Kind of. Without support of the hardware manufacturers, it stays an half baked and not completely secure solution.
Thanks for let us know the why
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Iâm using Android 14 on my Fairphone 3+, available since May '24 on iodĂ©OS. They do act commercially - they sell rebranded versions of Fairphones with iodĂ©OS preinstalled.
Requirements for the certification of Android devices
https://source.android.com/docs/compatibility/14/android-14-cdd?hl=en
There are many requirements that a mid-range device from 2019 simply cannot meet!?
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They might tell you it is not possible if it is not possible. Would you prefer that they lie?
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Sorry, but I donât get, what you are trying to tell me.
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Blockquote
We wanted to give you an update on Android 14 for Fairphone 3. After extensive research, we have made the difficult decision not to upgrade the Fairphone 3 to Android 14. The legacy Linux kernel (4.9) used in the Fairphone 3 poses significant challenges for the upgrade. It currently offers limited support for Android 13, and would not support Android 14 at all. We invested considerable time and resources into exploring ways to integrate the new Android system with the existing kernel, and even contemplated upgrading the Linux kernel itself. We also engaged in discussions with Google Android Engineering. Ultimately, we concluded that these options were too complex to implement and did not offer a reliable solution for our customers. Additionally, since software support for the Fairphone 3âs chipset was discontinued in June 2021, pursuing this project would present a high risk to our Fairphone 3 users.
So, I bought my FP3+ on april 2021. The software support for the chipset was discontinued on june that year? Can you please explain how it is possible to make a sustainable phone that has discontinued support while people could buy it?
It is beyond me that this company can advertise sustainable products without the software to support it.
Blockquote
Our primary goal remains to maintain secure and reliable functionality for the Fairphone 3 for as long as possible. The Fairphone 3, launched in 2019 with Android 9, has since received three Android upgrades, excluding Android 12. The standard end of life for Android 13 is set for 2025. In line with our commitment to device longevity, weâve added one more year of security maintenance, extending it to 2026. This will provide a total of seven years of software support for the Fairphone 3, a commitment we are dedicated to fulfilling.
No. It does not fulfill your promise to have software support for 7 years. It is pretty much a blatant lie to everyone buying the FP3+ later in product life. I am not even beginning on the software updates of my FP3+ because it lags continuously behind the monthly security updates of Google. I am on the beta team and that means that Iâm pretty lucky to have the security updates before most of the people.
In hindsight: I will never have suggest this phone to anyone. I will continue to use my FP3+ but it will be the last time I will buy any of the products.
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Since the time that Fairphone started it was close to impossible to find a chipset which would have a support by its vendor for more than a couple of years. It was like that for FP1 up to FP4. Only for FP5 they found a chipset that originally was not intended to be used in a customer smartphone but rather for industrial applications which often require longer support. That has never held back Fairphone from providing software updates on top of the not anymore maintained platform. You canât solve all problems at once unfortunately, but that was the best they could do at that point in time.
On the other hand releasing a new phone every year would contradict Fairphoneâs goals, too, which is why they only do smaller updates like the Fairphone 3+. This is why the FP3(+) was in the market 1.5 years after release and you could buy it. Around the release they promised 5 years of support which youâd still have if support ends in 2026 and you bought it in 2021 (wasnât it cheaper than the original price then already?). The quoted 7 years of course count from the release and I think itâs fair to state it in that way. An additional note like âlast buyers would still get a software support of 4-5 yearsâ could of course be added.
Only in the recent years, vendors like Sony or Samsung state that they have a software support of 5-6 years - and they never add âfrom the date of purchaseâ, but this is always counting from the release on. So is 7 years unfair for a phone from a time when other vendors still offered less? Is 5 years unfair if the phone model is not brand-new when you buy it?
I understand your frustration. I was not happy with the end of the official SW support and later with the inability to update to more than Android 11 with custom ROMs for my FP2, but with all our will to act sustainably, we need to watch the boundaries of what is possible.
