Software update v1.8 temporarily postponed

Marco · December 11, 2014, 6:56pm

Hi all,

I wanted to write a personal note to all of you at the forum, as you will soon also receive an email from the Fairphone team. We have decided to temporarily postpone the roll out of update 1.8 Kola Nut. In the last day and a half, we have received a lot of feedback on the new update, its usability and the effect it had on your home screens and launcher.

Due to this feedback, we are reviewing the software update and have stopped automatically sending it out to users. If you have not yet started the update process, we recommend that you wait and do not proceed to update to v1.8 until we have fixed these reported issues. Once the new update is ready to release, we will notify you by email and we will post on this forum of course.

Don’t worry: If you have already started the update process then it’s perfectly fine to complete it. If you run into issues can use our tutorial page or the forum to help troubleshoot your issue.

We would like to express our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this updating process may have caused. Thanks for your patience as we work to improve our software update process.

Kind regards,

The Fairphone Team

From my own perspective as a FP1 owner, I am sorry some small bugs and design issues prevented a smooth roll out of the software update. I have personally seen/read a lot of positive and negative feedback in the last hours, and I know that for some Fairphone users the update works perfectly where for others it caused a lot of frustration.

If you want to give feedback that we can use for improvement please consider the following topics:

Thoughts and opinions about the new launcher and icon size in this post

For feedback on the new support tutorials please post here

If Fairphone would set up a more extended group/platform for Beta testing of updates: would you participate? Do you have clever advice on how to do it? Or tips - please reply here.

Stefan · December 27, 2014, 6:14pm

No it is not available now (late Dec. 2014). You will surely be notified, as soon as the revised update is released.

Marco · December 29, 2014, 9:09am

You will be notified by e-mail once the new update is available and it will be pushed over the air. I currently have not timeline yet, but I expect it to be a while as everything needs to start up again after christmas and new years

Cathal · December 29, 2014, 12:06pm

Thank you for the update. It is useful to know that a possible date for release has not been announced.

aexl · January 12, 2015, 10:02pm

I can still see it in Fairphone Updater. Shouldn’t it be taken out?

Chris_R · January 12, 2015, 10:08pm

No @aexl , it’s still available if people want to upgrade but the update isn’t being pushed out to phones any longer.

Hopefully there will be news about the replacement update in the coming weeks including beta testing

aexl · January 12, 2015, 10:28pm

What do you mean by “pushed out”? Do you mean the “install new version” button?
I’ve never updated and still am on 1.5. I get infos all the time about a new update. I guess this will not happen to someone who’s on 1.7, right?

Chris_R · January 12, 2015, 10:42pm

The app checks in the background for new updates and will notify people if a new update is found. It will not notify people of the v1.8 update which is what I mean by being pushed out.

In your case, it will probably be notifying you because v1.6 is classed as the latest update and this isn’t installed.

For the time being I would suggest ignoring this until the next update is available - what’s going to be shortly v1.8.1

DoraXP · January 19, 2015, 7:33pm

I have just received my Fairphone back after it had to be sent back for repair. Do I now upgrade to 1.8 or not? Is it still postponed or not? I’m confused.

1.6 is already installed.

Chris_R · January 19, 2015, 7:40pm

I would suggest waiting for the next version right now. It should be due out shortly as a beta test to make sure everything is working before being a full release

oissin · January 20, 2015, 8:27am

will the next update have a patch for the webview-bug : http://thehackernews.com/2015/01/hacking-android-mobile-vulnerability.html

mohonk · February 10, 2015, 10:21pm

Any news on the update? What’s the current timeline?

Stefan · February 10, 2015, 10:42pm

At the moment we are in the phase of beta testing.

Lionel_Licini · February 12, 2015, 8:47am

hi, Is there some possibilities to repair domage of last update even if new version is in test ? I have several important bugs until I try to install 1.8. Not access to play store, bug on screen zoom which make very complicated to write some messages, vocal transcription not available, … please help !

anon12454812 · February 12, 2015, 2:59pm

And if users feel like joining the beta program, feel free to sign up!

Stefan · February 13, 2015, 11:19am

Maybe these bugs are actually repaired by 1.8.x. You are having various troubles here, and I am sure, some of them have already been discussed here on the forum. So in the meantime, you could use the search function of the forum (little magnifying glass above) and research your specific problems.

tin · February 26, 2015, 8:58pm

Beta testing? I never got a message about that. Why?

Stefan · February 26, 2015, 9:13pm

There was no mail sent. It was only announced on the forum. But maybe you can still apply.

tin · February 26, 2015, 9:31pm

Well - after the “update 1.8” there was a big discussion in the forum and there I asked about a beta test which wasn’t done with this update. So I recommended to make such a beta test for the next release. But it is going on now and I doesn’t participate - that’s pretty bizarre.