A new software update is available for Fairphone 4 users.
Software Version: FP4.FP40.A.142.20220628
Security Patch Level: 5th of June, 2022
List of changes:
Camera tuning update
The network compatibility for several carriers has been enhanced.
The update size is 535.06 MB for those who update from the latest software version.
Please note:
Together with our partners, we test the software before its release, and in some instances where a software update might result in some problems for users on a specific network or in a specific country, we prefer to delay the software release for that specific customer base and fix all the potential issues before making the software available to everyone.
That means that depending on your network provider, some Fairphone 4 users may receive this update later. Once the update is available youāll receive a push notification to automatically update.
500+ MB? Thatās a big one, about 5x the usual size. Is this changelog really just those two listed points? Mine is by the way 529MB, maybe it depends on the carrier?
As you certainly know, the security patches released monthly together with the Security Bulletin by Android are not the same every month; actually, because of their nature, they can be very different and touch totally different components.
As a result of this, sometimes the building mechanism is able to calculate a delta between the previously released package, sometimes not.
So, in essence, the size of security patches can vary largely month by month.
On top of it, we always work ābehind the scenesā to improve the network compatibility of our devices on various networks (not only for our direct partners), by enabling certain features or changing the interaction of the device with specific networks when it is needed, and sometimes those changes can eat up quite some space in the update package.
Unfortunately, there is no way to release these improvements in a different manner or for us to reduce the size of the update package.
For what concerns the camera improvements, we are constantly working to improve the user experience and so tuning different aspects of it, for which it would be difficult to list them all (and can also be confusing for really non-technical people).
In this release, specifically, I can tell you that the team has worked hard to improve, above everything, the white balance and the auto-focus response time.
In any case, we will do our best in the future to provide a more detailed list
I noticed this already! Especially when recording a video, it doesnāt zoom in and out that much anymore. This is great! A side-note, the location information option in the camera settings was toggled off after the update.
Hereās the usual link to the ota.zip for those that need it.
Iāve wondered about that myself, I get 529MB shown as well but the ota.zips I download never match that size.
Could be due to compression, but maybe those arenāt as universal as I thought either
The big mystery behind the difference in the package size (between the published size and the actual size shown in the update notification) can be easily solvedā¦
Windows machines use a binary base, where 1 KB = 1024 bytes
Android (from version 8.0 on) uses a decimal base, where 1 KB = 1000 bytes
I will make sure the size will be effectively calculated on a decimal base from next time on
PS: I am not 100% sure about the root cause, but I strongly suspect the reason stands in the explanation above.
Kilo is always 1000 1kB is therefore always 1000 bytes (powers of 10). However, 1KiB (kibibyte) is 1024 (powers of 2). The metric system is kind of a mystery for the Americans, and indeed, some products mix these up and use 1024 as a ākiloā byte.
It also depends on what you measure. Bandwidth is always in bits (because you transmit one bit at a time). Memory (cache/RAM) is usually in powers of 2. And storage usually in powers of 10.
Iām on Linux and (at least) Plasma uses kibibyte / mebibyte as well.
Thanks for clarifying this, I just assumed Google would follow common practice, silly meā¦
The important part for me is the payload.bin inside the ota.zip I linked matches the required size and hash mentioned in the logsā¦
Itās also age-of-source-dependent! KiB is a fairly new unit: before it was invented, kilobyte == 1024 except sometimes when dealing with rotating-rust storage ā but even then, some hard drive vendors used 1024, some used 1000, and some used the one and strongly implied they were using the other to make their sizes sound more impressive (yes, this feels like fraud to me too).
And KiB still hasnāt really caught on outside fields filled with pedants like us ā elsewhere, KiB means āI thought about this and it means 1024ā, K or Kb means ābest guessā, and āmemoryā means āI have no idea what the difference is between RAM, flash, and rotating rustā. (Most people donāt.)
Oh, and Ko means youāre French or Canadian. I donāt know if thereās a KiB-equivalent for that
Very off topic but yes age and youth donāt seem to play that well.
1024 is roughly a kilobyte in terms of 2^ and for those old enough to know thatās what it meant itās accurate to within a bit.
Also back then a billion was a doubling of a million by product not sum, so a billion was a million million (12 zeros) and a trillion was a million, million, million (18 zeros).
Back then the UK didnāt use metrics a pound(Ā£) had LCFs of (2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5) providing more manual ways of dealing with cash divisions than the decimal (2,5)
Computers are very tolerant to allow decimal they āshouldā stick to binary, Oh! they do, they just put on a show.
Language changes by the second, so hardy surprising old people donāt catch up, thereās ātooā much to remember, and the young have little us or tolerenace for old language.
Out of curiosity, the camera app version hasnāt changed. Itās still version v2.0.024(02151300-01). So these changes were done at a driver level? So any camera app would benefit from this, correct?
As for the improvement in camera performance, does this also mean that third-party apps and custom ROMs can now access all cameras and use all resolutions?
That would be really important for all custom ROMs.
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