I have to agree on the RAM (but 4GB is overkill imo, 3go would have been a good balance between price and lifespan).
You can still deactivate some apps that run in background that you don’t use (Google, i’m looking at you !), but if you are root, try Autostart (in F-droid) you can stop apps from launching at startup, thus cleaning a
bit more RAM !:))
THROWBACK : I remember on my former LG optimus 2X (wich had 512MB of RAM) i had a kernel that allowed reassignment of a chunk of the portion normally used by the GPU, it was very efficient for large multitasking
Just want to add, that I’m very interested in the FP2 but 2GB RAM is the single nogo reason for me. Right now I have a MotoX(2013) with 2GB and lately I’m experiencing effects of RAM shortage.
With apps getting more and more powerful (and bigger), in my opinion one can only claim futureproofness with at least 3+GB RAM. I would love to see 4GB in the next version …and hopefully my MotoX lasts so long.
The same here, we are second half of 2017 and FP2 is out since two years. Any news of a possibility to upgrade RAM to 3GB/4GB.
With the OS systems being upgraded and asking more memory, not to forget browsers and apps I think this will be a big issue in a couple of years.
FYI: right now I am using a galaxy mini S4 with 1.5GB for almost 4 years. It is running Android 4.4.2.
and it is starting to get on my nerves, becomes of the slowness of my device.
Usually navigating between chrome with dozens of tabs, FB, messenger, gmail, maps…
On Laptops & desktops the RAM is a separate module fitted in slots.
On a phone the RAM, CPU, GPU and Memory module is ONE single module. This is the case for all phones/smaller electronic devices as far as I know.
So to change the RAM you have to change the whole kit, and then the pins(interface towards inputs/outputs) might differ and you would have to recreate the whole phone… more or less. So it is unfortunately not a reasonable task to do. I guess if you found a module with the same inputs outputs(same CPU and all) it could work. But probably this requires too much work.
I don’t really agree. Yes, you have to redesign the mainboard. However, doing that for the FP2 would be feasible. Keeping physical and logical interfaces identical and changing amount of RAM to 3GB should be a non-issue as the Snapdragon 801 supports it,
I’m not sure if the 32-bit ARM cores on it supports 4GB though, so to go beyond 3GB a new SOC may be needed of course meaning bigger changes. Even that is not impossible in the same chassis/display/battery pile we call the Fairphone 2.
A different discussion is of course if ther’s a demand and a need to upgrade the mainboard. I find my FP2 to be quite snappy and I’d much rather see software being less bloated than just solving a clunky piece of software with more hardware. It’s not an elegant solution.
Sooner or later hardware upgrades will become relevant but I prefer consistency and would argue later is a good choice.
I agree with you, I havent done any research into this. I just stated the general work needed. But if the Snapdragon 801 supports it, thats great!
But the gain might be minimal, and as yu say, keeping SW up to date and snappy is more important.
But I fear the phone will be quite outdated come 2020(I Believe FP estimated 5 year life-span). Maybe not the OS itself but the apps surrounding it. Think security and demands on encryption(HW encryption is whats making our SOC obsolete in the eyes of google already if I understand correctly). So eventually an upgrade might be necessary, if not just a new phone.(Though I’d rather see an update instead)
But like you say, at the moment I’m happy with the speed of the phone, I swapped to Lineage OS recently and its even faster than FPOS.
I have a Motorola Moto G 2014, it has just 1 GB of RAM, and I use Firefox and Opera, each with about 100 open tabs. And it can be really slow. But that is the case only if lots of apps try to phone home to the App Store. If I use an app like “Android Assistent” and close all these apps, it is quite fast, at least I don’t experience any problems. So, the problem is not the phone itself or the RAM limitation, it is the operation system, which allows all these apps to start and occupy RAM and CPU resources. I always wonder if I see apps I have not used for month what they might do right now…
So, I think Fairphone should think about this! If the OS is modified in this way, I think we can use a current FP 2 for several more years.
I mean, I have a computer at home with a Core2Duo. 10 years old. But since I exchanged the hard disk against a SSD, I don’t notice any lack of speed anymore. (Ok, I don’t play new games which require state of the art graphics, 16 GB RAM, and so on…)
My current feeling is that this could be quite alright for 3 more years but that feeling may change of course.
I currently run Fairphone Open on mine and I have plenty of resources to spare! The only thing I wish for is longer battery life or wireless charging. But that’s a different topic.
I recently replaced my Jolla C (Snapdragon 212, 1GB) with this one and even that phone was fine with quite heavy multitasking.
I really hope and wish the Fairphone lives up to it’s long design life!
I think that it’s safe to assume that recent Android version are better in resource management than older versions. So lineageos for FP2 (Android 7.1 Nougat) will probably manage RAM and CPU better than the kitkat that runs on my FP1.
Firefox/Fennec often has to reload tabs although in many cases I only have 2 or 3 tabs open. That can become annoying when you want to copy-paste something from one tab into another…
