I really wish Fairphone 4 had GrapheneOS support, but after almost 4 years of Fairphone 3 I decided to go with a Pixel instead. Too many hardware bugs with the FP3 that were never acknowledged by the vendor and unhappy customers with bricked FP4's that requires sending them back in.
Also I would have hoped for them continuing the FP3 architecture, feels such a waste that they've now instead developed a much more expensive hardware again.
Building and maintaining an Android device is truly not trivial, kudos for that, but I don't think with their current company size they're truly up for the task.
Also buying a Fairphone instead of a wider used phone means you'll be able to repair it - but because all the internal parts are super customized, phone repair shops won't have their usual source of spare parts.
To add to that last point, after some time being frustrated with an FP4 and browsing the FP forums: it's not just availability of spare parts to repair shops. There doesn't appear to be a single mention in the forums of a repair shop willing to work on the FP4. There are numerous mentions of repair shops that are unwilling to, and of people being unable to find repair shops. Warranty repair is actually outsourced to a generic warranty support company that appears to operate on standard, replace-everything basis.
Apparently, for the FP4 (reportedly in a departure from some previous devices), all software development is also outsourced. Security patches are often months out of date. Known defects with basic functionality (camera hardware should be fine, but is almost unusable for many tasks because of poor firmware/software making, eg, focusing ridiculously slow; microphone noise and echo reduction has serious problems for calls, etc) go unaddressed, or, in worse cases, are acknowledged as something that won't be fixed, especially for the bizarre security flaw that the manufacturer's official OS is signed by test keys, and the device is set to trust test keys, something that apparently can't be changed, and makes the device one minor leak away from having secure boot entirely broken. This is apparently one of the reasons why GrapheneOS developers refuse to consider supporting it. At the same time, other flaws in the security design make it very easy to brick the device, as you point out, and FP charges for unbricking (the test key problem apparently makes it unsafe for them to release a fix): in one case on the forum, a user bricked the device by correctly following FP's own official instructions for updating the OS manually, and FP refused to unbrick it without charge.
I was astonishingly disappointed by the FP4, to be honest, and by Fairphone in general.
A thousand tims this. When I moved away from stock Android and on to cuwtom ROMs a few years ago, I didnt find anything that met my needs but then I stumbled on GrapheneOS. I understand why it doesn't run on non Pixels but their approach to handling Google Services and preinstalled software in particulqr should really be copied by other ROM maintainers and developers (something I'll give a shot in a few short months).
My only gripe now on my 2nd Pixel with Graphene is exactly what Fairphone is fixing, which is easy hardware maintenance + 3.5mm jack. I guess a modular/repairable smartphone with w non-invasive os is "the dream".
> Too many hardware bugs with the FP3 that were never acknowledged by the vendor
I have a FP3, and it has been my first and only Android smartphone. I now wonder if what I've experienced is the "normal Android experience" or if I would have experienced something different from another brand.
I'm also avoiding / disabling Google stuffs (I'm using f-droid, ...). I was occasionally surprised to see how a lot of people are flooded with ads / unsolicited messages and seemed not to care. I don't get it, though, it looks such an awful experience.
The main thing I've noticed is the long time it sometimes take for the picture-taking app to get on focus. But I thought it was due to the standard Android software.
I wished there was a Graphene/Lineage OS phone (OEM supported; not “flash it yourself” sorcery needed kinda thing).
And something within the size of original iPhone SE or Mini with just even an above average battery. I’d pay a premium for that phone. It’s my wishful thinking about smartphones.
As a note about repairability, ignoring various problems with the phone: while the FP4 does have more availability of parts from the manufacturer, is generally easier to repair, and is advertised as repairable, I found the Fairphone forums to be surprisingly and unexpectedly hostile to discussions of repair and repairability.
A significant portion of the forum userbase considers that Fairphone's primary focus is on fair trade, the treatment of workers, and the sourcing of raw materials. Regular posters, and highlighted users ("Fairphone Angels"), will often argue to users that the phone is not primarily meant to be repairable or longer-lasting than other phones. Concerns about outdated security updates and long-lasting, serious software problems with basic functionality often get responses about workers in phone manufacturing, and reminders that this is the point of the phone. This goes directly against Fairphone's own advertising, but it seems to be the general sense amongst users the company attaches their name to.
Coming from the Framework forums, this was astonishing and disappointing.
Fairphone 4 has been my main and only phone for several months now. Great experience, very good battary life. Performance-wise, I haven't noticed any significant difference compared to traditional phones. The only drawbacks might be the camera and thickness, but honestly I don't care much.
Of course, much depends on your use case and expectations. YMMV.
