Fairphone 5 VS OnePlus 15
Verdict BUY IT DROP IT
The Reality The 'up to 10 years' framing is real but has a firmer floor than the headline suggests: Fairphone's own guaranteed commitment is software support through 2031 (8 years from the 2023 launch), with 10 years framed as an aspirational extension to 2033 'if things work out,' not a guarantee. iFixit's own real analysis ('Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?') examined whether the phone lives up to its repairability/longevity promise in practice. This also directly addresses a real, separate 2021 Hacker News discussion (417 points) about Qualcomm being 'the biggest barrier to long-term Android support' — Fairphone's specific fix was choosing an industrial IoT-grade chipset (guaranteed by Qualcomm itself until 2028) rather than a standard consumer chipset. Less than a year after the OnePlus 15 launched, Bloomberg reported that OnePlus is ceasing consumer phone operations in the US and Europe entirely — a major business retreat, not a rumor. That means anyone buying the OnePlus 15 in those markets is buying into a brand that has already announced it's stepping away from after-sales support, software updates, and future models there.
SHORT ANSWER
Fairphone 5: Fairphone 5's guaranteed software support runs through 2031 (8 years from launch) — the '10 years' figure is a real but aspirational extension the company hopes to reach, not a firm guarantee. It's still far ahead of almost any other Android phone's support window.
OnePlus 15: OnePlus confirmed it is ceasing operations in the US and Europe just months after the OnePlus 15 launched there — a real business risk for anyone buying it in those markets, regardless of the hardware's specs.