Android 12 has come to the FP4

Help Fairphone 4
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Hi everyone,

It’s been a few weeks since our last update regarding Android 12 for the Fairphone 4, and we’re excited to share more information with you.

When you can expect Android 12

We are preparing for a staggered rollout, starting with most regions on Wednesday, February 1st.

The eagle-eyed among you noticed I wrote “most regions”. The current performance in some regions (Switzerland and France) does not meet our quality standards, so the Android 12 upgrade will be delayed for some Operators there. We hope to release it to everyone in the near future.

Plans for Android 11 security updates

In order to keep Andrdoid 11 users up-to-date with security, we have prepared a maintenance release with a new security patch. Users won’t be left behind or without security. This will be pushed out shortly.

Thank you and have a wonderful week!

[Edit 01.02.23]

It’s here! Some screenshots were already posted in the comments, but for completeness, here’s the list of features from the push notification:

Conversation Widgets

An all-new conversation widget puts the conversations with the people you care about front-and-center on your home screen so you never miss a chat from your loved ones. You can even see missed calls, birthdays and more at a glance.

Mic & Camera Indicators and Toggles

With Android 12, you can see when an app is using your microphone or camera thanks to a new indicator in your phone’s status bar. And if you don’t want any apps to access your microphone or camera, you can completely disable those sensors using two new toggles in quick settings. Simply flip the switch.

Approximate Location Permissions

While some apps need precise location information for tasks like turn-by-turn navigation, many other apps only need your approximate location to be helpful. With Android 12, you can choose between giving apps access to your precise location or an approximate location instead.

Privacy Dashboard

The Privacy dashboard gives you a clear and comprehensive view of when apps have accessed your location, camera, or mic over the past 24 hours. If you see anything that you’re not comfortable with, you can manage permissions right from the dashboard.

…and much more.

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Thank you! Excellent and much expected news.

Could you please define “Starting” and “Delayed”? Are we talking hours/days/months here? Not that it will change anything of course, just to put our minds at ease. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Excellent! Thanks for the update. And also great to hear some Android 11 users won’t be left behind while Android 12 is improved for those regions.

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Hi @Yasen_Tomov

What are the operators impacted in France, please?

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Those obtaining the upgrade from wednesday in :switzerland: Switzerland and :fr: France might help others in these countries if you mentioned it here complete with your operator name. :slight_smile:

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Great news! Thanks for the update :slight_smile:

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Great news! Finally I will be able to hide my exact location for my apps :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Hopefully Android 13 will be easier to upgrade to for you guys.

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Nice to hear that, the only problem is that I live in Switzerland…

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I’ll try to answer as many comments as I can in one go.

Could you please define “Starting” and “Delayed”? Are we talking hours/days/months here?

The upgrade will be made available to almost everybody on the 1st of February. Still, sometimes it may take a couple of days for the notification to show up on your device. If you read that some users already got the upgrade, but you still haven’t, give it a few days.

Regarding the delay for some operators, I can’t say how long it will be. All I can say is that it won’t be counted in hours/days, but in weeks/months. I’ll post an update when I know more.

What are the operators impacted in France, please?

I’ll check with my colleagues if I can share the names of the operators.

Hopefully Android 13 will be easier to upgrade to for you guys.

That’s what we expect, as it’s more of an incremental upgrade from Android 12, compared to 11 → 12. We’ll share more about that timeline when A12 is officially out.

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One more q: does this also affect people from other countries roaming in France or Switzerland?

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Hello @Yasen_Tomov
Thank you for this info. But this sounds odd: “The current performance in some regions (Switzerland and France) does not meet our quality standards, so the Android 12 upgrade will be delayed for some Operators there.”
The mobile network quality in Switzerland (incl. 5G) is pretty good. So, I wonder what’s the issue here. Would you mind providing us more information about this? Which operators are affected from the delayed rollout? And why?

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As above the authority/decision on which operators is being considered, as for why . . .

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Thank you! That was very helpful. At least for me, for I guess I’ll be one of those who will have to wait till summer (living in France)… :sob:
Still, I wonder what kind of “issue” (besides bureaucratic…) can affect some operators but not others… :thinking:

Technical question: What will happen to FP phones upgraded to A12, and roaming to those regions/operators who do not handle A12 yet?
(No, just curious, I haven’t suddenly decided to visit my family in Germany… :smiling_imp:)

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That’s what we expect, as it’s more of an incremental upgrade from Android 12, compared to 11 → 12. We’ll share more about that timeline when A12 is officially out.

That is wonderful to hear.

I am curious: Does Fairphone provide ADB-Sideload upgrade binaries? I was fond of those while i was on the Pixel2 and Pixel4a.

Thank you for your work!

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Not officially, but once the rollout started, someone can just extract the URL from the logs.

I’ve tried to do that for all the OTA updates in the past and I intend to keep it up as long as I have a phone with stock FPOS around.

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like quoting movies

Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to deliver a single Android OS upgrade is insignificant next to the power of speedy and constant delivery of the most current Android in general.

sigh we have finally? maybe tomorrow, not for everybody though, arrived on the Android 12 software layer level of October of 2021 that is. Maybe even with a few monthly security updates of A12 on top of that, who knows what monthly level we will getting handed. I wouldnt have imagined this being so hard. If your basic hardware board components you originally chose to be nicely supported by all the hardware vendors for your software stack (Android in general back then A11) were well within in the support windows and nothing exotic, then I still dont get it what took Fairphone as a company this long. You are not the only company running A11 or A12 on the SOC, are you? am I totally wrong here? you are not the only hardware vendor operating in all these nations, continents, the absolutely major network operators an all. I strongly doubt that we will see any speedy A13 delivery hereafter or let alone truly monthly and immediate security patches.

My question of some other thread still holds, how much money do we need to additionally fork over to have the software people of Fairphone decently funded, supported and paid. Are they getting minimum wage as well? are they getting pensions and what not? where did all my money go that I dropped with each and every payment for goods with the Fairphone company? Apparently the software guys were seriously left out of the game. What a shame.

How much does a Fairphone device need to cost, please do tell us, that this endless mess with barely being able to deliver A12 for flagship FP4 does not happen ever again. I am not convinced. Not at all. Not yet.

:frowning:

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once the rollout started, someone can just extract the URL from the logs

ah, yes. i love simple solutions like that - and will try myself to remember to attach my fairphone to adb to get the logfile :slight_smile:

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If you are on Android 11 and travel outside France or Switzerland, you shouldn’t receive the update.
If you are on Android 12 and travel to France or Switzerland, you shouldn’t notice any difference in performance.

I checked, and I’m not able to share the names of the operators that will receive the A12 upgrade later. The same goes for the reason for the delay. All I can say is that it’s not related to the quality or coverage of the network itself, but rather the network-specific optimizations and features that we include with each software update.

Worry not, our team is working hard to deliver the upgrade to everyone and with some luck, it will be out before the end of March.

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Thank you! :iphone: That is great News!

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Network specific optimizations?

I vote for Orange F. They provide the best QoS… and the shortest list of compatible devices (VoLTE).