I really want to love my Fairphone 4 but they really need to improve their software support. I have a bunch of bugs with my device: the screen dims after a short period making it unusable in bright daylight, NFC is erratic and needs a restart to fix, 5 GHz hotspot hasn't worked for months. The brightness bug is the biggest killer for me. There's a whole list of bugs tracked on the Fairphone website [0], and progress is unfortunately very slow.
I've been using my Fairphone 4 for around a year or so and it's been great.
An easily removable battery is a godsend and the phone is surprisingly durable as I've been dropping it a lot (me clumsy).
I haven't encountered any issue and the one complaint I have is the lack of 3.5 jack. It was quite hard to find a USB converter that worked and having to use an adapter is really annoying.
Still if this one breaks I can repair it and I would even buy a new one if I had to.
Fairphone is also tackling this. They guarantee 5 years but have been providing updates well past that. The Fairphone 2 from 2015 got upgrades to Android 6, 7, 9 and 10 with the latest security update in March this year. You can see their release notes here: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019515018
As a software engineer who spend the vast majority of his time on (successfully) putting newer Android versions on the vast majority of older Android devices:
Yes the hardware is the bottleneck.
This pains me, because what I can do is software, not hardware, where I spend all of my time is software.
An app just needs to target Android 7 to target 95%+ of users (so "only" 5% additional e-waste). And for app developers, targeting Android 7 is fairly easy (and the vast majority do), because Google provide androidx which is a compatibility library that provides backward-compatible APIs for every new shiny things. It's not 0 effort, and I understand app developers preferring Apple ecosystem here, but most of the Android app developers I've seen do use androidx and do target around Android 7. [1]
So, you get reasonably 5-7 years of app that are still working. The average renewal rate still barely bulged and still is around 2 years. People are not renewing their devices because of apps that are no longer supported.
IMO things that make people renew:
- Things that are a bit broken but annoying enough and accumulate: Too many apps leading to slow down, USB-C port getting dust making the connection harder
- The phones always look shinier in-store (because of over-saturated, over-brightness-ed screen amongst other things), so I'm pretty sure stores would manage to sell the same device over and over again by just changing the name.
- Kinda the same: Despite Gorilla Glass 424 Ultra Pro Max, screen's glass do wear, and phones' screen look worse and worse over time (if you have a screen protection, the screen will still look shinier in-store, if you don't your screen will be weary, and the screen in-store will look shinier) -- I like what Rebel Tech is trying to do here, they are trying to replace exclusively the glass part of the screen. That's so much cheaper that you could do it every 6 months to make your device look new again.
- Completely random software bug (which could very well be BECAUSE the device got a software upgrade, or could be just a bug in the app, or just Google decided that this was the new Best User Experience) that make people think "yeah well I get it, my phone's old"
[1] I do know of one exception: Slack app. They are deprecating Android 7 and Android 8. They suck.
I think yes. It's not easy to design and manufacture a phone using sustainable materials and components from vetted sources who treat their employees fairly, unfortunately. And to do it in such a way as to be easily repairable. They've set themselves a high bar and I think they've done a great job
The software can be improved iteratively. Hopefully as they grow in new markets we'll see more investment in e-OS and (hopefully) find a viable competitor to Google that's open source
Well said. Phones lose support long before their hardware is actually too weak. Also if we tried to optimize the software better, less of the hardware would feel weak.
I like that we're moving in the direction of repairability. I haven't needed to upgrade my pixel 2, and I would love it if I could simply replace parts as needed instead of buying a whole new phone. That said, it seems clear that phone makers would prefer you upgrade every two years. Wonder if we will see regulation around that in the coming years.
When people talk about the Fairphone there are always people bringing up the same or similar (often very valid) points. I would like to use this post sum up some Reddit discussion I took part in when the Fairphone 3 launched because the main points are still relevant for the Fairphone 4 launch:
Q: Wasn't the point of Fairphone to have ONE phone and then buy "extensions" or/and replacements only, aka modular - for the sake of preserving the environment, etc etc?!
A. No, it was always for repairability to ensure people can keep it for around five years without needing to replace the entire thing at once because the screen cracked or the audio jack broke.
This whole upgrade part stuff is something that get's hyped a lot in online discussions but from the very beginning Fairphone has been very honest and cautious when asked about possible upgrade modules in the future. They would love to offer crazy upgrade paths but cmon it's a small company in Amsterdam with limited resources.
However they did introduce an upgraded camera module in 2017.
I think the main takeaway I have for everybody regarding the Fairphone is: Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I've preordered the Fairphone 2, got it in 2016. People ask me about it often. They usually get very excited only to get disappointed when they realize that the team behind it has to make compromises just like every other phone brand has to.
