5 years is not enough these days, smartphones can live longer than that. But that's a good start.
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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Much better than the fucking 2 years of many Android phones. That's 2 years from launch, not from when you buy which could be one year in.
I can't remember the last time I bought a phone that was made less than 5 years ago. This is a joke
5 years after end of sales. Thats better than anything currently on the market.
EU obliges manufacturers to provide updates for 5 years after the end of sale
From this date, manufacturers will have to provide operating system and security updates for every smartphone or tablet for five years after the end of sales.
OS updates too? That's interesting.
I would've been fine with 2 years of security updates after 3 years of OS updates. OS updates do include security features but security updates are more important to the average consumer. Most people won't know what version of Android they are on. Most people wouldn't know if their 7 year old iPhone is no longer receiving updates.
There are 2 Possibilities to this:
Either every phone gets an F-, or they set the bar so low that the Fairphone is 6 ranks above S tier
It's more than just a grading system, there's some hardware minimums for battery life/durability etc. and a clause for repairs regardless of the grade:
They must also ensure that spare parts are available for up to seven years after the product has been sold, offer at least five years of software support and provide professional technicians with non-discriminatory access to repair software.
I wonder where something like Unihertz phones could be. Recently a teardown video of one of those surprised me, and it seems they do quite a few phones that way. They have a bunch of rugged phones, and at least some of them appear to be screwed together rather than glued.
Honestly, I haven't even considered that was a possibility nowadays. Otherwise I'd probably get one of those over Ulefone. Based on videos I've seen, my Armor 24 is virtually irrepairable. You have to enter through the screen which uses very strong glue and is recessed into the body. Disassembly thus basically requires destroying the screen.
Unihertz never updates their phones. It's amazing, fairly repairable hardware, but software support is terrible.
It's sad. They could let the community handle it, but they won't.
This. I was going to buy one on kickstarter, but their reply on planned updates wasn't reassuring.
It aint much but it's honest work
Proudly rocking my 7 year old phone.
I'd still be using my 2017 Moto G5s Plus if it weren't for the dead battery and mostly gone (soldered-on) USB port.
It was fine with PixelExperience ROM, and I am sure I could still get something good onto it. But, it is what it is, an e-waste slab. I've run the battery down to 2 hours of standby time and the micro USB only works with very few cables at this point.
I do miss the 16:9 and separate navigation via the front fingerprint scanner.
Same, writihg this from Poco F1.
Coul have been the Galaxy S3 (12 years) but that didn't boot anymore after the full case & body replacement. π
I wonder how small manufacturers are going to do the 5 years of updates. I mean the brands that typically get no updates at all.
Maybe they will band together to support a common base system that is more open? Wishful thinking I knowβ¦
Yeah, I mean, if I was Unihertz, I'd give all my drivers' code to LineageOS and sales would skyrocket. I don't know why they don't do this.
Even just providing specifications and some documentation about the devices, someone might write a new driver. Reverse engineering is hard, having something to go off of means they can probably extend support from an existing driver fairly easily.
The biggest issue is probably the MediaTek chipsets. Unlike Qualcomm, they don't provide the source code.
I only went with MTK based device for manual band selection. It can be done with root, but the only app for it I could find is network signal guru, and I am not sure about how trustworthy it is to give root access to.
Without more detail we can't really speculate. Who decides what sort of update is required?
Libre OSes do, what, 20 years? With volunteers
I guess security only and once a year, if anything. It's going to be hard to enforce.
Even big OEM usually do slow updates after 2 years.