The Fairphone 4 is a smartphone with mid-range specs that began shipping in 2021, but which should be supported at least until the end of 2025 thanks to Fairphone’s commitment not only to continue releasing software updates, but also spare parts.
And while Fairphone has a pretty good track record of providing its own software updates, the company’s phones also ship with unlocked bootloaders, allowing independent developers to port other software to the platform. Recently the Linux-based postmarketOS and Ubuntu Touch operating systems added support for the Fairphone 4. And now xda-developers member tfbb has released an unofficial build of LineageOS (based on Android 13) for the Fairphone 4.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
Fairphone 4 can now run Android 13 with microG courtesy of unofficial LineageOS 20 ROM [xda-developers]
The Fairphone 4 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor, at least 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and a 6.3 inch FHD+ display. Available in Europe for €579 and up, the phone still ships with Android 11, but now it’s possible to run a newer build of Android on it (unofficially).Â
Handbrake 1.6.0 release notes [Handbrake / GitHub]
Handbrake 1.6.0 is the first version of the open source, cross-platform media transcoding tool to support AV1 video encoding. It also adds high bit depth and color depth support for some encoders and filters, and removes VP8 presets.
MAUI Report 20 [MauiKit]
The latest on this open source suite of apps and frameworks for convergent apps that run equally well on phones, tablets, and laptop and desktop computers.
PinePhone Pro Display Support Nearing The Mainline Linux Kernel [Phoronix]
Like the original PinePhone, the PinePhone Pro is designed to be an affordable device for developing and using mobile Linux distributions. But some of the phone’s hardware isn’t yet supported by the mainline Linux kernel which means that operating systems for the phone have had to rely on custom kernels. But it looks like work is underway to mainline the display panel control driver.
Phosh 0.23.0 released [Phosh /GitLab]
The latest version of this free and open source user interface for mobile Linux distributions adds a new lock screen plugin for emergency information and brings improvements to help developers make plugins.
#Review of @khadas_official VIM1S Amlogic S905Y4 Arm Cortex-A35 #SBC with #Ubuntu 22.04. #linux https://t.co/HhEmn2ugH3
— CNX Software (@cnxsoft) December 30, 2022
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Hnadbrake’s early AV1 support is sadly on the slow side because their “turbo first pass” is broken, running both passes at the selected encoding profile.
AFAIK CalyxOS has been on 13 for a while now and supports the FP4.
Speaking of LineageOS and the Fairphone 4, it’s also reported as working on the experimental Android 13-based build of DivestOS