Well - as I said, it’s futile to try to offer a sustainable product with long support if the hardware manufacturers don’t help you with that. Of course Qualcomm does not care if any of their customers want to have support for more than 5 years if it is just a small company like Fairphone. They sell millions of chips to bigger companies and just don’t need Fairphone at all.
For me this means: it’s pointless to use a Fairphone if you require the latest Android versions. Google also offers many years of updates now (at least 7 years for the newer models) and they even collaborate with iFixIt to help user to repair their devices if needed. No vendor lock in for the parts like Apple and you get many replacement parts like displays, camera modules or batteries for Pixel 4 up to the latest Pixel 9.
But nevertheless we have to be grateful that Fairphone exists! Without this, the “right to repair” movement wouldn’t be where it is today. Big manufacturers see now, that easy repairability is not just a buzzword but something people really want.
This only confirms, what I explained. Without “hacks” using Magisk this won’t work.
And with Magisk it is often a never ending challenge - been there, done that. It is not a practical solution, if apps just stop working one day and you really need these apps like banking or NFC payment.
Edit: and in addition this is only BASIC evaluation. There are apps which require hardware backed attestation, which is just impossible with Magisk since Magisk can not “emulate” this.
If Google continues enforcing hardware-backed attestation, this might mean the end of the days where power users could run Google Pay and other SafetyNet-based apps in conjunction with root access by employing masking techniques. Since the situation is still developing, things might be more complex than what they appear on the surface. We will keep our readers posted if there are new developments on the matter.
That’s really sad to hear.
I did not consider becoming a beta tester for many reasons but I would imagine they should be given the priority in terms of care, attention and recognition.
Dear all,
I’m a Linux user and a Fairphone user, so used to live on the informatics margin, being banned from many applications and subject to loads of extra effort in order to keep up with technology development and access to basic services. During COVID, being bored, I became tester for an Ubuntu phone, and it was even more difficult - I gave up.
The newest issue is MS Teams. Teams for Linux doesn’t work any more reliably, and for some time, I got around that using it on my phone. Now I am on a new project, and the company IT system requires me to have Android 14 on my phone…else I cannot use MS Teams for security reasons.
So when reading this in the forum, I just got floored. I obviously will NOT shift to Apple, Samsung etc., and I will find a way around this, too - but WHY on earth does it have to be so damn complicated?
Frustrated greetings from a convinced Fairphone user,
Eva
As a linux user myself in a company that uses Teams, I am surprised by what you said since it works very well in the Chromium browser… like all the Office 365 applications.
TL;DR: For every new Android version, Google updates the technical requirements of the phone and introduces new compliance tests to ensure the device meets these requirements. Meeting the requirements often requires some work on the kernel and the device drivers which is difficult by nature. FP shouldn’t be having to deal with this sort of engineering but Qualcomm is worthless when it comes to providing the necessary updates. Not passing the tests means you won’t get to distribute the Play Store and other bits and bobs that make the platform Android instead of AOSP. So FP has to do the legwork.
Dear Alain, thanks for your response.
In fact, I don’t use it in the browser (also chromium) but had installed the MS Teams for Linux application, which is not an official MS Teams software. There was a time it didn’t allow me any more to arrange meetings and use headphones, but I believe it was an update issue because now it works fine again. I got used to using MS Teams on my phone because the computer one didn’t work…now it’s the opposite.
And @Zebrafax : Thanks a lot for the Lineage OS recommendation; I’ll have a look at that. But I also found that installing the company’s general app on the phone makes everything very complicated; you need to have a different commercial and private profile, complicated passwords, I don’t know what, so after dabbling one or two days with that, I disinstalled it and went back to my easygoing, unsecure private modus.
This said - I’d still appreciate keeping track with the general development of operating systems and not following with a year of delay.
Android 14 requires a newer kernel. Current Fairphone 4 kernel is 4.19. Migrating to a newer kernel is not an easy task. To ensure security updates for the time being, they consider migrating to SLTS kernel, as you can see here: Questions about SLTS v4.19 - Luca Weiss (Luca Weiss works at Fairphone, he is in the middle of porting FP5 to mainline linux kernel support, which also runs A14 with a 5.4 kernel, latest Android version to accept such an old kernel)
Yes, you are right, that used to be a real problem for Android phones from day one on, especially when using a community driven open source OS. For me that was a reason for a Fairphone 4, as the producer of the device promised long term updates with - if I remember correctly - at least 3-4 Android generations.
BTW, with a new kernel I really do hope they finally solve the battery issue using the modem (i.e. outside flight mode). One more reason to make this happen ASAP.
