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I have owned a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 since December 2017. My previous phone was the Galaxy Note 3, which is my favorite smartphone I've owned. Unfortunately my Galaxy Note 8 is beginning to show its age, and I will likely need to replace it before long.
Free and open-source software is important to me, and whatever my next smartphone is, I want to know that I will have as much control over it as possible. The phone I chose to upgrade to is the Pro1 X, a smartphone made by a British startup called F(x)tec.
The company had planned to release the Pro1 X with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, a high-end chipset released in 2017. That chipset has now reached EOL, and F(x)tec reported to its Indiegogo backers yesterday that it can no longer acquire them. Instead, the Pro1 X will be retooled to use a Snapdragon 662 SoC, a midrange SoC from 2020.
I'm not concerned about reports that this might cause a loss in performance. I try to use apps that are as light on resource as possible, so I doubt the change will make a noticeable difference.
What concerns me, however, is possible support for OSes other than AOSP Android. The Pro1 X had official support for several OSes such as LineageOS, Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish OS, and Replicant, and developers had almost completed Linux mainlining on the device. Support for some of those systems has been cast into doubt now, and I worry that the work to mainline the Pro1 X will now have been fruitless.
Many people have requested a refund from F(x)tec in the aftermath of this news. I have decided not to request one yet.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]