What matters is whether the majority of the market cares. Some of the most popular phones today don't have the Headphone Jack or SD card. I doubt the Fairphone business is going to live or die by the headphone jack, it will be things live price and consumer interest in their mission, which I think is probably low, sadly.
5 years of hardware support with 8 years of software support is starting to approach desktop class software updates. It would be superb going from android 13 to android 18, 19, and maybe even 20. The snapdragon should easily hold out for at least 5-6 years.
Where? I see this tidbit about a guarantee of 5 years of OS updates until 2031. That means android up to android 18 and perhaps more if possible. Considering, they supported older fairlhone devices out of vendor support. They should be able to.
Let’s talk about that industry-leading 8–10 years of Android support, which doesn’t necessarily mean 8–10 major OS updates. For now, Fairphone is promising “at least five operating system upgrades” because that is how long its weird Qualcomm chipset will officially be supported. Fairphone says Qualcomm will support that chip “until 2028” and after that, “Fairphone commits to extend support until 2031 and is aiming for 2033, giving users a total of eight to ten years of software support.”
Normal Android OS update development has a chain of custody: Google makes an Android release, then the SoC vendor, in this case Qualcomm, takes that release and integrates its drivers and proprietary code, then the phone vendor, Fairphone, adds support for the rest of the hardware and ships it. Qualcomm, in an effort to boost its profits and force an artificial upgrade cycle on the market, opts out of this process after a few years, which usually forces these devices to become e-waste. Fairphone, through a herculean development effort, has been the only Android OEM to keep going even after Qualcomm drops support.
Fairphone, through a herculean development effort, has been the only Android OEM to keep going even after Qualcomm drops support.
That seems to say that while Qualcomm will drop support, Fairphone will not. Which means that it’s very likely that the Fairphone will receive updates - including new Android OS versions - even after EOL by Qualcomm.
And given Fairphone’s history, there’s every reason to believe in their commitment.
Yeah, what they did with the previous fairphones was impressive. Updating your OS for an out of support chipset and still having it pass Google CTS was no small feat. Hopefully, other manufacturers will take a note or two and improve in a similar manner in both hardware repair and software support.
I understand the cynicism, but it’s worth looking at the details. This is not the most powerful phone on the market, but it looks very good. The price is reasonable. It is easier and less expensive to repair than anything else on the market and it comes with a much longer warranty. They appear to be serious about both minimizing their environmental impact and being fair to the workers all the way down their supply chain. Those are all significant achievements.
I don’t need a new phone right now, but I’m still tempted, just to encourage the effort. We tend to complain about all corporations being basically evil. We should do everything we can to support the ones that really aren’t.
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