What you need to know
- The Fairphone 2 has received its stable Android 10 release.
- Fairphone kicked off its public Android 10 beta in November of last year.
- The company notes that the phone has so far received 7 years of software support.
Fairphone’s mission is to build sustainable and ethical phones, and it stays true to that ethos. The company has finally released the stable version of Android 10 for the Fairphone 2 after months of beta testing.
The company calls it an industry first for an Android phone as it marks the seventh year of providing software support for a device that launched in 2015 running Android 5 Lollipop. This means the legacy phone is now picking up its fourth Android upgrade since it skipped Android 8 Oreo.
That eclipses the three or four years of updates that many of the best Android phones typically get, despite their manufacturers’ vast amounts of resources.
Today marks a big milestone for us at Fairphone. We’re celebrating the roll out of Android 10 for our #Fairphone 2. That’s 7 years of software support – an industry first for an Android device! 📱💥 How was this possible? Take a look (full video) ➡️ : https://t.co/rEUszd4WRJ pic.twitter.com/C8rYUqbCOuMarch 9, 2022
It’s essentially rare for any Android phone manufacturer to still be rolling out an OS update to its product six or more years after releasing it to the market. The only exception to that is, of course, Apple’s iPhone lineup.
Although getting an Android update that’s two generations behind doesn’t normally make you kick up your heels, it’s still an impressive feat for a device that’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset.
However, it seems like Android 10 is the last upgrade for the Fairphone 2. Fairphone’s software engineer, Bharath Prakash, noted that it would not be feasible to upgrade the device to Android 11 or 12 due to various hardware limitations and its Linux kernel version.
Fairphone’s latest move provides reassurance for anyone thinking of buying the Fairphone 4, with hopes that it’ll get the same kind of support period in the foreseeable future. In addition, the company is currently beta testing Android 11 for the Fairphone 3 and 3+.
Meanwhile, Samsung might be following suit after promising four years of security updates and three generations of Android upgrades for its recent devices. The Google Pixel 6 series is also getting 5 years of Android software updates.
Here’s hoping that this becomes the norm for the rest of the Android OEMs.
