The Fairphone 2 will hit end-of-life after 7 years of updates - Ars Technica

Fairphone

It tin beryllium done. Android manufacturers tin really enactment a telephone for a sizable magnitude of time. Fairphone has announced the extremity of beingness for the Fairphone 2, which volition beryllium March 2023. That telephone was released successful October 2015, truthful that's astir seven-and-a-half years of updates.

Fairphone is simply a precise tiny Dutch institution with obscurity adjacent arsenic galore resources arsenic Google, Samsung, BBK, and the different Big-Tech juggernauts, yet it managed to outlast them with its enactment program. The full extremity of the institution is sustainability, with easy repairable phones, disposable spare parts, and agelong update promises. The Fairphone 4 has a five-year hardware warranty and six years of updates, and the company's estimation says it tin supply that. Sadly, the phones lone vessel successful the UK and Europe. The Fairphone 2 lone promised "three to 5 years" of updates, and it blew that retired of the water.

Updating the Fairphone 2 has been a immense undertaking for Fairphone, since it has mostly been doing it without Qualcomm's help. Usually, the Android update process has a concatenation of custody, wherever Google updates the Android root code, your spot vendor takes that codification and adds drivers and different binary blobs to it, past the telephone shaper takes the spot vendor codification and makes it enactment connected a peculiar device. For Qualcomm, a abbreviated enactment rhythm means it sells much chips, truthful it bowed retired of the process beauteous quickly, greatly complicating updates for Fairphone.

Enlarge / Fairphone details the accumulation Android update process, which it has had to bash without Qualcomm's assistance for that mediate "chipset software" step.

Fairphone

The Fairphone 2 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, a spot that Qualcomm ended enactment for with Android 6.0. In what is astir apt an Android ecosystem first, that deficiency of chipset enactment didn't halt Fairphone, which teamed up with LineageOS and contiguous ships Android 10 connected the 7-year-old device. That's not the newest OS successful the world, but it passes each of Google's Android compatibility tests. I'm definite determination are newer amateur releases successful the Android ROM community, but Fairphone's Android 10 physique is up to the modular of an authoritative release, arsenic opposed to the "tell maine what doesn't work" modular of galore amateur ROM releases.

Fairphone doesn't accidental wherefore enactment is ending successful March, but if it's staying connected Android 10, it was going to person to termination enactment sometime this year. Google lone supports information patches for the past 4 versions of Android, truthful adjacent Google volition beryllium shutting down Android 10 enactment soon.

If you privation to support rolling with the Fairphone 2, Fairphone says you bash truthful astatine your ain hazard since it volition soon beryllium insecure. Fairphone says it inactive has a "limited" inventory of parts disposable successful its web store, and if you nonstop successful your retired telephone earlier the extremity of March, it volition springiness you a 50 euro recognition toward a caller phone.