Currently in July 2025, there are ONLY 2 Android OEMs that are promising releases of firmware blobs and binaries. Sony, with their Open Device Program, and of course FairPhone.
Google used to be part of that list, but they’ve recently announced that these things will not be released for new Pixels, instead opting to encourage to use Android’s Cuttlefish virtual device target to be used to compile, test, and development.
With that being said, how close or far is Fairphone in terms of similarity to the Cuttlefish Virtual Device? Are there issues or discrepancies that would make owning a Fairphone strictly for development beneficial for someone like me wanting to start contributing to FairPhone’s code?
I’d love to hear from any of the software developers from the Fairphone team or custom ROM developers on this. I get that testing on hardware is probably for the best to ensure functionality, but as someone based in the United States, FairPhone’s are not exactly easy or affordable to acquire, especially with uhhh… concerns about certain directions the United States have take in terms of imports 
I am new here, so I’m not 100% sure that we as users can develop and make Merge Requests to FP’s codebase, but from what I understand, we can?