I think the repairability of the Fairphone 3 is a huge step forward, but in the long run I want a phone that allows me to run an up-to-date OS for as long as I want. The Fairphone 3 will get updates for 5 years, that's not enough if you ask me.
To compare, 5 years ago the Nexus 6 was released, and had its EOL 3 years ago. The iPhone 6 did slightly better, with the last software release being 12.x which was released last year (and only just got superseded yesterday).
Expecting more than 5 years of support is pretty ridiculous, given industry trends and just the evolution of phones and technology in general in the span of 5 years.
Why not have a phone for 10 or 20 years, especially if the tech plateaus? I think a fair and good revenue model would be a modest software subscription fee - something like $20-50/year feels right.
I'll be interested to see what options there will be at the five-year mark: I'd guess that there would be options for non-official firmware.
Technically achievable with open source, but even OSS projects come to an end.
Depends on the project. With necessary projects to operate still-used technology, I don't know that OSS projects actually end (without drop-in replacements) very often.
Apple is pretty good about supporting older hardware, but I feel like we reached a point in the last few years where phones are powerful enough that upgrades cycles could be five years for an average consumer. So it should be expected that security fixes would be available for longer.
Android 4.4 still gets the latest version of Chrome (6 years later), and the Play Services is updated too.
In comparison when an Apple device stops getting updates, you are stuck with an insecure Safari version, so the device becomes unsafe to use for browsing.
Edit: Nokia phones are providing 2 years of version update (from release), followed by 3 years of security updates (and presumably browser updates for many years after that). Not bad for say the more expensive Nokia 7.2 at USD350. Disclaimer: I'm a Nokia 7+ owner (very happy with it too).
A solution to this is having an upstream kernel (like mainline Linux) work on the phone, and having fairly standard hardware in the phone with in-kernel drivers and free / standard libraries instead of these shitty blobs we need on current phones, and crappy unmaintainable Linux forks.
Android 9 works on my nine year old airis kira slimpad x86 tablet sold with Windows 7. It runs a standard Xubuntu though. And yes, the latest Ubuntu with latest security patches. I don't rely on the manufacturer. It just works with standard software. Have the OS builders and hardware device makers maintain each part for you.
This is not the world we live in though. In our world, Qualcomm and Samsung make their messy Linux forks and don't seem to maintain their Shit on a Chip.
The Librem 5 is promising on this matter though.
You probably can’t take a 10 or 15 year old cell phone and expect it to work on any carrier out there today.
There is an upper bound to how long a phone will even worn on a network...
I believe that the Nokia 3310, released 19 years ago, is still compatible with many networks nowadays (with somewhat degraded coverage). GSM turndowns: https://1ot.mobi/blog/2g-and-3g-networks-are-shutting-down-g...