Isn’t android 15 about to become stable? As someone who would be interested in getting a fair phone, I that kind of makes me want to reconsider. I like getting up to date software because I hate being a year late on features
It's pretty normal for Android manufacturers to be well behind on updates. There are really only a handful that are actually reliable, the rest are pretty bad. Feature updates seem to matter less and less these days, though. You can go back several versions and not really notice any difference.
It’s pretty normal for Android manufacturers to be well behind on updates.
Samsung managed to get a workflow rolling where the lag is relatively short. Basically Pixel owners are treated as beta testers and three or so months later Samsung owners get the upgrade.
It's a bit annoying (I know I'm still not getting it on mine despite the announcements), but their handling it of major updates (performance wise) have been decent on my end. I do love my FP5, but it's a bit hit and miss according to experience I read about online. I know my experience of their headphones (the most recent ones, the wireless buds) has been horrendous but I would recommend the FairPhone personally.
Fuck features, security is the important thing here. If they are 10 (11?) months old on major systems version jumps, the fuck are they doing for monthly security patches?! A year? 18 months?
For me, the biggest drive for me when getting a phone is rapid security updates. Then, openness of the bootloader. My phone - everyone's phone - is a golden ticket to a huge trove of data about the person. Modular parts and repairability are important (and very desirable for me), but absolutely not at the cost of security.
And it's not like it's difficult to put these together. Android... 8? Set the framework for modern updates. Everything is separate and only what you need to update has to be touched, so they can be very small and quick to install. We aren't in the multi-gig full system images days, requiring full QA and deep testing anymore. Patch, ship. It's not fucking difficult!
If they are 10 (11?) months old on major systems version jumps, the fuck are they doing for monthly security patches?!
Wait, what does one have to do with the other? When a new Android version comes out it doesn't mean that the previous one stops getting security fixes. You can stay on a previous version and still be up to date on security.
They come out with all the security updates (anywhere between 2 weeks and a month after Google pushes them out). They don't wait for a feature update to push out security updates.
I get that that article is supposed to be a bunch of good things that they did about the device, but it makes me really uneasy as someone who was curious about fairphone learning that when they had an obstacle in their path they chose to just remove the feature instead of provide workarounds.
I don't personally use aod myself but it's never a good thing to add a feature to a phone and then remove the feature cold cut for better battery performance. A simple on/off toggle would have sufficed greatly like what every other phone with AOD has