Yes and no, Fairphone has actually managed to reverse engineer some of the drivers for its old phones to provide android upgrades years after the component manufacturers have dropped support. The Fairphone 2, for instance, received a little over 7 years of support and 4 major version upgrades, skipping one on the way. For the Fairphone 5, they’ve promised 10 years of software support, and judging by their track record, I believe them. They also open source as much as they can and even give instructions on how to build the OS yourself.
Of course, open source drivers would be better, but that doesn’t exist at the moment, unfortunately. At this point, Fairphone is one of the companies that comes closest (with Shiftphone being a close rival).
I tried to find the article on it, but it was a while ago that I read, so I honestly don’t know 100%…
But I doubt it would be illegal, as a company they’re not small enough to fly under the radar and not big enough to flagrantly break laws and get away with it. Two possibilities that come to mind (and both may be true:
they did it via black box reverse engineering. That has less issues legally, since you’re not trying to decompile someone else’s code, but looking what that code does and trying to recreate it
the Linux Kernel’s GPL gives them certain rights in that area
That’s exactly the issue, and the bigger one. Theoretically, Google Pixel 1 could be upgraded software-wise with the newest Android, while the hardware can work longer. So, I’m not really interested in repairability (except the battery replacement, obviously) as much as in software longevity.
My iPhone 4s is still going strong, even despite numerous falls. The software though, it made it useless. I use one as a digital voice recorder sometimes, but that’s the only idea I had. It can shoot nice pictures too (in a bright daylight), and be a nice smartphone for a kid. (Because it’s very limited, and also small, and also cheap.) But the software made it useless.
It all boils down to drivers, if those are not open source (and they usually are not), then phone upgradability depends on them
Yes and no, Fairphone has actually managed to reverse engineer some of the drivers for its old phones to provide android upgrades years after the component manufacturers have dropped support. The Fairphone 2, for instance, received a little over 7 years of support and 4 major version upgrades, skipping one on the way. For the Fairphone 5, they’ve promised 10 years of software support, and judging by their track record, I believe them. They also open source as much as they can and even give instructions on how to build the OS yourself.
Of course, open source drivers would be better, but that doesn’t exist at the moment, unfortunately. At this point, Fairphone is one of the companies that comes closest (with Shiftphone being a close rival).
Isn’t that illegal?
I tried to find the article on it, but it was a while ago that I read, so I honestly don’t know 100%…
But I doubt it would be illegal, as a company they’re not small enough to fly under the radar and not big enough to flagrantly break laws and get away with it. Two possibilities that come to mind (and both may be true:
they did it via black box reverse engineering. That has less issues legally, since you’re not trying to decompile someone else’s code, but looking what that code does and trying to recreate it
the Linux Kernel’s GPL gives them certain rights in that area
Fingers crossed
That said, I like FP very much, but it’ll eventually hit the software block.
That’s exactly the issue, and the bigger one. Theoretically, Google Pixel 1 could be upgraded software-wise with the newest Android, while the hardware can work longer. So, I’m not really interested in repairability (except the battery replacement, obviously) as much as in software longevity.
My iPhone 4s is still going strong, even despite numerous falls. The software though, it made it useless. I use one as a digital voice recorder sometimes, but that’s the only idea I had. It can shoot nice pictures too (in a bright daylight), and be a nice smartphone for a kid. (Because it’s very limited, and also small, and also cheap.) But the software made it useless.
Indeed, this is really infuriating. They are forcing use to throw away perfectly working hardware in name of profits.