The fact that they got this product designed, launched and supported with <100 people is really amazing, so please don't feel disappointed by the fact that it doesn't offer something even Google couldn't get market ready.
These guys make really good phones that are not only as fair as it gets but also as innovative as it gets when it comes to the overall design. They introduced a camera upgrade module in 2017 which is amazing, other than that it's really just making your life easier when you want to replace parts.
I replaced the screen and the audio jack, the phone is still rock solid.
Q: What about Software? I keep my phones mostly 3 years, because even after 3 years, many LOS devs are jumping ship...?
A: They definitively do their homework. Security updates come usually ~3 weeks after Google releases them. Fairphone OS still gets bigger updates every ~2-3 months. They still support their Fairphone Open OS. Lineage OS is really popular on it and is well supported offering Android Pie for the Fairphone 2.
For the Fairphone 3, the manufacturer guaranteed five years of support. This means that replacement parts are available for five years and security updates are offered. In addition, the manufacturer promises a feature update to Android 10, but does not call for a date. Additional feature updates are planned but not guaranteed. For the sold out since March 2019 Fairphone 2 (available since the end of 2015), the manufacturer will continue to publish security updates and reserve spare parts for at least another three years.
The Fairphone 2 was delivered with Android 5.1, later came updates to 6.01 and 7.1.2 - the latter with great effort, because there were no official drivers for the Snapdragon 801 chipset used.
"Q": What an awful phone. Anyone who buys this is an idiot, you aren’t saving the world and all you’re doing is making yourself feel holier than thou because of your “ethical” decision which you can’t be quiet about.
Save your money and get a REAL phone with much better specs for the same price.
A: It's still a step in the right direction.
I also don't see the problem with feeling cool about "ethical" decisions.
I definetely think my Fairphone 2 is cool. I think it's tacky, chunky and technical look is beautiful and it sparks interesting conversations with other people that think it's cool. If fair and open... If having a seven year old phone that looks absolutely worn out becomes the new mainstream cool that would be the best thing to ever happen to us.
I for myself feel pretty cool when people ask me about my phone and how old it is. I also feel better, yes.
"Q": We shouldn’t care about the conditions our phones are made in. We should care about the best value for our money, performance and quality.
A: Well you know that's just like your opinion man.
"Q": YEA lol pay [price of the prior Fairphone] for a phone just to feel good about your enviromental impact. top kek.
A: As you may know the Fairphone is not only trying to improve the enviromental impact, the company is also doing as much as possible to improve the situation of the involved asian workers. I would like to use this moment of awareness created by the Fairphone 3 announcement to invite you to get a small glimpse into the live of Xu, your typical Foxconn phone assembly line worker. Please excuse that I just copy & pasted this together.
On the last day of September, a 24-year-old migrant worker in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen killed himself. Xu Lizhi jumped out of a window of a residential dormitory run by his employer, Foxconn, the huge electronics manufacturing company with a million-strong workforce that makes the majority of the world's Apple iPhones.
In most cases, Xu's suicide would have been yet another footnote in the vast, sweeping story of China's economic boom and transformation. He is one of a legion of young Chinese migrants who emerge out of rural obscurity to find work in China's teeming cities, only to end up crushed by both the dullness and stress of factory jobs, insufficient wages and a steady accumulation of personal disappointments.
But Xu was a poet. And, after his death, his friends collected his work and got some published in a local Shenzhen newspaper.
《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 "A Screw Fell to the Ground"
一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw fell to the ground
在这个加班的夜晚 In this dark night of overtime
垂直降落，轻轻一响 Plunging vertically, lightly clinking
不会引起任何人的注意 It won’t attract anyone’s attention
就像在此之前 Just like last time
某个相同的夜晚 On a night like this
有个人掉在地上 When someone plunged to the ground
-- 9 January 2014
Reading through the poems, one in particular stood out to me, ‘A screw Fell to the Ground.’ While it was done eight months before his suicide, the context seems to be relatable to how he may have been feeling—mostly the sound of “someone” plunging and nobody hearing.
We ran along the railway,
arriving in some place called ‘the City’
where we trade in our youth, and our muscle.
Finally we have nothing to trade, only a cough
and a skeleton nobody cares about.
‘Sleepless’
The poems, translated at the leftist website Libcom.org, are a wrenching echo of the alienation and hardship felt by countless people in modern China and, for that matter, in other parts of the developing world. They lament the grinding ennui of the assembly line, the squalor of a migrant worker's narrow, frustrated existence.
