This device is going to get at best around 2 years of proper security updates due to using an SoC launched in late 2020 with 3 years of support. They're claiming they'll be providing something they won't really be providing without doing the work for it.
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It'd be nice if journalists looked beyond marketing and press releases for evidence/substance. It's probably expecting too much. Apple has done the work to provide 6 years of proper support. Fairphone has no actual plan or intention to do it. It's not enough to want to do it...
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OEMs can provide 4 years of proper support by using the latest and greatest Snapdragon SoC and timing their device releases based on SoC generations.
Google never timed Pixel releases that way but will very likely be providing 5+ years of proper support via their own SoC now.
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Providing 2 years of delayed security updates and hacked together major version updates several years late is hardly being an industry leader.
Even Samsung does better despite having a ridiculously bloated line of phones and immense changes to the OS.
Compare it to an iPhone...
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On the positive side, Pixel 6 should result in 5+ years of proper support. Samsung could do the same if they phase out Snapdragon.
Qualcomm is unlikely to expand beyond 4 years in the near future and that only translates to 4 years of support in a phone shipping a brand new SoC.
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On what basis do you claim that they need vendor support for the SoC to provide support for the phone using it?
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They're shipping the firmware, drivers, libraries and other device support code provided by Qualcomm including proprietary and shared source code that they're not able to continue supporting themselves.
They've demonstrated they don't provide any proper extended support already.
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Work is ongoing to get postmarketOS running with the mainline Linux kernel. This will basically mean support for as long as the hardware is functional.
wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone
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A large portion of the updates are for firmware and won't be available anymore after end-of-life. Using a mainline Linux kernel doesn't imply that the drivers are actively developed / maintained either. It just means that the core kernel updates can keep being applied longer.
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