FP Security Updates need to be more frequent

My FairPhone4 shows date of last Security Update: September 5. Today’s date is November 24.
This cannot continue. I personally do not care about major OS updates like moving from Android 11 to 12. But I purchased my FP4 to use in a corporate network for a client, and their policies no longer accepts my phone using corporate resources, because the security update is too old. And they’re right.

I want to be idealistic BUT also secure.

I realize that perhaps this may have something to do with my Norwegian network provider, Telenor? I do understand that the network providers play a part in adjusting and distributing the updates, but why has this all of a sudden become a problem? It has worked relatively well so far this year.

Please advice if I need to turn to Telenor about this, if not, please let me know when the security update should be out.

Thanks.

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You run the latest version from FP, best to #contactsupport and tell them your complain.

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To know if you have received the most recent update (what you have) you can check here

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At the very least it would be useful to receive some official Fairphone communication about the state of software updates for Fairphone 4 (let alone Android 13). If there are some issues or delays, just tell us what they are. It’s hard to take this company or anything they say seriously otherwise.

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Not sure that more information always equates with reliability…still I agree FP would do themselves a favour if they would communicate a bit more, as I’m sure there are good reasons why the A12 rollout is delayed, like e.g. lockdowns in Shanghai

Its always difficult to find the best approach, I have seen other smaller companies, providing deadline over deadline over deadline and then people also question reliability.

Overall updates never came monthly for any FP and an Upgrade always took around a year after being available, so being a long term FP users, its all no big surprise for me

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We’re not asking for deadlines or promises. We just want more open communication about what’s going on and what the current state is, and whether it’s worth hanging on (like OP), or we should switch to something else. Same thing for other on-going software issues. At the moment this community seems to live on its own, separately from FP. And with the current lack of communication, all signs point to switching to something else.

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You are free to do so and there are most likely better phones out there for you.

The forum is mainly a community forum and lead by community not Fairphone. So your annoyance is mainly hitting user like you and not the company.

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All very true, this forum is community based, in that regard I understand that we are all helping each other here.

I just can’t help to wonder if FP employees don’t read it, at least to be able to communicate internally of concerns. I’d expect that at least the community manager would keep a pulse on this. And they do promote and link the forum on their website.

I suspect that like me, many here expect that the device is supported both in hardware and software,. You can’t get away with stating a commitment of full support of a hardware device with out the software, those days are long gone.

Now in fairness to FP, they are at least keeping the security updates rolling. I’m just not sure that’s exactly what is assumed to be implied by those that purchase the device.

Open communication by FP would go a very long way to resolve this challenge. And I don’t think it would take much to do.

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Open communications takes a lot of effort if it had to address the hundreds of posts on this site.

So I don’t think there is a community manger as such and as I said, the task would be daunting.

Personal problems can be addressed to support@fairphone.com This forum is for users to discuss issues whether or not they have asked for offcial help.

The other use of the site is that Fairphone can and does inform that updates have been pushed to the carriers, but there is never a post from Fairphone to say they are about to send, that would be pointless as events may change.

All the best

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Just to clarify, I said that the community manager should be monitoring the forum, not signed up to answer every question or comment. That way, one could address concerns, in a format that works like a blog post as an example.

I think we all want FP to be highly successful, change the perspective that you can’t manufacture without being ethical.

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As I said: I don’t think there is a manager with the role of reading all the topics so how could they answer the issues as you say they should ?

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There probably isn’t, but maybe there should be.
Having someone who knows what’s going on in the community and can relay that to the different teams and in turn notify us about the internals and future developments, that would just be very nice.

I mean, I read almost everything on this forum (apart from some FP2 / FP3 specific topics) and if the stats are to be believed, that apparently takes me ~1.1h/day. That incudes interacting with people, which wouldn’t be necessary to get an overview.
Seems possible to me :man_shrugging:

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Hard agree. I’ve visited several other forums in my days, and it’s not uncommon to see an official representative answering questions even on unofficial forums. I find the complete and utter lack of communication from Fairphone fairly off-putting I have to say. Google isn’t exactly communicative when it comes to their Pixel phones either, but at least you can regularly read on news sites like AndroidPolice about what’s in store for the Pixel when it comes to updates. With Fairphone all we got is speculation that Android 12 is about to drop due to the monthly security update delay.

(I’m not sure I would even call this an unofficial forum, seeing as it’s hosted under the official fairphone.com domain which makes the lack of a Fairphone community manager presence all the weirder)

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Sure this is an ‘official’ forum but not one for official support, or future software detail.

An “easy fix” for FP would be to select 3 FP Angels as community managers. The Angels are already very active on this forum and spent their time here already to answer people’s questions. The only missing link is a regular communication moment with FP itself. Maybe we can create a (sub)category or use #participate:trustedmembers for these possible community managers where they can formulate their upcoming communication with Fariphone. Then they can sent out the questions from the community to FP and then FP can respond to that in either an online meeting with the community managers or in writing.

In part we already have this. A few months ago the FP Angels had an online meeting with core people from FP where we could ask some questions and got a reply back. If we do that more frequently, then I would say this is covered.

Then again, at that time they did point out that Android 12 is aimed for Q3 or may drop in Q4. So in that sense. There was some communication. Maybe we Angels should’ve created the minutes of that meeting and then we had the official communication :nerd_face:

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I doubt its a good idea or easy to let user speak on behalf of the company without any contractual agreement from a legal/data protection perspective. Even the Forum Moderators dont speak on behalf of the company, only employees do that.

Also I think thats not a discussion to be held in public.

And for all who read this to avoid false expectations (again): a Fairphone Angel is not connected with Fairphone officially. A Fairphone Angel is just a user/community member and never speaking on behalf of Fairphone. My reposnses are my personal view and if anything goes wrong when one follows a tip, its on their own risk.

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True, it’s not in a official capacity. Just someone or a group of people that form the bridge. How that exactly would work can be different than I suggested. But someone from FP that does this is of course fine as well. But then we’re expecting someone that knows what the community is up to. That will be at a cost. I rather have FP employees work on improving their services and products. The community can filter out the highlights for them to keep the workload minimum. But these are just brainfarts :slight_smile:

apologies, I dont expect anything, please speak for you and not for us.

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Objectively speaking, if we want a community manager from FP (as is discussed here), then we need someone that dedicates time for that. That’s something “we” would expect, if someone was appointed to do so. If that’s an opinion, then that’s my own I guess.

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sure its an opinion only why would anyone here be in the position to be able to expect anything? I at least dont expect anything even if I think that it might be a good idea to improve some parts at Fairphone end. Thats a wish and not an expectiation.

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