Fairphone has carved out a place for itself as a phone manufacturer that produces phones that are highly repairable, durable, and sustainable. The Fairphone brand is not available in several key regions, notably the United States, however this does not detract from the phone's high repairability. The Fairphone 2 has been around since 2015, when it debuted with Android 5. Fairphone has announced the availability of an Android 10 upgrade for the smartphone seven years later.
It has always been a difficult nut for manufacturers to crack beyond two or three OS updates for their devices. Some of the critical factors that ensure an OS upgrade are outside the phone manufacturer's control. It might be related to the chipmaker discontinuing support for the phone's obsolete chip, or Google no longer supports the OS version. In recent years, Samsung has been able to maintain up to four updates for its smartphones, although most models receive only two OS upgrades during the life of the phone. Apple, on the other hand, offers up to six years of software support for its iPhones.
The Fairphone 2 is powered on the Snapdragon 801 processor, which has been discontinued by Qualcomm since 2016. Fairphone anticipates between 2 and 5 OS updates for its phones in the future. The Fairphone 2's lifespan is projected to be limited to software support for Android 10. However, security patches will continue to be released until Google pulls the plug on Android 10. As a result, we may see the seven-year-old Fairphone 2 for several more years. The Fairphone 2’s record of seven years and counting could be hard to beat.
