II’m happy with the hardware. I’m also happy with the stability.
I’m not at all satisfied with the software.
No security updates for months. That doesn’t work at all.
That’s why I can’t recommend Fairphone. Everything is okay, but this point outweighs all the good things.
Regular doesn’t necessary mean frequent. Once every quarter is regular 
Yes, I joked about that too earlier… Unfortunately it ceases to be funny when it becomes commercial reality… 
Fairphone has definitely lost its soul (if it ever had any) in their headlong rush to make money with shiny new, but that for necessarily disposable products. They simply can’t afford to maintain any bigger number of products.
Promises? Oh, that was just the usual marketing candy-coating, you didn’t actually believe the spin, did you… 
Hi all,
I wanted to follow up on this thread with our latest support article all about our software support roadmap for our phones. Please find it in the link below. Hopefully that explains the process. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks,
Ioiana
Monthly security updates for about 3 years, and then we will switch to bi-monthly security updates
from the fairphone 5 paragraph.
I think monthly security updates should truly mean that we get one each month and not a month and a half (if not more) later
First of all thanks for taking the time to post some information.
I do have a question though: While I couldn’t but notice that security updates are supposed to be bi-monthly now, where is the September one?..
When I posted 6 days ago, it was precisely because the supposedly “bi-monthly” update was already one week overdue. By now it is 2 weeks overdue. Yes, yes, some will argue September isn’t over yet, but for years security updates used to come at the beginning of the month (around the 5th) and it’s (IMHO, YMMV) not a good sign if Fairphone doesn’t even bother to keep this new relaxed schedule. Soon: tri-monthly updates?.. 
.
Please understand that the issue here is promises made and promises broken.
I went from ecstatic fanboi to extreme critic in less than a year, specifically because of this, and unfortunately I’m not alone. And yet I’m working in IT myself, I’ve collaborated in a couple start-ups myself, I can definitely understand the problems of a small company in the tech sector.
But I can’t and won’t understand insincerity.
What am I talking about? Your extremely over-eager marketing has insinuated things, making promises the commercial and/or technical departments were clearly not able or willing to keep. This started with the breathless description of the FP4, which according to your website was the absolutely best phone in the world, with the absolutely best camera, the absolutely best support, and so on. You get the gist.
It was way too far from reality, and even now we keep discovering how much. On themselves the problems of the FP4 weren’t overly serious, especially for a small, unknown company; They only become so when compared to the ecstatic descriptions which caused us to buy one. Example at hand: “Regular updates for x years” suddenly becoming “Uh, they will be vaguely regular, but not really frequent, sorry.”. Please note I would had had no problem with that if you had already told me so back in 2022, I would had bought the phone nevertheless.
I can understand your managers live in their own echo chamber where everything is peachy and there are silver linings everywhere (they all do), but I don’t think Fairphone will stay around for long: You’re trashing your biggest capital, your reputation.
Hello.
Thank you for getting back to us and I do appreciate the effort to clarify things.
I also am very happy with the length of support for my FP5.
I welcome this post as the opportunity to clarify things but perhaps also as a way to make the expectations more realistic. We had it with FP3 now there might be an issue with FP4.
In your post there is a suggestion that the support of FP4 to 2028 has not been confirmed yet, so in my opinion it might be not that reasonable to have it in its marketing description
I really do not know what I should write as an answer on your comment:
First, I truely appreciate the first note on the FP4 roadmap in this forum. Maybe it would have been better to present such information before doing so instead of 8 months later. As @KurtF wrote: I could have accepted this frequency of sec updates had I known beforehand.
What leaves me speechless is the information regarding your not yet confirmed aim to provide A15 in 2028 (!) A15 is scheduled for Q3 2024. With all necessary respect, are you really serious taking 4 years to provide the next Android major release after A14 (which BTW is one year old next month)?
IMO you really do everything to loose your reputation as sustainable mobile device vendor. It is really sad 
I think you misunderstood the whitepaper. I understand it as “until 2028, we plan to deliver security updates, and also A15”. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they will provide A15 at the end of the interval. Look, A14 is about to be delivered roughly 15 months after release.
I read this
We also aim to provide upgrades for Android 15 and do security patching until mid 2028, but it is not confirmed yet.
which would just indicate A15 is the last major upgrade and after that security patches are planned till 2028…
I think the A14 upgrade is the first one done without QC support, thus more difficult then the upgrades before with rather more severe bugs during testing…
I would like to mention HDMs roadmap for the just recently or soon published devices and say that I appreciate that FP is doing better than this long-established big company.
2 Android upgrades and Security updates:3 years (2 years monthly + 1 year quarterly)
While I agree, this ship has sailed long ago…
As I said above, I can understand a small company can’t afford to support that many different products. Support costs money.
Personally I’d already be happy if they manage to keep their current promise of bi-monthly updates. Because right now it it doesn’t seem like they will.
My point exactly: Misleading statements, equivalent to false promises…
Who can trust them after seeing that, again and again? Did they never hear of “crying wolf”?
Don’t hold your breath: It was promised for some time in September, now, according to the above mentioned “Fairphone OS” page, it might as well come next year, in “Q1 2025”.
And if they now mention Q1, it’s certainly because it’s unlikely to be ready this year. They wouldn’t have to say it if the release was just slipping to next month (October), or the next 2 months after that (November/December), isn’t it.
I guess monthly just means an update each month and not Sep SPL in Sep…and I think the monthly promise for the FP5 was kept so far?
Is there a reason that you didn’t email people about this? You manage to email me that Android 14 released for my phone even though it didn’t, but you don’t mail people about the security update plans? 
As a beta tester for A14 I’m gonna let it slip that the main stopper at the moment is an issue where the speaker stops working, and they obviously can’t ship that.
I don’t see how fixing that and the minor issues that might still be around could take 4 full months so I’m personally going to be surprised if they don’t launch it in Q4. But I’ve been surprised by this company before.
Thanks for your hint, I obviously misunderstood this completely. Sorry!
But anyway, bringing A14 to the FP4 is already one year behind the release date. Even with assuming that non-Google providers need much more time, this could already have been rolled out few months ago.
Well, it depends on the number of “men” allocated to the required “man-hours”…
Fairphone has proven that they don’t have too many resources, so what would take a major player a single day might indeed take Fairphone a month (or five). Who knows.
Since Fairphone doesn’t have a record of humility I think the simple fact they mention Q1 must mean something. 
That been said, I personally don’t worry too much about A14. It would be nice to have, eventually, but what I really would like to have ASAP are the security patches.
Unlike what some people might think, security patches aren’t optional, especially since once released, every “bad guy” out there knows which vulnerabilities they fix, and thus can easily (ab)use them. Which is a potential problem for a professionally used phone.
The issue here is Security. Features are optional, security should be a priority. I wouldn’t mind if my phone stays on A13 forever, as long as it is safe to use.
Scheinbar sind wir beim FP4 jetzt bei einem 2 monatlichen Zyklus für Sicherheitsupdates angekommen…
Yes as officially described
For FP5 there was no June update and right now I’m on the July 5th patch so that’s not what I would call a monthly release schedule.
This needs to improve.
June SPL releases in June
August,SPL released in August
so you/your provider? is not up to date
