I would assume that this is actually their busiest time! Their phone already started with production, there’s still a million issues to fix before real mass production starts, there’s lots of last minute fixes to be done with the software, as they announced they’re also working on documentation for custom OS and then there’s far too many press appointments. And meeting with the press and talking with them is both, time consuming but also very important, because Fairphone also runs on money just like any other company. And if they do their job right they create more demand and maybe some big companies like T-Mobile, KPN, Vodafone or 3 might get interested and help Fairphone to level up
I’m just sitting here, becoming impatient, waiting for my new phone, but at the same time still confident that they’re doing a great job! I didn’t support them and paid for a new phone aaaaages ago, only to lose faith in the very last days and couple of weeks!
We have a wealth of information to share with you this week! We agree it was so quiet, too quiet as we where waiting for SAR results, iFixit results, the Gold video, SailfishOS news, FirefoxOS news, Delivery news, battery replacements, screen replacements, microblog (I hear you @therob!) developments and of course at the same time staying on track to deliver the FP2 to all you!
But, these week we’ll start sharing the stories of many of these adventures and how the are going. Starting today with a Fairphone 2 production update.
And, yes, I am meeting later today with the software team and will squeeze every single bit of information I can get of them. But it could be that the information is; Android 6.0 will still take a while… so don’t set your hope to high.
News about having more news is awesome news (but still, I’d rather have the news themselves ;)) I’m looking forward to whatever you will publish later this week.
The unofficial reply I just got from the developers is that FP2 will 99% sure support Android 6.
The Fairphone 2 will be shipped with Android 5.1. Starting next year our chip supplier Qualcomm will prepare android 6 for the chip currently used in Fairphone 2. After that we can start working to make it ready for the the Fairphone 2.
Pressed to give a date, our developer said that in an optimistic scenario Android 6 will be ready for the Fairphone 2 in the summer of 2016.
I hope this answers your questions regarding Marshmallow.
Any new updates will come after Qualcomm have prepared Android 6 for their chip beginning next year.
Never say never, but very highly extremely unlikely we will ever see Android 6 on FP1. Not even Android 5.
As you might know there is an ongoing community effort to have [Android 4.4.4 on FP1][1] and we follow and support that with great enthusiasm. Hopefully we can officially support that one day.
Security updates and fixes will continue to be released, but also depend on the severity of the bug and company resources.
I do not think of that as a huge problem – unless you are a developer eager to test out Android 6.0 features. I will be a while majority of apps will take advantage of Android 6 APIs. Looking at this: Distribution dashboard | Platform | Android Developers (the Android Version Distribution as measured by Google), i project even in autumn 2016, less then one third of all Android devices will run Marshmallow.
At this point I don’t think we can really talk about 99% that would require one of those glass balls to do predictions and I can’t find a working one. I would first like to see Qualcomm release a 6.0 port for the msm8974 and continue the discussion from there on.
One thing seems more certain: By the time we would release 6.0 the next Android version would be lurking at us.
I thought [Sony got that already (Z2/Z3)][1], or do they do stacked releases? I don’t want to create trouble [I’m totally fine with 5], I’m just wondering how “open” the process works. Do all OEMs get the code at the same time by the webpage or do they release their “open” code later?
Or is Sony doing their own thing (That’s what I assume)?
I don’t know how these updates work either. The HTC One which got the update already is the “Google Play Edition” and updates are prepared by Google directly. I can imagine that Google has priority support by Qualcomm (or is probably capable of pulling this off without help by Qualcomm). Fairphone will very likely be less of a priority for the chipset manufacturer.
At least we know that an update to 6.0 is possible for FP2 (in contrast to the hideous story of updates for FP1).
Yep. I still want to see what code they will release for Android 5 so I can judge what I can expect of a Android 6 release. But it looks like they will make a software “video” (the term webinar sounds wrong for this to me somehow) soon … so gather your questions
I still wonder why they go through so much media trouble instead of answering FAQs with software. Media diversity is not a wrong thing for advertisements/product reviews … but for facts written texts just work better, you can reference them for others more easily. So I’m interested how well the first one will work out for tech specs.
Well, since Qualcomm released the relevant Android 6.0 kernel sources and blobs for the MSM8974AC already quite a while ago, I would be very surprised if an update would be technically infeasible. Other vendors which use the same chipset in their devices (e.g. the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact) already offer sources and build instructions for compiling AOSP for such devices and several custom roms exist as well. For example, you can have a look at the following website:
Not sure about the camera though, yet I can’t really understand why the FP team is so conservative about this issue. I understand that they aren’t willing to promise more than they can keep, but if they don’t manage to get Android 6.0 working on this (technically already supported) platform then they didn’t learn their lessions from the FP1 disaster (which is still vulnerable to severe WebView holes as it’s still on 4.2).
I think it’s more about the limited resources they have, and they can’t promise to make an upgrade if they sell less FP2 than predicted (the price breakout for the FP2 is only valid if they sell 140 000 phones a year !), if not, they might not have enough money to assign developers.
I think it’s also why they wanted to make the OS choice as free as possible, and plan to give all sources to everyone
Hey there, im going to be a fairphone user by january…if i read something like this:
I get some bad feelings…i like the idea and the social aspect of fairphone.
But if i read those lines it feels like i bought a phone that is a security issue in two year because of a software that is not maintained. Hope i didn’t make a wrong decision…
Don’t worry. First, @kuleszdl was talking about the First Edition Fairphone which is years old already. That means your Fairphone 2 is a totally different story with a much newer operating system.
Second: Even Fairphone 1 is not any less secure than most other Android phones out there. Hardly any phone manufacturer provides updates for longer than a year and many smartphones don’t get any updates at all. In comparison, Fairphone is actively pushing security updates to a two year old phone. You could say it is more secure than many other phones.
Bottom line is: If you are concerned about smartphones being unsecure, Fairphone is probably a better bet than many since Fairphone has a track record of providing security updates. More secure might be an iPhone, Google Nexus, or Blackberry.
I disagree a bit with your wording It’s weasel wording the issue. Most code is insecure, it’s just not known yet. But if a known and exploitable bug (that can impact the user/it’s data) exists in the latest ROM of a phone, it’s an insecure ROM and it needs to fixed. It’s not about the phones hardware, it’s all about the company selling not caring about their users/the older product sold. (Yes, Fairphone is not MTK/Qualcomm, I know, but this is why the users need to know how long the company will support the SoC = contracts)