But don't let me guilt trip you into buying this phone. The Fairphone 2 was an amazing device and I am sure the Fairphone 3 will be a solid upgrade. This is a great phone line and not some shitty alternative. The Fairphone 2 definetely had some reliability issues. I believe it was the right decision to introduce more screws and flat cables to make it more reliable and decrease additional material was needed for all the pogo pin connectors that made the Fairphone 2 extremely quick and easy to disassemble but also prone to all the random connectivity issues.
The FP3 is still as good as it gets when it comes to repairability. The changes to the FP3 give me hope that it could finally become a reliable phone as well.
Every gripe I had about the Fairphone 2 after using it since 2015 got addressed in this new iteration.
It's not only the Asian workers! They also go to great pains to make sure the people mining the basic resources, for example in the Congo or in Peru, are paid more fairly than usual. That combined with pretty much what you said makes the price easily worth it for me.
> Q: Wasn't the point of Fairphone to have ONE phone and then buy "extensions" or/and replacements only, aka modular - for the sake of preserving the environment, etc etc?!
Sounds like they are confusing it with "Phoneblocks", which went viral around the time the FP1 launched. Logos look similar, too.
So does it mean it's not possible to have popular apps like whatsapp or Tinder on this?
I also wish it was just a phone with much less performance for a smaller price.
I want something durable and repairable, not something fast, Wirth's law is very important to consider when consider software and hardware. I hope they will make such phone, one day, because I am not spending that much money for a phone.
I bought a 150 euro phone and it already lasted 3 years, because even if a phone becomes obsolete, it is still cheaper, per year, to use crappy phones, than to use a durable expensive phone.
If your really care about fairness and the environment, make lightweight hardware and software.
I have been using a FP4 for about a year with /e/-os, and it has been pretty ok so far. I don't use many (if any) of the /e/-os cloud features, so can't speak for those. Other apps have been working fine w/ microG and the custom app store (which combines the play store and fdroid). The only issue I can think of off the top of my head is google translate not working. Other Gapps (Gmail, yt, lens, etc) seem to work fine, as do pretty much all others I have tried. Unsure how well in-app purchases work. Some /e/-os apps have UI quirks... But nothing is worse than "ok" in my view. Ymmv.
Not sure I buy that lightweight phones would necessarily be better for the environment? Surely repairability is key?
I've got a FP3 (so the older model) and I have had no problems with any app. I don't use Tinder, but Whatsapp works as good as on any phone I've ever owned.
As for the cheapness, I've been keeping a running tab of how much the repair is costing me vs how much it would have cost with a normal phone (ballpark estimate) and, considering the phone price, I'm currently saving about 200€, even factoring in the phone price. The biggest expense is shipping because I live in the middle of nowhere and I can easily get 10€ of shipping on a 15€ spare part (which is why I'm not replacing the protective cover even though it looks like shit).
Or keep your phone. I’ve been using a iPhone 5s since 8 years now.
Support dropper a year ago iirc. So that’s not advisable anymore.
But I’m still happy with the phone and most things still work
I wasn't able to tell from a quick scroll over the homepage, but while they fix instead of replacing, teracube don't seem to include fairly sourced resources, which are a pretty big sales point for fairphone
Years ago this would've been interesting to me. But it took too long. Given that the Fairphone 4 has been out everywhere else for years now and there wasn't even a peep of it coming to the US, I decided to jump ship for an iPhone.
If I couldn't get a truly repairable phone, then at least I could buy the one that would likely last the longest given the wide availability of official repair outlets (e.g. Apple Stores) and the history of solid software support for at least five years.
So that's where I am at. Thankfully things are looking a bit better on the laptop side of the repairability fence. I have every intention of pre-ordering a Framework 16 the second pre-orders open.
GSM, CDMA and UMTS are all dead or on their way out in the US. In terms of LTE bands I think T-Mobile (or MVNO's depending on their network) is the sole choice.
I would just love a good Android based phone with a Blackberry style keyboard. I know there are a couple out there, but something from a current large manufacturer would be nice.
Got a fairphone 4 for somenody I care about and will likely get one for myself when my current unrepairable, glued-battery piece of e-waste becomes unusable.
I wish they would come preinstalled with something like kde plasma mobile though. I will never warm to android, no matter how "degoogled" it might become. There is something about its architecture that seems freakish. Like the entire digital universe that was created in the last decades.
This is cool and all... I just wish someone would release a device with user replaceable battery and better OS update policies. Basically a pixel with slightly easier repair.
I think the modular aspect is cool, but seems like a gimmick that would be prone to failure. Just my opinion anyway.
