Just like a complete smartphone package involves hardware and software experience, keeping the phone as long as possible also requires both parts to keep working. The promise of a sustainable and almost eternal fairphone smartphone will fall rather short if it stops pushing updates while still storing cellphone components. In line with that mission, the Dutch-based company made a big announcement that the six-year-old FairPhone 2 will receive Android 10 immediately, something that is not done by other smartphone makers.
2015 almost felt ancient with smartphone standards, even if it was only six years ago. It becomes clearer when you read the Fairphone 2 specification sheet, which includes Snapdragon 801, 2GB RAM, and 12MP main camera. It was also launched with Android 5.1 Lollipop, which is definitely prehistoric in the Android history now.
But that’s the type of phone that will test the promise of fairphone from a sustainable and durable smartphone. The company continues to sell replacement parts for telephones, including display, camera module, and batteries. Now proudly revealed that it continued the same support for Fairphone 2 software, despite the difficulties experienced by Android 9 updates earlier this year.
According to FairPhone, it has studied the lesson at that time and has also asked for the help of his fans to improve the process. Instead of 18 months travel starting from Android 7.1 Nougat to Android 9 PIE, it only took ten months this time. It was thanks to the help of his community and voluntary developers who worked on the Open Source Android section during that period.
This is clearly an achievement that fairphone can be proud of and something that must be aspired to be imitated. Indeed, the company only has a relatively smaller number of cellphones to support, but the modular nature of this phone also makes it difficult for the software support process. FairPhone is also a much smaller company with fewer resources to be disposed of in software updates, so there is still no small achievement that it will be able to offer Android 10 to the Fairphone 2 owner.
Beta testing for this update starts this week, and FairPhone expects that a stable version will be available at the beginning of 2022. Also starting this week is the 11 beta Android test for FairPhone 3. Even though it’s still a little late, it’s still encouraging that this fairphone is able to provide software support During this time, and it might even be faster because the shelf enhances the experience, knowledge, and tools to launch an Android update faster.
