November 26, 2021
Fairphone recently announced that it will ship Android 10 for Fairphone 2, a six-year-old device originally intended for Android 5.
Six years of comprehensive updates are extremely rare in Android, with more mainstream Android OEMs like Google and Samsung only offering support for a maximum of three years. Fairphone is pretty tiny compared to established brands, but it beats the giants when it comes to updates.
The Fairphone 2 uses a Snapdragon 801 SoC, and Qualcomm only supported this chip until Android 6. In the absence of Qualcomm support, Fairphone sought help from the Lineage OS Android community to upgrade the device. Fairphone still does all of Google’s CTS testing and officially licenses the Play Store, a stark difference between Fairphone and an aftermarket ROM.
As far as timing goes, the beta program of Android 10 for Fairphone 2 works perfectly and is ready for a final release in “early 2022.” Fairphone also started this week with Android 11 beta testing for the Fairphone 3 and 3+.
Along with Apple, Fairphone is the only other smartphone brand that offers long-term smartphone support to users. While Apple is a multi-trillion-dollar giant with unlimited resources, Fairphone is proof that every OEM is able to provide long-term support if it really want to.
For more information, you may view the original story from Arstechnica.
