Fairphone 4’s long-delayed Android 14 update gets another delay

Key Takeaways

• Fairphone 4’s Android 14 update has been delayed to 2025.
• Fairphone is working closely with Qualcomm to address the issues.
• The new release timeline remains uncertain, with Fairphone providing an update early next year.

The 2021 Fairphone 4 still stands out for its user-repairable design and a promise of receiving updates until the end of 2026. However, Fairphone’s pace of rolling out new OS updates has been frustratingly slow. After a lengthy two-year delay, the phone got a taste of Android 12 in February 2023, with Android 13 arriving relatively quickly in October 2023. For Android 14, Fairphone promised to roll out the update in H2, 2024, almost a year after Google released it. Now, with less than two months left in the year, the company is postponing the update’s release to 2025.

In a post on the Fairphone forum, one of the company’s employees revealed that Fairphone 4’s Android 14 update is not ready yet as it has run into some issues. Below is the full update as shared by @loiana_luncheon on Fairphone’s forum:

UPDATE: Unfortunately, we won’t be able to roll out the Android 14 update for Fairphone 4 users just yet. There are some issues we have run into for which we will need Qualcomm’s support on. This is taking a little longer than we anticipated. As it stands, we don’t see the update rolling through in 2024. Hopefully, we should know more by early next year. We’re really sorry about this unexpected development, and we’re working round the clock to get it out as soon as possible.

Adding to the frustration, the update’s wording suggests there’s still no final revised timeline for the release of Android 14. The company will only know a precise timeframe “by early next year” after it has worked closely with Qualcomm to resolve the issues.

Qualcomm might be to blame for the delay

One possible reason for the delay in rolling out Android 14 to the Fairphone is the Snapdragon 750G chipset. Qualcomm stopped supporting the SoC following the release of Android 13. The lack of newer binaries is likely a key factor hindering Fairphone’s efforts to bring Android 14 to Fairphone 4.

The good thing is that despite this hurdle, the company is not giving up on the update, as it promises to work closely with Qualcomm to resolve the issue. However, even if the company succeeds in doing this, the Fairphone 4 might not get further OS updates after that.