Fairphone announced today on twitter that the FP3 will get seven years of updates.
Source : Fairphone 3 gets seven years of updates, besting every other Android OEM | Ars Technica
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It is already running an end-of-life and insecure kernel.
Not to mention the vendor support from Qualcomm is dead or near so afaik.
Unless they have plans on actually updating beyond Linux 4.9, this is meaningless fluff.
edit: For what it is worth the team did actually do a great job on extended support for FP2, they did many many kernel backports to 3.4 which I myself directly reused applied to all other devices.
They also did remove vendor blobs with known security issues where possible (see the ALAC decoder).
But I wish they called it what it really is: extended support not the implied full support.
Ars Technica is putting it a bit flattering. Fairphone only reiterated today what they already said in an their April press release
Both models [the FP3 and the FP3+ are guaranteed to continue to receive software support until
at least August 2024. However, Fairphone aims to support the phones for even longer, until 2026.
The wording on Twitter (that Ars Technica refers to, see below) today was actually a tad bit softer on the August 2024 promise, although I don’t doubt that the August 2024 target will be met as promised in April. And I also think it wasn’t a conscious change of wording from the April promise.
P.S.: I notice other outlets are interpreting the same tweet in the same way as Ars Technica does … well, everyone judge for yourself if the tweet justifies the headlines made out of it.
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when is an update not an update, or when are updates promised for seven years not worth the paper they are being announced on?
is it seven years when i get one exact update at the end of the seven years? now slightly adjust the parameters and tell me what does updates mean to you personally?
when are updates no updates in their original meaning?
Updates to Android OS ~ A14, A15, A16 etc. and security, what are you otherwise thinking of ?
Firmware updates also play a huge role in keeping your device secure. And Fairphone can’t update those.
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What is the safest ? A device with only software updates or a device with no update at all ? Yes, you can do better but something is better than nothing.
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As told on other post I think that fairphone would be choose better the conponents to be more mainline compatible. Linux 5.16 can run on fp3 with much limitation (no call/sms/SIM), Linux 5.18 is broken.