The Fairphone 4 has not yet received its update to Android 16 / Iode 7, which I understand, however is there somewhere some kind of issue tracker? What are the blockers?
I am asking mainly not because I want to receive the A16 update, but rather because FP4 ist still on Vendor Patch Level from September 2025, with the newer vendor releases only being merged in the v7-staging branch.
This is further a problem, since apparently since the September Vendor update, battery drain of the FP4 is abnormally high, with this problem being fixed with the A15 Fairphone vendor update (patch level October and later) see here. Currently, I need to charge my phone about 3 times a day, despite having a completely new battery installed…
I don’t know the answers to your questions, but wanted to ask which version you are on now? I read that 6.12 is the latest stable version for FP4. Did you receive this?
Sorry for your big battery problem, hope, you will be able to fix that, soon.
I am asking for clarification in how to explain well, but as I understand all releases (including the ones from the manufacturer) have separate “Android Security Patch Levels” and “Vendor Security Patch Levels” and I am not sure if Fairphone do have a newer vendor patch level or not for the FP4 than the published September 2025 release? Another possibility is that that update will only come with Lineage 23.2, which is not yet incorporated in iodéOS.
Well, I would think that when Fairphone updates their ROM they not only pull in the security bullit ins from AOSP, but also the driver updates and therefor update the vendor level.
But even if that would not be the case, in the gitlab it is quite clear that the updates to “FP4.QREL.15.14.3” and “FP4.SREL.15.14.4” only happens on the v7-staging branch and not on the v6-staging.
Our developers reported that there are no Fairphone vendor patches for their Android 15 base since Sept 2025, so our 6.12 build has the latest available vendor security patches for the Android 15 base of iodéOS 6.x.
The bug of locked bootloaders not booting after updating to iodéOS 7.x on the FP4 have prevented us from releasing Android 16 based builds, so once that bug is resolved the upgrade to 7.x will happen (and thus the Android 16 vendor security patches will be incorporated).
No, 6.12 does not fix anything and also does not have any new vendor patches, since the fixes are only on the Iode 7, meaning Android 16 branch.
Idk what @rik is saying above there, since the patches from Fairphone are on their Android 15 branch, which, yes, is not their Android 13 branch anymore. And Iode 6 has previously built upon the Fairphone A13 vendor images. And I can imagine, that this jump from Fairphone from A13 - > A15 may introduce some work, that one has to do before incorporating those changes and that the Iode devs want to do this only once (and that for A16, Iode 7).
But this is not what rik said and honest, I also do not believe it. I just think it was forgotten, since they thought Iode 7 will be released in a few days anyway. But here we are now, with our old, buggy vendor patches, which also do not include any of Fairphone security fixes since September.
Let’s see, it will hopefully not take too long, until Iode 7 is fixed for the FP4 and our phones stop dying 3 times a day (or loose 60% battery over night)
I am bit confused, the iodé 6.x builds are A15 based, not A13.
I believe what @vince31fr was explaining to me is that there are only “Android Security Updates” (OS level) that are updated in the newer Fairphone OS builds, but that there is no Vendor Security Patch Level newer than Sept 2025 (these are more hardware based and are different than the OS security update level). Admittedly they don’t specify what type of security patch is included in their builds.
If there is someone that has Fairphone OS 15.x installed on their FP4 and can confirm from “Settings > About Phone” it should show both the “Android Security Update” date and the “Vendor Security Patch Level” date.
iodéOS 6.12 releases also have the “January 2026 Android Security Update” (via LineageOS).
As there doesn’t seem to be any progress made, is there a possibility of getting a iodéOs 6.x update with the latest vendor specific patches of Fairphone? This battery problem is really annoying …
Please look under “Battery Usage” to see if you can identify any rogue apps sucking battery when inactive, etc.
For me, Qobuz is a big culprit so I have it running in “Shelter” where I can disable / “freeze” it when I am not using it for this exact reason.
If nothing stands out, then it is a bit harder to evaluate the “systems” side of the Usage tool, as you will just see “Mobile Network” or “Display” taking up a ton of it and that isn’t too helpful, but maybe something else seems suspicious there.
The problem described by @rtfm98 is not because if power hungry apps, but because of firmware fuckups from Fairphone, that fixed in the official images but not in IodeOS, since Iode (on branch v6) has not incorporated any changes from upstream since September 2025. Only on the v7 branch, but since that has not been released, all (or at least many) FP4 owners have problems with abnormal battery consumption, especially in idle.
Therefor, incorporation of the upstream changes or a timeline or some kind if issue tracker, when v7 will be ready, would be really nice
I can only confirm this. For some time now, the battery of my FP4 has often been at 2-3% at the end of the day (previously 20-40%). Without any change in usage behavior. I even installed a new battery a few months ago.
As far as I know, battery usage on non-rooted phones is not a good indicator of the actual battery consumption of individual apps.
There is an issue with the android 16 on the FP4, and iode won’t be able to release iodeOS 7.x on FP4 until it is solved: unfortunately, at the moment, if the software is updated to 16 with the bootloader locked, [EDITED; SEE POST BELOW] Iodé is in touch with fairphone about this issue, but as FP4 stock is not yet on A16, it may take some time.
My apologies, I passed on the incorrect information. The situation is that a factory reset is required to upgrade from 6 to 7 if the bootloader is locked. The device does not get bricked, but a reset is mandatory, which is far from ideal.
It is possible to avoid the factory reset by canceling it 4 or 5 times, then it reboots on the previous slot still in iodéOS v6. But the situation is the same, the team has paused the update to iodéOS 7 until further notice.
It will do exactly that, BRICK YOUR DEVICE if you apply this to a FP4 with a locked bootloader (well, you will have to factory reset your device). So please please don’t just flippantly download and install this. But with the growing demand I thought it responsible to post that there is an option to upgrade to v7.x for users with an UNLOCKED FP4.
2026-03-13 clarification: rather than “brick”, a better explanation is it won’t boot without a factory reset (thus wiping out your userdata).
