Android 14 on Fairphone 4

[JulianR]

Thanks, @madbilly for sharing the infographic - software is always more complicated than it seems from the outside!

[askaaron]

@KarlKl

Not that I want the new major versions quickly either. But as a software developer, I know that sometimes things sound and look a bit easier from a distance than they really are. I’m sure FP is doing everything they can (with the financial and human resources available to them) to get the update out as soon as possible.

I also think that Fairphone is doing every needed to get updates done as fast as possible. However I miss a bit more transparency where the process is at the moment.

In the past Fairphone had a public bug tracker, so you could see, if an issue you experience, was already reported or not. And you could also see if there is already a fix which will be included in the next update.

Now you just have the same “black box” as usual - you don’t know what the manfacturer does and if the manfacturer is even aware of certain issues. You can just wait and hope that it will not take another 6 months or longer to get things completed. And the forum is just a forum. No Fairphone employee will ever notice anything at all what is written here. If you want to report a problem, you have to contact support and this means you also have to take care that you never loose your proof of purchase, since then support won’t accept any requests at all.

[JohnnyD]

Do you know where I would have found the old bug tracker (any dead links maybe) and why they have it removed?

[askaaron]

I don’t have any example for the

@JohnnyD

Do you know where I would have found the old bug tracker (any dead links maybe) and why they have it removed?

I don’t have any example for the old bug tracker as it dates back to the time of the Fairphone 2. After that Fairphone stopped this. As far I remember the reason was, that they outsourced the software development.

However, there is at least a list of “known issues” at https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/9831446296849-Fairphone-4-Public-Issue-Tracker. But I don’t know, how frequent this list gets updated or how complete it is. Also you can not just create a new issue like in Github but only report things in the user forum and hopefully an employee of Fairphone will pick this up.

[askaaron]

And as an example, how an issue tracker would look like - see GrapheneOS:

Issues · GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker

[yvmuell]

This broken record has been discussed 100s of times and is not the topic of this thread. For this you could have just used your previous topic, I will reopen it for you and any further discussion should proceed over. there.

Communicating with the users

The “Fairphone world” is still somewhat new to me, but I already learned that the user forum is mostly just for users and not to communicate with Fairphone as company - at least it seems that no staff of Fairphone is present here on a regular basis. But I may be mistaken - if I missed anything, let me know. That’s a pitty since many questions in the help forums could be answered by just keeping a list of known issues and maybe an indication what Fairphone as company is already working on. Also …

[aemarques]

@system

And if you’re using a Fairphone 4 , we haven’t forgotten about you. Expect to hear from us by mid-Septembe

It is now almost November. Any oficial follow-up regarding the update to Android 14 for FP4?

[nickalcock]

They followed up and said “late 2024 / early 2025”. Meanwhile my mother’s cheap Motorola Android phone (about a quarter the price of a Fairphone) got an Android 15 upgrade last week… even other small manufacturers like Nothing have managed upgrades to 14 by now and some have gone all the way to 15.

(I thought the point of Android 10’s new partition layout and the unified kernel image etc was to make upgrades faster and much less work, but I see no sign that Fairphone, at least, are doing this any faster than they used to, even though they’ve got very little customization to do compared to more or less all their competition.)

[KurtF]

Software has never been Fairphone’s strong side.
A pity they are selling handheld computers…

[askaaron]

LineageOS for Fairphone 4 has also Android 14 now:

Info about FP4 | LineageOS Wiki

Quote: “Current version: 21 (Android 14)”

However, installing LineageOS requires unlocking the bootloader and thus disabling certain features like NFC payment with Google Wallet which require a “secure” OS without unlocked bootloader.

Edit: and the last time I tried LineageOS it ended with a non-functional USB port after a while (only charging was possible, but no data transfer) which required replacing the mainboard. So I am reluctant to try this again.

[loseyourself]

I doubt LineageOS killed a hardware component. Seems really unlikely IMO.

Maybe try Calyx? I believe they have Android 14 by now.

[k3dAR]

@askaaron

unlocking the bootloader and thus disabling certain features like NFC payment with Google Wallet which require a “secure” OS without unlocked bootloader.

not know as in Lineage, but on Fairphone 5 with stock OS, and unlocked bootloader and rooted by Magisk, NFC payment with Google Wallet work for me with installed module PlayIntegrityFix

[noodlejetski]

yeah, since January https://calyxos.org/news/2024/01/16/android-14-pixel-3-3a-fp4-moto/

[yvmuell]

Android 14 is here. Here's what's changed - FP5.UT20.B.041.20240624

Hi all, UPDATE: Unfortunately, we won’t be able to roll out the Android 14 update for Fairphone 4 users just yet. There are some issues we have run into for which we will need Qualcomm’s support on. This is taking a little longer than we anticipated. As it stands, we don’t see the update rolling through in 2024. Hopefully, we should know more by early next year. We’re really sorry about this unexpected development, and we’re working round the clock to get it out as soon as possible. Thanks aga…

[heli]

I’m really angry now!
Never again Fairphone!

[heli]

Why can LineageOS already offer Android 14 for FP4?
Obviously they don’t have Qualcom problems!

[yvmuell]

They dont need Google Certification. Just read what I linked above for Shiftphones and you will understand the obstacles.

[loseyourself]

So when is Qualcomm support ending for the FP4 anyway? If they have obstacles like this for Android 14 then I’d assume Android 15 is going to be even harder, right?

[nickalcock]

Oh God you’re waiting on Qualcomm? My condolences I have in the past only been able to get things out of them (needed by multiple commercial partners!) by literally leaning on friends of mine who work there and getting them to nag others internally.

[askaaron]

@heli

Why can LineageOS already offer Android 14 for FP4?
Obviously they don’t have Qualcom problems!

Most likely because they use an older kernel version which still supports the Qualcomm drivers - this is the usual way how custom ROMs work: take an older kernel, and add new Android version on top of it. This works most of the time since the userland kernel API does not change that much with new versions.

However when doing this you don’t get any security certificate and apps which requires SafetyNet attestation won’t work. But since an unlocked bootloader is also required to install LineageOS, you don’t get SafetyNet anyway, even if you would use the correct kernel version.