Fairphone 2 Android 9

Well, there were quite a few bug-reports, like WiFi-problems, that really do bother me more, than the privacy issue. Even more so, since I have turned off BT all the time, and use WiFi at home only. I don’t do social media or messenger apps. It’s mainly a phone to me and I really need it and don’t wanna go back and forth if somethings fails.
Plus; I don’t miss any feature, that might come with a newer version of Android.
So, I guess, it’s rather habit by now. :wink:

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Cool, it seems as if my update to Android 9 is running unexpectedly with all of my apps that were active before with FPOS android 7.
What I did:

  • created a backup with TWRP of my Android 7 version
  • manually installed the Android 9 version
  • ‘forgot’ to install all the apps I had active before with Android 7, assuming that - as stated in the installation instruction - by wiping the user data also all of my apps would have been gone
  • flashed TWRP, restored only the data partition from Android 7 backup

After restart I see now all of my apps, tested already few ones, they worked.

I’ll continue testing.
Thanks for offering this version :slight_smile:

ahh, wrong thread, but also belongs somehow here to, as it is FPOS Android 9 related.
Wanted to reply here: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp2-fairphone-os-20-06-2-beta-0-android-9/62001/7?u=hpg
and did that also there now.

XDA has it also:

As beta tester - how to join this Android 9 beta? The updater on FP2 does not give any information.

There will be a blog post with the details how to join the beta testing this week, so probably tomorrow or on Friday.

The developer team actually pinned this yesterday, so I guess they regard the instructions there as still valid:

@urs_lesse But I am already a registered beta tester with access to the beta area…

Not very clear.

Well, visit the Beta section of the forum. The installation file has been made available there.

@urs_lesse So there is a second or special beta section? On the beta section I have access to I don’t find any information about this beta Android 9. Last message dated there 15 april 2020.

The last message in a topic about Android 7 was indeed posted on the 15th of April. There’s two topics above it: about Android 9 and a sticky informational topic. I’ll PM you the link. If you still can’t access that, forum admins will need to have a look.

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It’s cool that Android 9 becomes available for the FP2! But I just had a question.
I thought I had understood, that you have to adapt AOSP to the CPU, (and so Qualcomm did it for Lollipop and Marshmallow for the Snapdragon 801, but not for Nougat, and so Fairphone had to do it itself for Android 7 and it was incredible etc). That means that Fairphone had to do it for Android 9 this time as well, didn’t they?
But what I fail to understand, is that other OSes like LineageOS already had adapted Android 9 to the FP2. So this is not so much incredible…
Or am I missing an important fact about Lineage or Fairphone, or anything else?
And in this case, technical question, did they reuse the work of Lineage? (it’s just a question, no criticism)

(if it’s off topic feel free to move it)

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Depends. Custom ROMs use a different approach to adopt new Android versions, explained here …

https://www.xda-developers.com/in-depth-capitulation-of-why-msm8974-devices-are-excluded-from-nougat/

That’s what got e.g. LineageOS up to Android 10 (currently) on the Fairphone 2.

Whether Fairphone did it similarly or used the work of LineageOS or the cooperation with /e/ now to get to Android 9, and whether this might get in the way of Google certification for the official Android 9 … we’ll just have to see.

Custom ROMs naturally don’t have to bother with Google certification, but it is very important for phone vendors to be able to sell and support their phones with all the Google Apps and services installed, as most people still want to have them.

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A nice comment from “ElReg” today can be found at

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I’ll add one important point here. If you observe most of the custom OS their SELinux status will be permissive which means they are not safe and prone to threats. The other thing is they will be userdebug builds. These two will not be the case with respect to official releases.
The manufacturers need to work a lot more beyond the functionality(which is the primary focus of Custom ROMs).

Perfect. This gives an exact explanation.

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Question. If there is Android 9 on FP2, does this mean, an UBports port using GSI could be made?

No, because of

The FP2 does not have a vendor partition.

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10 posts were split to a new topic: FP2 heat dissipation ideas

A post was merged into an existing topic: FP2 heat dissipation ideas

A post was merged into an existing topic: :pencil2: FP Open / Sibon download link archive

At the moment I guess the best available details are the open issues in the bug tracker: https://bugtracker.fairphone.com/project/fp2-android9/issues

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