iPhone 6s is the longest officially supported phone, 7 years of full software support, but what about Fairphone 1?

And will FP3 break the record? iOS is a relatively safe OS on its own since it is closed source and Android is open source so I guess that makes it easier to support it. While Android is aging phones too quickly.

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You may read some here about Fairphone and it struggling with longevity. But this forum keeps much more on this issue, feel free to use the search option.

Fairphone 2 suffers from these missing “blob” files from Qualcomm which is why some features went lost since the upgrade to Android 7 (e.g. switch off sim cards by software option). I guess up to now it’s not yet clear for how long Qualcomm will supply these drivers for the Fairphone 3 chipset. In the past I could also read that’s even worse with Mediathek.

Which actually is a major business concept Fairphone tries to shift.

Generally spoken yes if there wasn’t the need for the chipset drivers which mainly are supplied by the chipset manufacturer which of there are only a few.
There are different other Android based OSes for the Fairphone like /e/, LineageOS and more. But afaik they all have their own way of solving the dependency on the afore mentioned “blobs”.
Same game for the Fairphone 1 and in addition different manufacturers stated not to manufacture or hold on to some aged parts which unfortunately were needed for this phone. This discussion about Fairphone having to drop support for the initial model was going on here as well.
It again shows how troublesome Fairphones path was until now.

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The discussion around the FP1 is really an old and in my eyes quite obsolete hat and I‘m really wondering what the purpose is to open this discussion over and over again? Also I think you can neither compare Apple and Fairphone as a company nor can you hardly compare iOS and Android. The FP2 is now around 5.5 years old and many devices still work fine for many users and I’m optimistic many will still work in 1.5 years.

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I never seen this discussion and I never use search as I do not like necroposting. You must be ancient forum dweller who lost track of time. But things change, things move, people die, people born, new ideas come, old ideas go, earth is no longer flat and is not the center of the universe and no thought police is knocking on your door for having an opinion, so why not ease off the trigger.

What do you mean by a blob? I think fairphone should partner with those who share their vision, even if they have to make certain sacrifices, the approach has to be holistic. Is Android and Qualcomm that type of partner? Otherwise what’s the point? Money is of course the elephant in the room, but then again the road to hell is paved with good intentions, more money is not always a solution.

jump to “binary_blob”

No, but it is the least bad solution without having to redo everything to get a usable device.

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Fair enough. First day I joined my gut feeling told me that fairphone is a template company, too small to have any impact.

Only a template company is not right, Fairphone bends Android with a crowbar to fit the Fairphone 2.

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I think personally Fairphone will not break the record, because they say they deliver 5 years of support and I think it is not a big problem. When you have a IOS smartphone you have way bigger problems when your device is outdated and with the android treble project and custom roms you can get longer then 7 years of new android versions. So FP3 will not break the record I think except when you are tech heavy and can flash a rom. A FP is a low/mid end phone so i think it should not help in any way, because the phone will have too low specs over 7 years

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Few people will flash rom, few people can, and there are apps that will not work on flashed phones for security reasons. My bank app wouldn’t work on a flashed phone. Manufacturers simply have to provide longer support, simple as that. And so far iPhone is leading, although it is a big company like Samsung, Samsung phones just like Pixel receive only 4 years of security updates. This is like the disarmament issue, all parties have to agree that this is the right way. And other brands are in the world of their own… as far as I know Sony provides only 2 years of software updates, but might extend to 3 years for flagships.

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