Yes, my info on the Fairphone 2 is out of date, and the wiki needs to be updated, because I am unfairly criticizing Fairphone. I checked into this. Between Dec. 2019 (Nougat 7.1) and Mar. 25, 2021 (Android 9), Fairphone did not provide any OS updates for the Fairphone 2, and I saw complaints on the Fairphone forum about this. I assumed that support had ended, because Google stopped supporting Android 7.1 in October 2019, so the Fairphone 2 couldn’t get security updates.
Kudos to Fairphone for finally providing an Android 9.0 upgrade on Mar 25, 2021, and an Android 10 upgrade in Mar 9, 2022, but the troubles that Fairphone had with the Android upgrades for the Fairphone 2 actually proves my point. Of the millions of phones with the Snapdragon 800/801 chipset, the Fairphone 2 was the only phone to officially get an Android 7 (Nougat) upgrade. Its Android 9 upgrade came out 31 months after Google released Android 9. Fairphone stated:
To get to where we are today, we had to go through approximately 477,000 Google tests and pass them all in order to get the certification. That’s a huge achievement for us. Not that we were counting. Ok, we were. Wouldn’t you?
Google stopped supporting Android 9 in Jan. 2022, so again the Fairphone 2 couldn’t get security updates for several months. The Fairphone 2’s Android 10 upgrade was released 29 months after Google released it, and its support ends in Jan. 2023. Fairphone’s FAQ says:
Q: Android 10 is almost 3 years old. Why not upgrade to Android 11 or 12?
A: We started working on Android 10 in late 2020. Back then it was the obvious choice. Android 11 had just been released and the open source community was still working on making it available for a range of devices. Frankly, taking matters into our own hands when upgrading a 7 year old device, the odds of passing the hundreds of thousands of tests for GMS approval are already stacked against you. The further you get, the more difficult this process becomes. With Fairphone 2, we’re really hitting limitations with regards to video decoding tests, for example. We will not develop Android 11 for Fairphone 2. Android 10 is the last software upgrade we will do for the device.
Q: For how long will Fairphone support Android 10 by providing security updates?
A: We will continue to provide software updates for as long as Android 10 is still actively supported by Google. We aim to release 3 Android 10 version updates in 2022, after the upgrade.
Q: Why aren’t you doing another upgrade after Android 10 for the Fairphone 2? You are doing Android 11 for the Fairphone 3, so why not for Fairphone 2?
A: It has become increasingly difficult to bring newer Android versions to the outdated Fairphone 2. This is because the hardware in the Fairphone 2 doesn’t meet Google’s requirements for later Android versions. We would have loved to support Fairphone 2 beyond Android 10. We will continue our longevity efforts for our other devices.
Another important point is that the Android 5.1, 6.0 and 7.1 releases for the Fairphone 2 were based on Linux 3.4.0, which was released by kernel.org in May 2012, and the Android 9 and 10 releases are based on Linux 3.4.113, which was released in October 2016, so the Fairphone’s kernel is effectively 5.5 years old. Fairphone makes a point to say that it relied heavily on the work of the LineageOS community to do these upgrades, which supports my point that it is very hard for any of the small Android phone companies to actually provide these software updates:
Once again we’d like to thank the open source community, we couldn’t have done it without them. More specifically, we thank the LineageOS community and some of its members: Chris Hoffmann, Bruno Martins, Michael Bestas and Kevin Haggerty for their work on the Snapdragon 801.
Another point is that Fairphone must have gotten special permission from Google to use these kernels, because officially Android 9.0 only supports the android-4.4-p, 4.9-p and 4.14-p kernels and Android 10 only supports the android-4.9-q, 4.14-q and 4.19-q kernels.
For my web searches, I can find no other Android phone that approaches the Fairphone 2 in being able to support Android 5.1 through Android 10. The next best Android phones that I can find only supported 4 years of Android releases:
- Galaxy S6: Android 5.0.2 - 8.0
- Galaxy Note10: Android 9.0 - 12
- Google Pixel 2: Android 8.0 - 11
- Google Pixel 3: Android 9.0 - 12
- Motorola Moto X4: Android 8.0 - 11
Most flagships have only supported 3 years of Android releases:
- Galaxy S8: Android 7.0 - 9.0
- Galaxy S9: Android 8.0 - 10
- Galaxy Note9: Android 8.1 - 10,
- LG G6: Android 7.0 - 9.0
- LG G7 Thinq: Android 8.0 - 10
- Google Nexus 6: Android 5.0 - 7.1.1
It is very rare that these phones get a kernel upgrade. Most of them keep using the old kernel with newer versions of Android on top. This is very different from the Librem 5 and PinePhone which use recent kernels and I fully expect both of them to keep getting OS upgrades for the next decade.