There is planned obsolescence for the Fairphone 5. Five years warranty and eight years of Android updates, leading to a maximum safe life of about a decade.
Given the nature of chip and software development, by 2033 the main board and in particular the CPU will be so out-of-date as to be unusable for new features.
The phone I’m replacing with a Fairphone 5 was a flagship. Expensive and only got three years of Android updates before being declared obsolescent.
There’s nothing much wrong with it after nearly four years, except that the lack of updates means I may be at risk of unknown or known security flaws fixed in later security patches or Android releases.
I haven’t got the 5 yet of course, so we’ll see how it goes when it arrives, but I think it’s a bit rich to knock Fairphone with allegations of short obsolescence cycles when the competitors last just three years to Fairphone’s seven to ten.
Maybe the next Fairphone will allow replacement of the CPU as well, but that’s unlikely as probably half the cost of building the phone is in the main board. So it’s unlikely many customers would stump up the cost of a new board - probably costing more than a new phone after five years or so.
Hardware obsolescence is a feature of Moore’s Law, which says CPU capability will double every two years. Proposed in the 1960’s it’s held true ever since, but is thought to be near to coming to an end with physics limits as integrated circuit lithography reaches down to 5 nanometers. So it’ll be interesting to see what effect the end of Moore’s Law has on phone obsolescence.
It seems to me unlikely progress to yet more powerful units will simply stop though. Maybe the Fairphone 10 will aim for 20 years or lifetime support? 