Thank you for you reply.
I could not find the answer to my question. Is there any possibility to have android 7 on fairphone 2 (official fairphone, open source fairphone + open gapps, cyanogenmod or other)? Can you point out to me where the answer is?
Thank you
There was some discussion above that there most probably won’t be a Android 7 Fairphone OS with Google Apps because of the CTS test. Google cannot, however, forbid a FP Open OS based on Android 7. Android is still open source after all.
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A few posts above this question is answered with:
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Yes, exactly what I was asking for. Open OS based on android 7 plus open gapps is the right way. This pair allows to extended for many more years the lifetime of fairphone 2.
Well, i for one would be extremely happy with the Open OS version, but i understand that the mainstream user, which i guess is also the main client source for Fairphone, will be left alone, as they need a standard Google -Android phone… A pity, maybe, but reality. Which indeed is a hard blow to Fairphone’s idea, but this is the commercial world. No interest in sustainability, but only new products, to keep the business going.
Something for us consumers, indeed. The only ones who can rectify that situation, in the end
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Security patches for Android 6 won’t stop soon so there will still be a secure Fairphone OS with GApps preinstalled, as long as Google releases security patches. I expect that Fairphone will probably handle the story like with FP1 and Kitkat. We users can’t have hope for Android 5, but there will be security updates until Google drops Kitkat support.
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I do not agree. Why do they need a standard google-android phone?
If you have the open OS version together with open gapps you have all google apps if you want and you have also standard playstore.
What do they miss?
Moreover, fairphone is not only a phone, it is a movement, a life style. Hence, you cannot forget this in the name of business otherwise all the castle will fall down and the fairphone will stop to exits.
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The question is not, what they miss, the question is if they would be willing to get the technical information and invest the time to flash FP Open OS plus Open Gapps. Most people I know just don’t care enough to invest the effort.
Sad, maybe… but true.
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Yes, that’s true. Still, how long will Google support a main version? Two years? This might be too short for an ambitious lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, the idea is great, but still we’re at the mercy of fast revolving hardware and software. As FP already realized, they are too small to influence these big players. Well, until now. With all that media attention and acknowledgements maybe there’s a chance to get to people and decision takers…
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It’s very simple. Most people are consumers, not tinkerers. While it might not be too difficult to learn to flash opengapps and what not to get the phone behaving like any other consumer Android phone most people won’t bother. That’s the truth. And that’s the strength of Fairphone. They produced a mass (compatible) product that’s also fair, which is a strong selling point for many. But not strong enough to drve into flashing, trouble shooting and living Google free. This will not happen.
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Can we can a little insight what the reasons were for moving to 6 instead of 7 or even staying on 5.
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In few words, the SoC snapdragon 801 of fairphone 2 is not support by official CTS of android 7 a due to of missing support of OpenGL ES 3.1. The fact is that no phone using the snapdragon 800 or 801 (the 801 also uses the adreno 330 GPU) has been announced to support android 7.
So it is not possible to officially port android 7 to fairphone 2 and this is the reason for which has been selected android 6.
However, by using the open source version of fairphone 2 OS together with open gapps, it will be possible to port also android 7 to fairphone 2 since other OS like cyanogenmod 14.1 aka android 7.1 are compatible with old devices with lower specifications than fairphone 2.
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Jelly Bean (API level 16-18) was supported for about 2,5 years: It was released in June 2012 and Google stopped providing updates in January 2015.
KitKat was released on 31st October, 2013. If we assume a life cycle of 2,5 years, support should have stopped by 31st April, 2016, which it didn’t.
It’s really hard to predict anything here so it’s even more important to push the alternative projects like Cyanogen Mod, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch.
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The question is not, what they miss, the question is if they would be willing to get the technical information and invest the time to flash FP Open OS plus Open Gapps. Most people I know just don’t care enough to invest the effort.
Sad, maybe… but true.
Yes, that’s true. Still, how long will Google support a main version? Two years? This might be too short for an ambitious lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, the idea is great, but still we’re at the mercy of fast revolving hardware and software. As FP already realized, they are too small to influence these big players. Well, until now. With all that media attention and acknowledgements maybe there’s a chance to get to people and decision takers…
Exactly, this is the point. The only way to extend the lifetime of fairphone 2 to at least 5 years is to have the ability to upgrade to latest OS version since the hardware is enough for 90% of users.
Since fairphone is to small to influence big player, it should go on by itself. How? By developing the open source OS version updated to latest version of main android and by creating a simple procedure to switch from closed source OS version to open source OS version.
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It’s really hard to predict anything here so it’s even more important to push the alternative projects like Cyanogen Mod, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch.
Yes, a porting to cyanogemod could be very useful and maybe also ubuntu touch.
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Earlier this year there were lots of discussions about this. Then, FP said they weren’t pursuing this because they had not enough resources. Time changes, the idea of the sustainable phone is strong, let’s see with what they come up by the time Android 6 is on our phones and they have to followup somehow. By that time a working cm and Ubuntu also might be reality
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Watching this very closely…
the ZUK Z1 […] will be the first Snapdragon 801 phone to get updated to the latest version of Android.
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Now that is interesting! I searched the internet a bit and it seems, the Z1 will at first just recieve an open beta version of Android 7 at the end of January. Some websites write as if will definitely get a final version, but some are writing that it’s not quite clear, wether or not the phone will just stay on an open beta version (maybe because of this Google compatibility thing).
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Any news on Android 6/7 department?
Thanks and happy new year 
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Is there already a beta version available for the beta testers?
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