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I'm writing this message from a Fairphone 2 released in 2014 with Android 5, now updated to Android 10 thanks to the company still providing support for it 7 ye

I'm writing this message from a Fairphone 2 released in 2014 with Android 5, now updated to Android 10 thanks to the company still providing support for it 7 years later. And it has a Qualcomm snapdragon. A small company in the netherland is successful doing it. If Google wanted they would have done it. They just don't want. ps the Pixel 3 is also supported by Ubuntu Touch.

BobbyJo 5y ago
TBF, Qualcomm is probably asking a lot more from Google than from a small company in the Netherlands.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Iolaum 5y ago
  IIRC they are probably doing it without Qualcomm. In a similar way to the way LineageOS devs port devices to newer versions. I decided to take a risk with them and buy FP4 to support them.
nextos 5y ago
Yes, but another conclusion from this is that we will miss PCs when they are gone. A sane architecture means support is much easier. I've used low power PCs that were more than one decade old, and I could still run the same well supported software as in a newly built machine. Some regulation is needed to stop this madness. We don't have enough resources to let everyone trash their phones every three years. Rare earths are scarce, not to talk about all the junk going to landfills.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  PCs only happened because Compaq managed to screw IBM and with it created the clone market. Had IBM been able to prevent it (and they did try with PS/2 and MCA when the courts failed), there wouldn't be PCs as we know it, rather like every other 16 bit computer of the time.
kevincox 5y ago
There is an important distinction between promised lifetime and actual lifetime. For example if a CPU instruction-level issue was discovered Fairphone would have no way to fix that without microcode updates. This means that a vendor can't guarantee security updates for longer than Qualcomm will offer low-level support. However the discovery of an explotable instruction 3 years after release is quite unlikely and as far as I am aware hasn't occured so presumably Google *could" continue updates in this case. Of course there is still consumer expection issues. If phones are usually supported for 5 years even though they only promise 3 you might feel cheated if your particular model has to stop at 3.5 years. There is also the option of ignoring the CPU vulnerability but continuing other security updates. However trying to explain this to users is incredibly difficult. Even if you can get their attention you have to explain the impact of being able to break out of the app sandbox to them.
- phh 5y ago
  Have we put all our computers in a trashcan since rowhammer?

BobbyJo 5y ago

TBF, Qualcomm is probably asking a lot more from Google than from a small company in the Netherlands.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Iolaum 5y ago
IIRC they are probably doing it without Qualcomm. In a similar way to the way LineageOS devs port devices to newer versions. I decided to take a risk with them and buy FP4 to support them.

nextos 5y ago

Yes, but another conclusion from this is that we will miss PCs when they are gone. A sane architecture means support is much easier. I've used low power PCs that were more than one decade old, and I could still run the same well supported software as in a newly built machine. Some regulation is needed to stop this madness. We don't have enough resources to let everyone trash their phones every three years. Rare earths are scarce, not to talk about all the junk going to landfills.

pjmlp 5y ago
PCs only happened because Compaq managed to screw IBM and with it created the clone market. Had IBM been able to prevent it (and they did try with PS/2 and MCA when the courts failed), there wouldn't be PCs as we know it, rather like every other 16 bit computer of the time.

kevincox 5y ago

There is an important distinction between promised lifetime and actual lifetime. For example if a CPU instruction-level issue was discovered Fairphone would have no way to fix that without microcode updates. This means that a vendor can't guarantee security updates for longer than Qualcomm will offer low-level support. However the discovery of an explotable instruction 3 years after release is quite unlikely and as far as I am aware hasn't occured so presumably Google *could" continue updates in this case. Of course there is still consumer expection issues. If phones are usually supported for 5 years even though they only promise 3 you might feel cheated if your particular model has to stop at 3.5 years. There is also the option of ignoring the CPU vulnerability but continuing other security updates. However trying to explain this to users is incredibly difficult. Even if you can get their attention you have to explain the impact of being able to break out of the app sandbox to them.

phh 5y ago
Have we put all our computers in a trashcan since rowhammer?