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This is absolutely right, and I completely appreciate the rock and the hard place that Fairphone appears to be between. However, two observations
- Fairphone didnât choose to stop software support for the SoC, Qualcomm did. So although Fairphone on their own canât change the problem at hand, the wider industry canâŠbut wonât.
- Itâs completely unacceptable from the industry to be in a position that because active support for an SoC ended, that we canât update itâs kernel anymore. A modern Linux kernel still boots on machines from 20 years ago, and only now is there some talk of deprecating the old old stuff. This inability to update the kernel is an unwanted side-effect of the downstream kernel development model that SoC vendors like Qualcomm use for their SoC support, and it amounts to planned obsolescence. Which is why Iâll keep challenging it, here and anywhere I see fit.
I honestly think Fairphone should use itâs clout to start demanding better upstream kernel support from SoC vendors for future generations of phones, and force them to reduce the downstream patches required to turn an upstream kernel into an Android kernel - so that rebasing to newer kernels becomes not just feasible but easy enough to be a routine job as part of the system updates.
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Those versions of Android do not support some security features. You canât pay with NFC, store train/metro tickets, use some banking features, use fingerprint login on some apps⊠The main official FP OS canât afford to miss those.
When you buy a Fairphone with /e/OS, iodeOS, etc⊠You know what youâre getting into. It means you did some research and chose to use that OS instead of the official one.
The vast majority of Fairphone buyers are using the official OS and didnât make that choice. You canât remove features with new updates.
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Those are mostly due to google âintegrityâ checks to ensure the device is âsafeâ from any unwanted modification.
Ofc you need to root your phone to pass it on a third party rom/old phone
which just compromise the whole security aspect of it and makes it useless in terms of safety and only makes it another way of screwing you over.
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Hello everyone,
iâm still using my Fairphone 3+, wich i bought new only a few years ago.
The concept of longevity made me pay more than i would have for a different product of similar technical possibilities.
The phone still works well, no need replace it at all.
Except Fairphoneâs annoncement of an upcoming FP3/3+ Android-Update-End 08/2026.
I canât belive this is true!
If this is the new policy, iâll never by another product by this company!
Dennis KrÀmer
And which other Android phone from 2019 is getting more than 7 years?
Btw you could change to several custom ROM to just use it longer
Edit: to not duplicate the discussion I moved your post here, as it also gived details about the reasons
Edit 2: which OEM supports a device after support for the Chipset and Android Version ends?
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Am I understanding correctly that, after that date (08/2026), FP3/3+ owners who are âsimple non-tech usersâ (i.e. nat willing/able to change OS), will be in a similar situation as Windows 10 users, who can from now decide to live without security updates and take the associated risks ? Or are there other implications ?
Unfortunately the parallel that you draw between W10 and the world of mobile phones and just about all computer hardware, is basically valid. These problems will remain so as long as thereâs no incentive for hardware designers and manufacturers, particularly of chips and SoCs, to include greater scope for modularity in their plans.
Big questions implied here âŠ
It is of topic here but I just learnt I could register for extended security updates on my PC and keep it a year longer (itâs ten years old and not compatible with Win11).
Could you elaborate on that? âNew policyâ seems like the announcement youâre referring to contradicts earlier information. But I donât see how. Of course I havenât seen/read everything Fairphone has ever stated, but if my memory serves me well they said in 2019 that theyâll support the FP3 until 2026 and what you wrote to me sounds theyâre going to deliver exactly what they promised.
As yvmuell already hinted at, the Pixel 3a, Pixel 4 and Galaxy S10 from the same year are EOL for years now. Iâm a bit baffled where you see a disappointment. From my perspective, updating an Android phone about twice as long as everyone else doesnât really fit a âtheyâve done so bad Iâll never buy anything from them againâ stance.
Edit: added the Pixel 4 as well after checking again, released in 2019, EOL three years ago
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I guess in this case one blames Windows, so why dont blaming Google to stop support for Android 13 this year? Why blaming FP?
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