Fairphone’s approch is not to trick people who don’t care to buy a fair phone anyway, but to get people to care.
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obviously that’s not what I said. But I know that it’s hard to listen when you have different point of view
- Although the FP2 has quite “old” hardware and software, it is still perfectly usable for everyday use. The user interface is smooth and not stuttering, and you can still use your favourite apps as most app developers did not abandon Android 6 yet.
- Many people use even less powerful hardware and older software. My mother still uses her Android 4.2 phone with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB internal memory (which is painful today). Old Samsungs are a common sight, too.
- Porting the new Android versions to the FP2 hardware is hard work as the SoC vendor (Qualcomm) abandoned the hardware. Fairphone decided not to skip Android 7 as they found that porting Android 8 is much harder and more time-consuming than porting Android 7. After they successfully released and stabilized Android 7, they will look whether and how they can port Android 8.
- If you are anxious for Android 8, you can install a preliminary version of LineageOS 15.1.
- Updating the hardware is hard work, too. You have to look for a SoC which is not abandonded after a short time and which you can use with the auxiliary modules of the FP2, you have to develop the new main module around the SoC and have to test if all works fine.
- Updating the SoC means that you have to maintain software for two platforms, so it is advised to update the hardware as seldom as possible.
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.Is it stable enough for everyday use? If not, “preliminary” fits there.
Short answer: LineageOS is stable enough.
Long answer:
“Preliminary” implies some beta version, or that something different (supposedly better) is coming later on … which was the case as long as the Fairphone 2 port of 15.1 was in the testing phase and not ready for official builds by the LineageOS project.
For the port to become official, however, it had to meet certain criteria, two of which are …
After a port becomes official, it gets updated every week with automatic nightly builds, and this is the real catch here.
Conceptually, automatic nightly builds of course can’t be considered as stable as Fairphone’s OSes with their official beta tester program.
But in the end in practice Fairphone’s OSes have bugs just as LineageOS does, and Fairphone as well as the LineageOS community do their best to fix them.
But the nightlies of LineageOS are just the way the LineageOS project operates, they are not a preliminary thing before something else comes along.
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I’d say it works much better than FP (Open) OS. Sure, you have to accept that issues caused by upgraded hardware take longer to fix. E.g. users with the new camera module still have to use a workaround to turn off the phone completely - normally it would just reboot. Other than that there are no issues and e.g. security updates always come regularly even if an upgrade is coming soon…
It’s worth to note that this particular bug is not a LineageOS thing, it currently is an Android newer than 6 thing on the Fairphone 2, as Fairphone’s Android 7 beta suffers from this, too.
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I have my doubts, that you will get an (semi)official answer on the phone.
There is a statement by Bas van Abel, if I recall it correctly, that FP right now is focusing on the FP2, as they have spent lots of money on the development and programming. Yet he sees the need to come up with a new phone, but he can not tell, when and what kind of phone it will be.
I agree with you insofar, that it will be hard to convince someone right now, to buy a new phone at more than 500,- Euro that runs Android 7 (someday soon 
) and has hit the market more than 2 years ago. Most of the competitors from two years ago are by now discontinued and there are so many shiny new devices out there offering way higher specs than the FP2.
It really takes quite some idealism to buy into FP2 now.
Speaking for myself, the specs were always secondary, as - even up to now - my old Sony Ericsson from 2006 is working fine for making calls and receiving mails. And I switched to Fairphone only to make that project a success. My FP1 definitely still suits me fine.
But I am well aware - of course, that’s not how most people see it.
Still:
Fairphone can hardly adopt the fast paced model changes of the phone-industry without sacrificing it’s core values.
Regarding your understandable critics, this means, that a new FP model might attract idealists as well as those people that don’t care about kids in Africa, but like to follow the trend or the design. (Although I really have my doubts, that this kind of customer is willing to pay the higer price that comes with fairness and social responsibility.)
Once the phone is two years old, it might be attractive for idealists only again. But maybe or rather hopefully some of those non-idealists, having bought the phone while it was new, are convinced of the concept by then.
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Please don’t lose yourself in too detailed discussions about hard and software. If i red
I thought there was a bad decision making in terms of longevity. But it is what it is, deal with it!
The community (me included) is very tolerant with the “little issues” of fairphone, which are countless.
@demetrio pointed to a blind spot. That’s a gift @paulakreuzer . You should be grateful but you put him down. Take the feedback from the community and carry it to your decision makers!
I am an idealist. I am one of the first 17000 FP2 users. But after a little bit more then 2 years the phone is nonfunctional and i am not going to pay twice the price for worse hardware, outdated software and a really bad battery performance again.
Even idealism has an EOL!
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If fact, by choosing Qualcomm over Mediatek for the SoC, Fairphone gained a lot in terms of longevity between FP2 and FP1. Basically they already remedied the bad decision they did for the first model.
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To clarify: @paulakreuzer, same as the other community moderators, doesn’t work at Fairphone. We aren’t employees.
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It is very annoying that you (once again) moved my post to a new topic. The purpose of my post, that you DECIDED to overlook (because I clearly said it several times), was to have an answer from someone who work at FAIRPHONE. This is why I originally made my post below a post from the social media manager. I actually didn’t want suggestions on how to convince people to buy a Fairphone from the community.
Your work as moderators is definitely disrespectful.
I agree that Android 6 or 7 currently isn’t the point where we should decide if the phone is outdated or not. The hardware is still totally fine for everyday use, too. What I see as a problem is that if you buy a FP2 today you already lost about 2.5 years of potential support by the company, so chances are lower for keeping it as long as possible in case hardware components fail. According to the life cycle assessment of the FP2 it looks like they consider a 5-year “repair” scenario, which I assume is a lifespan of 5 years including a few repairs. Together with a price that is still the same as when it was released (which is probably because there has never been a big profit margin on it, so I do understand it) it is hard to recommend it today except for the idealistic reasons - unfortunately.
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This is a community forum. If you have a question for the company, you’ll have to contact them.
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Come on, he obviously knows that.
Still there are some FP employees regularly active on this forum.
So there is nothing wrong with trying to get in touch with them or “using” them to raise awareness for something with the company FP, that is still small enough to consider this a realistic way. And answering to a posting results in a notification, that someone has answered. If that answer is moved, it’s kind of breaking the chain, and you have to be curious to follow the moved posting.
@demetrio
You can try to address FP employees the way I am doing right now with you; just add the name with an “@” as prefix and this person will be notified. Obviously you then should at least add an explanation, why you “invited” this person, like “I think you at FP should know about this issue” or the like.
And you can, of course, always try to contact someone using the pm-function of this board.
How successful any of this is, I have no idea, as I do not work with FP.
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That was obvious, but as was said before me, they do answer sometimes directly on the forum. This was what i was trying to reach.
Fortunately you and some others, do not understand anything rather than “wow FP is sooo great”. It is like a fan-forum of Apple. Nothing more nothing less.
Since is like talking with a wall, I leave you with your blind happiness. Farewell.
Can we please com back to an objective conversation?
Thank you.
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Experience tells us that the community steps in when the company fails to provide spare parts.
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And to improve these circumstances, I talked on my visit in Amsterdam with @Monica.Ciovica about repairing the peripheral modules. This would be also a community effort to tighten meshes in the net to secure the spare part availability.
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