Fairphone, the European mobile phone maker and social enterprise that has made it its mission is to build and sell fairer smartphone hardware, has announced it is ending support for its first handset, the Fairphone 1 (spotted earlier by The Register[1]).
Blogging[2] about the decision last week, founder Bas van Abel described it as “bittersweet”. “Over time, the possibilities for continuing to support the Fairphone 1 have steadily decreased,” he wrote. “It is now clear that we can’t keep spending resources on finding new options and loopholes without negatively impacting our company’s future.”
Fairphone has always described device longevity as one of its “primary goals”. And in June 2016 it [3]was still telling owners of the Fairphone 1 that an Android KitKat upgrade was “coming soon”. However that confidence turned out to be misplaced.
“Practically speaking, this means that we will no longer sell spare parts for the Fairphone 1, and have stopped developing the software upgrade to Android 4.4,” wrote van Abel last week, confirming that both hardware and software support is being ended for the handset.
A small first production batch of the Fairphone 1 was sold in late 2013, with a second batch released in May 2014. A final batch was sold in February 2015. So owners of the device have only had between two and 3.5 years’ support.
“We wanted to see it succeed for as long as possible,” said van Abel, in the blog post. “For ourselves, but more so for the community of pioneers who bought this phone and provided the financial springboard to start our company. However, after supporting the Fairphone 1 for three and a half years and the Fairphone 1U for nearly two and a half years,...
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