Hello. I am getting ready to acquire a FP2 from a vendor in Germany who is being kind enough to pre install Fairphone Android 9 upgrade.
I had asked Fairphone support this question, but I never got a reply 
“Does the FP2 with android 9 upgrade get security updates?”
If anyone can confirm, and let me know the security update date shown, that would be so greatly appreciated.
Thank you all!
Regards.
Yes last one is from end May including security updates till 05th Jun
thank you yvmuell for the acknowledgment.
my last question on the subject is… is/was the May update OTA? or a manual update of some sort.
if it was manual, could you please advise on how it was done?
again, thank you FairPhone community forum, you are all so kind and helpful!
You can normally do all updates through the updater app included in the OS, however all versions can be downloaded and installed manually using fastboot as well
Hello again yvmuell and thank you for the explanation.
I will try this out once I receive my phone I just purchased from a seller in Italy.
Regards
Just to add some information: Fairphone said that the FP2 will not get another version upgrade, so Android 9 will be the last official Android version.
As far as I remember they did not really say anything about how long they will provide security updates. But I guess there will be security updates as long as Google will provide them. This should be until September 2022, then Android 9 will be EOL (according to several online sources).
Current patch level is 05. of June 2021 and was provided OTA. July patches have been skipped until now (same as in the FP3). I hope that both the FP2 and FP3 will get the August patches quickly, as they fix some major security issues in the media framework.
hello ontheair and thank you for your insight.
as as a long time android user, i let the carrier (t-mobile in my case) push out the security updates.
where i am lost is if say FairPhone is not updating on a regular basis, if there was some way of acquiring the security update on line (say from google) and push the security update on ones own manually.
this was another reason I was asking about root as I believe based on xda site searches, it can be done.
again, thank you all for your time & knowledge, cant wait to receive my FP2
I am not so sure if you can get the security patches by Google from some kind of Git-style developer system or if you have to be a certified manufacturer to get them. On the other hand there is the Android version of Fairphone, where the source code is available and you can change whatever you want. At least if you are a system developer and if you have plenty of time every day.
There is a big community already building a well-working and regularly patched Android and they even provide Android 10 for the FP2.
Installing is pretty easy: You just have to install a custom recovery system on the phone, then you do ADB from your computer to install ist. All future patches will be done OTA. No need to root something, no need to compile whole Android, no need to create your custom kernels.
This also means: No need to quit your job, to get enough time for building your own Android version and keep it up to date 
Just use the excellent work from the community. It is easy and safe. There is a nice little step-by-step manual how to do.
All other options are - in my opinion - not worth thinking about it. You can tinker around with root access, but why working in a compiled running system if you have the source code available in this case (FP or plain AOSP)? And yes, you could cross-compile the linux kernel on your desktop system and install it to the phone with root. But even then there is all the Android-specific things, where usually most of the security issues are (Android security issues are 99% issues of media framework, Dalvik / ART, etc, not kernel issues).
But if you really want to integrate the security patches by your own: Please share your experiences with us. This would be very interesting, especially for me as I am not up-to-date anymore (loved to work with custom roms, rooting, kernel mods before; but had no time for that in the last years).
hello again ontheair.
this is exactly the insight I was looking for.
I will explore the Android 10 for the FP2 as well as the FP2 Lineage options.
In closing, I too was like you now, (loved to work with custom roms, rooting, kernel mods before; but had no time for that in the last years). I put in so many hours at work, I am forcing myself to have a hobby so I have an excuse to not bring my work home with me.
thanks again for you time!
regards, george
Why would you buy a 2016 phone in 2021? Just wondering …
Best wishes,
Thomas
Hello Teezeh. The FP2 is the only phone on the planet with a SD801 processor running on Android 9 - I have a bunch of app’s I will be using my FP2 to optimize, in order to run on another similar spec’d phone with similar processor and OS.
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