Fairphone is marking the public release of Android 10 for the Fairphone 2 with a question: “Why are we the only phone manufacturer to provide software support for an Android phone that’s only seven years old?”
We’d like to invite you to join us for a live webinar and panel discussion on sustainable software.
Panelists include:
Agnès Crepet, Head of IT and Software Longevity at Fairphone
Erik Poppe, Right to Repair member and Researcher at the Technical University Berlin and Fraunhofer Institute,
Dr. Daniel Köster, Official LineageOS Maintainer for the Fairphone 3
Erik Albers, Digital Sustainability Programme Manager and Communication Senior at the Free Software Foundation Europe
Tickets are available from today. They are free, but limited. If you’d like to join, reserve your spot here.
Is it possible to ask questions during this webinar? The biggest question from me would be, how can you support a phone longer than Qualcomm is able to provide security fixes? At that point I suppose it becomes a best effort thing. Without the support of Qualcomm a huge gap is created in R&D in terms of security improvements/fixes. I don’t see how the Fairphone can fill that gap. Monthly updates usually have an impressive list of fixes from Qualcomm. It would be an illusion that those security problems stop when Qualcomm pulls out.
...Fairphone is gathering a panel of experts **to discuss** underlying forces that drive the continuing decline in the longevity of phones.**
About this event ...
I’m not meaning to say this rhetorically, just to make sure: You might not know that Qualcomm stopped supporting the FP2 chip almost four years ago. Fairphone released the upgrades to Android 7, 9 and 10 (upcoming) for the FP2 without Qualcomm support, and these as well as updates in between included security fixes. So it’s not a first.
CVEs are indeed included in monthly updates, but they also include Qualcomm chipset fixes for e.g. WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. I don’t see those included, I did not check them all. I checked some randomly, they seem to be the regular monthly fixes that are included by Google.
By the way, good to know questions can be asked from the public. A panel discussion usually is just a discussion between the panel members. Looking forward to ask this question, because it’s one of the reasons I take the long support with a grain of salt.
These fixes are included in basically every monthly update, so if it was moved upstream to the kernel, we would see more things like that. Would be nice if it was in the kernel. Would make things easier for everyone (except Qualcomm).
A little reminder that there are still some spots left. If this topic interests you, please join us!
The benefit of joining is that you’re able to ask questions and be part of the experience. If, however, you are interested but are not able to join at the time…not to worry. I will share the link of the recording in this topic. We’ll also do a shorter highlights video for our YouTube channel too!
