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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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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For their existing devices, they didn't even provide the monthly security updates and major version versions on the normal schedule when the devices were supported.
All they provided beyond norm is hacking together major version upgrades without the security patches years late.
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twitter.com/DanielMicay/st
I don't this this deserves to be lauded and referred to as industry leading. They should have shipped Android 9 in 2018, not 2021. It was their own choice to ship outdated hardware on day one and they haven't shipped half of the privacy/security updates.
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Replying to @DanielMicay and @0_steve_1
Fairphone 2 came out in 2015. Android 9 is from 2018. Them updating to Android 9 in 2021 is really just doing 3 years of support very badly rather than having 6 years of updates as they want to portray it. It's a failure, not a success. Makes no sense. Compare to iPhones...
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I just don't get how shipped it 3 years late results in them getting lauded for provided 6 years of updates, especially when the privacy/security updates are largely missing. Those are an important baseline and then you worry about the major version upgrades afterwards.
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If privacy/security updates are months late or half of them never get shipped after 1-2 years of launch, that's a serious problem. If major version upgrades are 3 months late, that's not a big deal, and some users would even prefer it. Each major release gets 3 years of updates.
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i.e. a device could launch alongside Android 12 and do 3 years of major updates to Android 15 and then 3 more years of privacy/security updates (making it 6) based on Android 15. They'd ideally ship 16, 17, 18 but it's not mandatory to ship most of the privacy/security bug fixes.