Now seriously: Directly porting KitKat to FP2 is not possible. Adapting some of the interface to include features from FP1 is another story.
Actually, Iāve had had a very long conversation with one of the people who applied as testers about this very topic. She likes the interface of Fairphone 1 much more than of Fairphone 2. I had to tell her, and I also have to tell you, that porting the old Android interface to a newer version of Android does not make much sense. In general the interface of Android improves with each release and some of the features that we have had in FP1 have been made obsolete by these improvements.
When coming up with a new design for Fairphone 2, my colleagues (that was before I started working here) and Kwamecorp put a lot of thought in how to take the user experience of Fairphone 1 and gradually improve it. What you currently see on Fairphone 2 is the result of that process.
But, of course, I understand that the question of design and features is always subjective. What are your favorite features of Fairphone 1 that you miss in Fairphone 2?
No, we do not currently conduct tests with Tom Tom GO.
To get some understanding of the problem: You enable bluetooth tethering on your Fairphone and connect the Tom Tom with it. I assume data works on your phone in general. Did you test whether tethering to other devices (for instance your laptop) works?
Iām guessing you canāt really say much about this (legal/contract issues), but Iāve heard rumours that the MTK sources arenāt the most joyful thing to work with as a developer. Are you coping? Does the people team provide counselling?
Yes I mean features not the entire interface, at least I can recall the ones I really used a lot and I miss:
phone call recording: during a call if you push the menu button youāll be able to record the call, I used it a lot for work in order to take voice notes during meetings;
SIM colors! I use 2 SIMs one for work and one for private calls and the possibility to have color feedback of the calling/receiving SIM was very useful;
contacts sharing: I was able to select a contact and send its data via sms;
I have many more and honestly I was tempted to put up a build machine in order to port the functions from 4.4 to 5.1 and rebuild the FP2 image, but I had very less free time in these months
Iām pretty sure Iām not allowed to share the sources with you ā¦ however talking about my feelings when working with them should be fine
I have never asked for counselling. Maybe I should? Iām pretty sure our people team has several open ears for my complaints.
Letās phrase it like this: The rumors you have heard are not entirely baseless. The entire source tree and build systems seems to be organically grown and has several levels of indirections. This does not always make it easy for outsiders (non-Mediatek people) to quickly understand how stuff works. I believe the system is well adapted for the needs of Mediatek: There are many abstractions in place that help them manage several devices with completely different hardware configurations. On the other hand these abstractions make it cumbersome to work with if you only have exactly one phone
Hello, I test the laptop and the phone work mobile but even if you allow the Network Access Points of the mobile/laptop/Tom Tom Go the device connect cannoāt download the internet dataās or surf the web.
The crazy think is that if FP1 is connect at a wireless internet point (like at home) and donāt use the mobile dataās the tethering function very well! With the connected device I can surf on the web and download Tom Tom Go dataās.
Please consider to make a test on this problem with TomTom because I search on the forum and I discover that Iām not the only FP user that has this problem. TomTom and Fairphone are both dutch companies and is strange that the two device cannot talk each other
Whoa, I didnāt even know FP1 was able to do that.
This is something we cannot change much about: Android 5 introduced the option for apps to set the notification bar transparent or to a different color. Since then all icons in the notification bar need to be monochromatic.
When receiving calls, the interface does have different colors based on SIM. I donāt know of a way to change configure that color, though.
Yes, this only seems to work as MMS. Not much we can do about it. The share menu can only offer options that are declared by apps. If no app declares the intent to share the contact as SMS, then this is not possible. We cannot change the default SMS app. What you could try to do: Install other SMS apps. Maybe one of them offers that option.
Hi Franz, thanks for the reply. Great that youāre committed to the ongoing testing, and, no, I wouldnāt be so happy with a half-baked release.
Canāt say right now that Iād want to join a tester group, but will keep it in mind.
Look forward to the FAQ.
Thanks again.
What is the precise name/number of the device you use? Online I can find descriptions, that Tom Tom GO navigation devices connect to the Wireless Access Point that phones can start. This does not match what you describe (tethering via bluetooth).
One explanation could be that your Tom Tom can only receive data/internet when connecting to wifi shared by your phone. However, your phone is already connected to your home wifi and cannot start a wifi access point.
In any case, please give me a detailed name/version number of the Tom Tom GO and I will put it on the list of devices that do not work properly with FP1. Please keep in mind, that I cannot promise that we will actually buy such a device and test the connection.
Great to see that 4.4 is coming for the FP1.
Once released, what is the plan to maintain it? Will there be regular security updates, like for the FP2?
Is this even possible, or does Google not provide security fixes any longer?
Can you maybe elaborate a bit on maintenance plans and difficulties related to that?
Thanks!
Yes, the plan is to provide regular security updates as long as Google releases them for KitKat. As of now, this is still the case.
You already mentioned one of them: We can only offer substantial security patches as long as they are provided by Google. As long as they keep coming, the largest hurdle will be to apply these patches to the Mediatek source with all its peculiarities. To give an example, Mediatek uses several distinct source trees and overlays sources of the main Android tree with them. That makes it more work to find where to apply the patches and to apply them properly because chances are, that they wonāt apply without any conflicts.
