Subscription model to continue FP1 development

[Stefan]

@Gerry

They struggle a lot to make “KitKat” work on Fairphone 1 because the manufacturer of the SoC does not allow access to source code, but they are working hard to make it possible:

Not completely true: Fairphone does have access to the FP1 source code, but they are not allowed to publish it. In response to the other post: This also makes LineageOS near to impossible. (Someone has tried Lollipop and provides an in-depth explanation why it doesn’t work here.)

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@cschl

Bunch of standard apps are not working anymore under 4.4.2 not to mention security issues.

I’m sure you mean 4.2 because:

@cschl

4.4.4: I’m aware of all of this and am running the alpha.

…is not possible because the latest alpha pre3 itself is Android Kitkat 4.4.2.

@Douwe

A new test build will be released once 4.4.4 changes have been merged into all repositories.

Unfortunately this “test build” hasn’t been released. So at the moment there is no 4.4.4 for the FP1.

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@cschl

On a similar note, I think a project like FP should explore such a subscription systems in any case.

Fairphone is thinking about these things, as a blog post from January 2015 reveals:

A third option is to explore new business models – for example, one where ownership stays with Fairphone as opposed to individual consumers. Instead of selling the Fairphones, they could be leased and then fixed (at the end of the lease term) before being leased again in different markets.

A follow-up blog post from August 2015 gives more details to circular-economy business models. I think the latest blog post on the topic is this one from October 2016, but unfortunately it doesn’t feature information about Fairphone’s current approach. My guess is that at the moment they leave the field to the mobile operators.

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@Gerry

OK, so according to your calculation (total of EUR 500,000.00 for 60,000 phones), that would be around EUR 8.33 per phone.

I hope that my screen won’t fail me too soon! (It hasn’t needed to be replaced.) And, judging from the Market and even when FP1-users have their phones longer than average, I’m sure that there aren’t 60,000 working FP1s left.