Fairphone 2 Android 9

Discuss The Products
1

I found this on the bugtracker. Does this mean there is a plan for Android 9 on FP2?

https://bugtracker.fairphone.com/discover

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2

Sure looks like it to me!

3

Hm, that might explain a tweet by Miguel Ballester a couple of days ago that hinted at some kind of news for the FP2


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4

Perhaps they’ll partner with /e/ to support it on the Fairphone 2 themselves, that would be Android 9 currently :slight_smile: .

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5

Exact wording:

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6

I wish Fairphone would be more communicative about FP2, especially as there have been no software updates in a long time. Their website focuses on FP3 and their values, and FP2 feels a little forgotten. Aside from any background work, it would be great if they could remind us why they are not like other manufacturers, i.e. by discussing their plans to continue developing the older model.

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7

I agree, but I suspect it has a lot to do with Fairphone’s promise to bring Android 4.4 to the FP1, a project they eventually didn’t manage to tie together technically and had to abandon. Guessing they wanted to be 100% sure they could actually do this before they tried to sell it.

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8

FP like to keep new developments under wraps, which I think is actually a way of keeping people happy. If they were to have a big announcement today that development on Android 9 is starting, they’d be flooded with emails and forum messages for months by people asking IS PIE DONE YET.

Same as with the FP3, they did a pretty great job at keeping it a secret until they were ready to release, because if they’d said something about it earlier their inbox and the forum would have been nothing but IS FP3 DONE YET for months.

And I think that in the case of developing new software for the FP2, there’s also the fact that it may work out differently or take longer than expected. If they tell the public it’ll take about 8 months to develop Android 9 for the FP2 and it doesn’t turn up after precisely eight months, the emails will start coming in, the forum will flip out and articles will pop up with titles like ‘Is the age of Fairphone over?’ and ‘Fairphoning it in: the decline of an ethical smartphone manufacturer’ on websites with names like TekWalk and NerdBlip.

I’m interested to see an FP-produced version of Android 9 (AOSP!) run on my FP2, but I get that FP aren’t shouting about it from the hilltops, at least for the moment.

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9

What are you supposed to see on the mentioned link?
I see only those 4 lines so I suspect the new input was recently hidden??

  • Android 7
  • Community port: LineageOS
  • Community port: SailfishOS
  • Bugtracker
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10

There was an “Android 9 for FP2” (or different word order) item at the top of the list.

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11

I absolutely can verify this.
And it seems, they - understandably - did not mean to make that public; as it still might be possible, that the development will not end in a stable and marketable version (the FP1 example was already mentioned).
As the page is headed by “6 public projects to discover”, it looks like this project was just accidentally marked as public for some time. :wink:

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12

It’s back in the bugtracker for the public eye (see link in OP). Beta testing has started.

Everyone please don’t expect Pie to become available for every FP2 user by tomorrow.

EDIT: Official announcement.

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13

I’m glad to see the public list of issues. This gives a good indication of when the Android 9 update might be ready for release. Looks like it’s not there yet, this might take a few more months. :slight_smile:

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14

I think, having an official Android 9 image will also boost the alternative OS distros (/e/, LinageOS, etc) once again. LineageOS e.g. currently provides an Android 10 based image for the FP2, but they are stuck to the old kernel.
I really enjoy Fairphone putting so much effort into this product. Keep up the good work.

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15

I don’t think an updated FPOS comes with a newer kernel version.

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16

You are probably right. My fault, I should have chosen an other example.
Anyway I still think a vendor approved image (along with its binary blobs and the release of the updated open sources) will help to reduce the ever increasing version gap, that the AOSP-based distros are facing.

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17

This is now appearing in news articles:

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18

It’s really great, that they are getting media attention for their developments.
My bet would be, that they are actively pushing those things.

(Though the first article by 9to5Google has got it wrong when stating, that FP2 came out with Android 7.1; it was 5.1 (I am still on 6
).

There are German articles as well.
I linked them in the thread on German articles

Edit:
:fr: And I found one article in French:

:sweden: and one in Swedish

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19

The article by Android Authority was very positive and had an interesting angle, making Fairphone an example of what we could/should expect from other companies:

This is an enormous undertaking for such a small company, which is why the 2015 Fairphone 2 getting Android 9 shouldn’t be seen as “slow,” but rather incredibly impressive.

This true David-and-Goliath story should not only paint a clear picture of the ethical problems of the smartphone industry as a whole, but also prove that huge companies like Samsung, Huawei, LG, etc., have the power to do much more than they currently do when it comes to designing and supporting devices that last.

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20

Why are you still on 6, Bert? Is it the dual SIM issue?