
A tiny smartphone company just brought a new Android version to a 2015 device - Vinnl
https://www.androidauthority.com/fairphone-2-android-9-1129547/
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Abishek_Muthian
Kudos FairPhone for sticking to its ideals.

I would sincerely suggest FairPhone team to look into officially supporting
pure Linux OS (PostmarketOS, PureOS, Ubuntu Touch) both from consumer/business
perspective.

Because, those who are ordering Librem5/PinePhone are doing it for
open/ethical/privacy features offered by the pure Linux ecosystem; but the
hardware being used is far from that philosophy (Although Purism team seem to
have taken great effort in choosing vendors).

Fairphone Linux phone would fill in the need gap nicely!

~~~
ar0
There is the officially supported /e/OS Fairphone 3:
[https://esolutions.shop/shop/e-os-
fairphone-3/](https://esolutions.shop/shop/e-os-fairphone-3/)

Granted, /e/OS is not the same as one of those "pure Linux OS" options
mentioned above, but it is open source and privacy-focused.

~~~
owenversteeg
Does anyone here have one of these? I'd love to hear about someone's day to
day experience using one.

~~~
raffraffraff
Using the fp3 right now. It's great.

I had the fp2 previously. The experience wasn't great but it was cool to demo
it to people... Like turn it off and take it apart in about 15 second. They
sold a camera upgrade for about 25 bucks, and a replacement battery was around
the same. The battery was pretty shit, but if you format your internal and
external cards, replace the battery every year and use the open OS without all
the Google crap, it lasts a day easily, even if you're oncall. That phone is
rock solid and still works after many years of use, so it's my backup. But it
doesn't perform great, doesn't have nfc.

The fp3 is a different story. Bigger screen, much better battery, same camera
as the pixel, nfc. I get 2 days of battery life out if it. I'm not really sure
what else people need from a phone. The fact that it's repairable is huge for
me. After I dropped my new HTC M8 into water for a split second and then had
to watch buzz to death, taking my photos and videos with it, I swore that
never again would I buy a phone that didn't have a removable battery.

------
garysahota93
This is amazing! I used to flash custom roms on phones back in college 5+
years ago, which was awesome. Would even charge friends for it. I think
there's something here & makes me want to buy the Fairphone 3 even more now.

------
bserge
Thanks to the mentioned LineageOS team (and many other developers at XDA
forums) this otherwise "enormous undertaking" is relatively easy.

Android 9 works flawlessly on many SD 801 devices. I believe it's the last
version of Android to see such active development on this 32-bit SoC.

I've just installed it on my old HTC (which was also stuck at Android 5 and
apps last updated ~2 years ago, even the autocorrect stopped working), and
it's surprisingly usable.

Increasing the minimum CPU frequency and boost time makes it feel much
snappier, and everything works as it should, even Google Assistant with
hotword activation. Some overclocking should provide even better performance,
but it would likely need a new battery.

~~~
fgeiger
Fairphone employee here.

> Thanks to the mentioned LineageOS team (and many other developers at XDA
> forums) this otherwise "enormous undertaking" is relatively easy.

You would think so. In fact, we also thought so, when we had started our work
on Android 7 for the same device a while ago.

Unfortunately, it shows that Lineage OS is by and for tech enthusiasts. There
are several issues that break using this for production devices. There are a
lot of stability issues that that the regular Lineage users put up with
because they care more about the control they get than stability. However, the
same instability is prohibitive for releasing this to regular less tech-savvy
users.

The worst problem, however, is that the Lineage OS community only develops and
tests with "userdebug" builds. Unfortunately, regular "user" builds don't even
compile and if they do, they do not run properly. That has huge security
implications (SE Linux rules, root access, etc) that we could not ignore.

That being said, having the work of the Lineage OS community available did
give us a leg up. Open Source is great.

~~~
Vinnl
Thanks for your work on keeping up maintenance of the Fairphone 2! And of
having made Fairphone Open available on it; I know usage is probably not high
enough to make it happen for the Fairphone 3, but with Fairphone Open
available I had no reason at all to consider Lineage, and the peace of mind it
gives me is way beyond what I expected when I first installed it.

~~~
fgeiger
Thank you for your kind words.

It is true that we do not have an Open alternative for Fairphone 3 yet. I
don't know if we will ever release one. However, I truly believe that the
cooperation with the /e/ foundation [1] gives our users an even better option.
/e/ do a much better job at providing a good open source OS than we could ever
do because for us it always was and would be a side project.

1:
[https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP3/](https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP3/)

~~~
Vinnl
Yep, I was a little worried about the /e/ account and all that, but after
reading someone else's account here, that sounds like it might fulfil the same
goal for me, so that's something to look forward to.

But only after my FP2 dies, of course. Which hopefully won't be anytime soon.

------
jbverschoor
iOS 13 is supported on a 2015 device, the iPhone 6S

~~~
fgeiger
Apple does a much better job in keeping devices alive for longer than Android
OEMs in general. Having full control over hardware and software and focusing
on few devices helps there.

In Android land, this is unfortunately different. Longevity stands and falls
(mostly the latter) with the (lack of) support of the chipset vendors such as
Qualcomm and Mediatek. If they stop supporting a chipset, all devices built on
them can not be properly supported anymore.

Just think of all of the unreported and unfixed hardware and software
vulnerabilities in proprietary components. It is impossible to maintain a
device without the chipset vendor's involvement. Apple, on the other hand, is
its own chipset vendor.

The Android supply chain needs a drastic make-over to come anywhere near that.

~~~
ryukafalz
I really think the only way forward long-term is to build on hardware with
mainlined drivers. This is so far outside the norm in the mobile ecosystem
though that it's a huge uphill battle to get something working even passably.

Purism and Pine64 have made great strides in that regard though.

