it could have had with any other OS.
PS: I hope you can follow my thoughts, if I was unclear, please ask.
The point is: We, your customers, do not get the information about your tries. For us it seems like you don’t. You’ve earned a lot of negative feedback on your communication previously. And your policy is still on need to know basis. Fairphone is not different than other companies. A lot of advertisement, a lot of what you think we should know. The fact, that you (sometimes) are communicating directly with customers makes no difference, since you don’t say anything. Do you have a NDA with MediaTek on the communication? Are you forbidden to tell us what their answer is? Im certainly not happy with “we are trying” once every 3 months.
@HackAR, just a friendly tip: by not making every other word bold, you’re ensuring your text is easy on the eyes and less hard to read.
As for the contents of your post, I partially agree. FairPhone could be even more open in their communication towards customers, but I feel it’s not for a lack of want on their end, but due to a lack of experience. It’s probably very hard for them to get a clear picture and understanding of how the community perceives them and this causes them to overestimate their own transparency sometimes. I sincerely believe they are trying, but sometimes fumble because they don’t know better. I do feel they are learning and getting to grips with this thing called “communication” though. It has definitely improved in the past year.
Well… I do not agree. I’ve made your argument half a year ago myself. But the fact is: Nothing has changed. I don’t see what has improved. Please enlighten me.
I just sent this message to Mediatek. I know it will not change much. But doing nothing will surely change nothing at all:
Hi MediaTek,
I’m the proud owner of fairphonefp1, which include a #Mediatek chipset. I want it to last a few years, for I don’t like to throw away good and functional devices.
The maker, Fairphone, won’t be able to fully support it in a year or two, as soon as you, and other intermediaries will cease supporting its internal chipsets. Furthermore, it cannot be upgraded to some newer version of android, or cannot use another OS, such as Ubuntu or sailfish OS, due to the same lack of source code for its chipset.
I urge you to release the full source code needed to operate the chipset, even if you are not legally obliged to do so.
I’m sure such a gesture would make you a better choice for many makers over the world. Besides, this chipset getting old, the release of its source code, after a reasonable delay (say, somewhen between the end of production of your chipset, and the end of support on your part), would probably not give much advantage to your competitors.
Thank you very much for considering this demand.
Regards.