Fairphone releases code for its Fairphone 3 to raise awareness of software obsolescence

“If you can’t dig into it, your device isn’t really yours“. This is essentially the message that the Dutch company Fairphone wants to convey with the recent release of the source code for its Fairphone 3.

A commitment to sustainability

This practice has become a habit for Fairphone, which religiously publishes the software bricks that run its devices. Beyond a significant desire for transparency (an open code means that anyone can examine, tweak and improve the operating system), the company highlights the advantages in terms of sustainability of such an approach. “We often say that software is the unsung hero of phone longevity. That’s why, for every smartphone we produce and sell, we release as many source codes as we can.” indicates the brand in a tweet.

Completely incomprehensible to the general public, the source code of the Fairphone 3 contains almost all the elements necessary for the proper functioning of the phone. If a few proprietary code bricks (especially for certain Google services) are not published, most of the software is there. By offering this documentation, the company opens the field of possibilities for its mobile. If by chance Fairphone stopped publishing updates for its mobile (the manufacturer has a rather good reputation on this point with software support for seven years on the Fairphone 2), it would be theoretically possible to tweak the source code to continue to use the telephone.

Fight against all obsolescence

Obviously this is not within everyone’s reach, but open source at least allows those who really want to extend the life of their mobile. “Transparency and openness are at the heart of our ambitions to bring more fairness in our products — and also in the software of our products“, completes Fairphone. It is not only the material that determines the longevity of a product. A phone that still has a good battery and an impeccable screen is not worth much if it is stuffed with security breaches, which is the very definition of software obsolescence.

The idea for Fairphone is therefore to limit the effects of this software expiration date by offering as much flexibility as possible to its customers. One can imagine that a Fairphone 3 no longer receiving updates could be recycled into a microcomputer by installing a Linux distribution on it, for example. This is the idea that was raised during the “Upcycling Android” campaign launched at the end of 2021, in which Fairphone took part. “If we want to make long-lasting products, we have to act on the whole chain“, explains Agnès Crêpet, head of software longevity at Fairphone.

Behind the very technical announcement of the release of the source code therefore hides a philosophical or even political will on the part of Fairphone, which seeks to set an example to get the rest of the industry moving.