And what about FP1 ?? Any news there, @douwe ?
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.
Hope this helps you!
[1]: [UNOFFICIAL] Stock ROM Android 4.4.2/4.4.4 Kitkat for FP1 & FP1U
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“Android 6 will be ready for the Fairphone 2 in the summer of 2016”…
… upon which the release date for Android 7 will be days away!
Not that many other phones you can order today will come with android 6, and many out there that will never get 5 either.
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Thanks @douwe, I wasnt expecting Android 5 or 6 for FP1. But Android 4,4,4 would be great together with further security support for the FP1.
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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.
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4 posts were split to a new topic: Should FP announce early and sometimes get it wrong, or better not announce at all?
Hi,
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.
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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)?
Update: Added link.
[1]: http://developer.sonymobile.com/downloads/tool/software-binaries-for-aosp-m-android-6-0/
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Just as a cross link about Current Android Coverage:
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The same is true for HTC One M8 (Google Play Edition) which has the same chip and Marschmallow is released for.
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).
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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).
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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 
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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…
Welcome to the club, @chief_cook.
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.
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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)
Exactly. And this is the reason why Fairphone is probably a better choice than other manufacturers which sell a phone and never provide updates.
My wording was probably wrong when I said “Don’t worry”. Of course, you should always worry about security of your devices in general. What I meant is that Fairphone is not any less secure than other phones.
Would be nice though. My current phone that gets replaced by the FP2 is second hand, so I don’t know how old it is exactly, but the model (Nokia 1100) is 12 years old and it’s still functioning (after combining the best parts of both 1100’s I own, I should say). Would be lovely to see such sturdiness in the FP2.
*sorry for the necro reply, I hadn’t seen this thread before so I thought it was new, but I’m replying to someone talking in augustus. Hello! I’m from the future, the Fairphone 2 has landed in Holland yesterday 
.
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I disagree with you, @jftr: The FP1 may be “as secure” or even more secure than other 2 yrs old phones, but for many others you can flash a functional (!) custom ROM and prolong its life for much longer. This does not only apply to the Nexus line. E.g. there are working Android 6 ROMs for the HTC Desire HD, a single-core device released in September 2010 (more than 5 years ago!). This allows you to use this 5yrs old device with security updates for all issues found in these years! Of course, its performance may not be what everyone expects, but it’s a good choice for people who basically want to phone, send messages and browse the web - which applies to probably > 70% of the smartphone population.
=> the FP1 is less secure than a lot of other 2yrs old phones, provided you use a custom ROM.
Of course you could argue that the FP team is trying to provide updates directly from the manufacturer instead of “just” the community. This indeed makes the FP different on a theoretical basis. But looking at the actual facts, the FP1 is mostly industrial waste due to the unfixed Webview vulnerability. There is not much of a point in providing security updates for libstagefright and friends while still having this high impact hole open. This just gives people a false feeling of “getting security updates” while in fact they are still using a highly vulnerable deivce.
So, just before coming back to the Android 6.0 for FP2 topic: Why can’t fairphone provide this update for FP1? Well first, they can’t upgrade to Android 4.4 where the issue is “fixed” (by using a different web framework) due to chipset manufacturer issues. And second, they theoretically could fix the issue in Android 4.2, but this would require a lot of work which FP is obviously not willing or not able to do. Now imagine we will experience a comparable vulnerability of this type in Android 5.1 and again Google will only provide a fix for Android 6.0. What will happen? Exactly the same! This is why providing the update for Android 6.0+ is so crucial.
I asked for confirmation if they have access to the Android 6 code or if Google or QC is doing something like a stacked release. No answer yet.
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