Fairphone is one of the only phone manufacturers with a mission of sustainability and ethics. Its Android phones are among the most repairable on the market, and the company is doing its best to support the hardware for as long as possible. As such, it has just released a new Android update for its five-year-old Fairphone 2 – Android 9 Pie.
We’d normally scoff at a company that updates a phone to an irreparably outdated version of Android (* cough * Motorola * cough *), but with Fairphone, we need more context. The Fairphone 2 was released with Android 5 Lollipop and is practically the only Android phone of 2015 to still receive official software updates from its manufacturer. The company needs to work with a chipset that is no longer supported or upgraded by Qualcomm due to its age, the Snapdragon 801. Furthermore, it is important to note that the phone is making the leap from Android 7.1 to Android 9. These are crucial obstacles almost nonexistent. another manufacturer is concerned with overcoming, but with Fairphone wanting to create a sustainable product (and promising five years of updates), he felt compelled to push the limits of what is possible in the Android world.
Fairphone says the launch is starting today and will continue until April 18. He is going for a staged rollout to make sure he doesn’t miss any problems during the one-year beta phase that the new rollout has gone through.
Meanwhile, Apple also supports 2015 phones, but the company builds and designs its own processors, so it has fewer obstacles to overcome. It is also substantially more difficult to repair your devices on your own than a Fairphone.
