> neither will their own Motorola whenever they get around to actually making it Source: You made it up A quick search would basically disprove everything after your first sentence.
It's a reasonable extrapolation of the current state. They want up to date patches, Google is already winding down open support for that, and it'll release in what, a year or two? Basically guaranteed to have outdated security patches on launch or they'll have to start maintaining their own. Might happen, but it seems unlikely they can hack it, as it were.
this is 100% in the hands of the SoC manufacturer. Android versions are locked to kernel versions, which are locked to binary drivers to run your hardware. there's no way around that and you can't reverse engineer or do anything if you want that SoC vendor to continue to fulfill your orders (which you're already at the bottom of the fulfilment list because of low volumes)
If this were genuinely 100% a Qualcomm limitation, I'd expect every Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 phone to be similarly stuck. But Motorola's Edge 70 Fusion uses the same SoC and was already in Android 17 beta testing in February, and Nothing's Phone (4a) and OnePlus Nord CE 6 are also slated for Android 17. So it seems the SoC isn't inherently preventing Android 17.
SoC vendor (and correcting myself, every componet vendor, such as camera, touch screen, flash controler, etc) must make the drivers available TO YOU to ship to your customers. picking out binary blobs and reusing is what grapheneos does, and ia highly frowned uppon and will get you blacklisted
There are devices meeting these basic standards right now, and the entire family of them, no less. GOS are vocal about safety and security of all the devices, not just seriously insecure Fairphones, and this article is about something different altogether, that's misinformation they've been hit with several times. Fair criticism is fair, but yours is fabrications.
I've always been a bit curious about Fairphone, but as I only get phones that cost less than $200 (and use them until they physically break), I'll probably never get one.
Still only on my second smartphone, so I'm not worried about producing more e-waste.
If this were genuinely 100% a Qualcomm limitation, I'd expect every Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 phone to be similarly stuck. But Motorola's Edge 70 Fusion uses the same SoC and was already in Android 17 beta testing in February, and Nothing's Phone (4a) and OnePlus Nord CE 6 are also slated for Android 17. So it seems the SoC isn't inherently preventing Android 17.
it's not that simple to promise 5 year of security updates your SoC needs to also have that support for that time frame + part of your developmeant/production time (as you can't the last steps of development/production before that chip is released). Lastly you need to add the duration during which you promise the 5 years security updates. to put it simple for a 5 year guarantee you need ~8 better 10 year support for…
That sounds horrible. I can understand why Apple makes their own chips with the practices that these SoC manufacturers are getting away with.
Perhaps the EU can step in and force these SoC companies to change their way of working so that a user can simply install Android 17 with a few clicks regardless of their hardware (to a point). Like how desktop computers work.
Are ya'll really repairing your phones? I replace mine when it can't run Google Maps smoothly anymore. After 4-5 years, on every phone I've ever had, user interactions begin to lag noticeably. Apps launch much more slowly. Intense graphical apps like maps become frustrating to use. At some point I can't take it anymore and replace the phone, long before its physical parts or battery have worn out.
Genuinely, how do you make your phone so slow? I've been using my s10 for 7 years, and besides the minor crack in the corner of the screen from being dropped, and constantly juggling storage because I hoard media, it works as well as it did when it was new.
The recently released Fairphone 6+ runs on Android 16. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, their website doesn't even clearly state that. Android 16 is 14 months old at the moment. Android 17 was released to manufacturers 6 months ago and had a general release 2 months ago. So why does a brand new phone run an operating system from over a year ago? Does it really take over 6 months to update a phone to a new version…
I belive you are mistaken. Android 17 final was "released" 6-7 weeks ago.
But Google being Google, this release is pretty much useless until Samsung et al deal with all bugs and performance issues, which will take 2-4 months.
Happy FairPhone 4 user here. Running 3+ years, only replaced the battery once. Aim to keep it 7-10 years, barring unforeseen events like theft. Not going to replace it just because a newer model is released.
I've been running mine for ~4ish I think, on my third battery and might run out my fourth because it's feeling a _little_ sluggish at times. I am waiting for the next FP model where I can use a USB-C/dp external display and then I'm all over it.
That's a lot, I usually use old phones from family members, most of them have 4 years of use by the time I get them and I get a whole day of usage from the battery.
Happy FairPhone 4 user here. Running 3+ years, only replaced the battery once. Aim to keep it 7-10 years, barring unforeseen events like theft. Not going to replace it just because a newer model is released.
I've been running mine for ~4ish I think, on my third battery and might run out my fourth because it's feeling a _little_ sluggish at times. I am waiting for the next FP model where I can use a USB-C/dp external display and then I'm all over it.
What is happening to your batteries? I'm on something like year 6 on my Redmi and my battery is fine. Am I simply lucky?
It's paranoia to want ≥ security than an iPhone or stock Pixel?
It depends who you are. If you're Edward Snowden, or even a high ranking politician, it's a sane precaution. If you're just a rando like me yes, it's paranoia.
I think this has historically been true and is still approximately true now. But I think in the relatively near future (less than 5 years) there's a really good chance it won't be true anymore.
Once open models catch up to the current frontier in vulnerability exploitation, the cost to target people will go way down. In the past, the cost to hack a random individual person was generally high enough that if there wasn't some special reason to hack you in particular, it wasn't worth it. That may no longer be the case in the near future. The floor of what is acceptable security for the General Public probably needs to rise quite a bit over the next few years.