Issues with microphone on the FP4 that are not explainable but the good news is? I can just change the mic for 20 euro!
The real issue with the FP4 is the camera. Ugly pictures, and under bad lightning its like taking picture on android a decade ago.. Albeit the pixel number is enough.
My experience with fp4 has been pleasant. No problems. The only mild annoyance was the finger print unlock mechanism, which feels less user-friendly than my previous phones. But you get used to it.
Tester here. After some months of working out the kinks, this phone and OS pair are working great. I strongly recommend (if you are okay with a so-so camera).
[+] [-] miduil|2 years ago|reply
Also I would have hoped for them continuing the FP3 architecture, feels such a waste that they've now instead developed a much more expensive hardware again.
Building and maintaining an Android device is truly not trivial, kudos for that, but I don't think with their current company size they're truly up for the task.
Also buying a Fairphone instead of a wider used phone means you'll be able to repair it - but because all the internal parts are super customized, phone repair shops won't have their usual source of spare parts.
[+] [-] cge|2 years ago|reply
Apparently, for the FP4 (reportedly in a departure from some previous devices), all software development is also outsourced. Security patches are often months out of date. Known defects with basic functionality (camera hardware should be fine, but is almost unusable for many tasks because of poor firmware/software making, eg, focusing ridiculously slow; microphone noise and echo reduction has serious problems for calls, etc) go unaddressed, or, in worse cases, are acknowledged as something that won't be fixed, especially for the bizarre security flaw that the manufacturer's official OS is signed by test keys, and the device is set to trust test keys, something that apparently can't be changed, and makes the device one minor leak away from having secure boot entirely broken. This is apparently one of the reasons why GrapheneOS developers refuse to consider supporting it. At the same time, other flaws in the security design make it very easy to brick the device, as you point out, and FP charges for unbricking (the test key problem apparently makes it unsafe for them to release a fix): in one case on the forum, a user bricked the device by correctly following FP's own official instructions for updating the OS manually, and FP refused to unbrick it without charge.
I was astonishingly disappointed by the FP4, to be honest, and by Fairphone in general.
[+] [-] pSYoniK|2 years ago|reply
My only gripe now on my 2nd Pixel with Graphene is exactly what Fairphone is fixing, which is easy hardware maintenance + 3.5mm jack. I guess a modular/repairable smartphone with w non-invasive os is "the dream".
[+] [-] cauch|2 years ago|reply
I have a FP3, and it has been my first and only Android smartphone. I now wonder if what I've experienced is the "normal Android experience" or if I would have experienced something different from another brand.
I'm also avoiding / disabling Google stuffs (I'm using f-droid, ...). I was occasionally surprised to see how a lot of people are flooded with ads / unsolicited messages and seemed not to care. I don't get it, though, it looks such an awful experience.
The main thing I've noticed is the long time it sometimes take for the picture-taking app to get on focus. But I thought it was due to the standard Android software.
Is there a place to list the FP3 bugs?
[+] [-] crossroadsguy|2 years ago|reply
And something within the size of original iPhone SE or Mini with just even an above average battery. I’d pay a premium for that phone. It’s my wishful thinking about smartphones.
[+] [-] nilespotter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cge|2 years ago|reply
A significant portion of the forum userbase considers that Fairphone's primary focus is on fair trade, the treatment of workers, and the sourcing of raw materials. Regular posters, and highlighted users ("Fairphone Angels"), will often argue to users that the phone is not primarily meant to be repairable or longer-lasting than other phones. Concerns about outdated security updates and long-lasting, serious software problems with basic functionality often get responses about workers in phone manufacturing, and reminders that this is the point of the phone. This goes directly against Fairphone's own advertising, but it seems to be the general sense amongst users the company attaches their name to.
Coming from the Framework forums, this was astonishing and disappointing.
[+] [-] gclawes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frazar0|2 years ago|reply
Of course, much depends on your use case and expectations. YMMV.
[+] [-] dadoomer|2 years ago|reply
I only replaced my phone this year (S7 edge) because the battery was depleting too fast.
[+] [-] gsa|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://forum.fairphone.com/t/known-reproducible-and-reporte...
[+] [-] lawn|2 years ago|reply
An easily removable battery is a godsend and the phone is surprisingly durable as I've been dropping it a lot (me clumsy).
I haven't encountered any issue and the one complaint I have is the lack of 3.5 jack. It was quite hard to find a USB converter that worked and having to use an adapter is really annoying.
Still if this one breaks I can repair it and I would even buy a new one if I had to.
[+] [-] ctenb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMode|2 years ago|reply
Having a phone with a new battery doesn't matter if I can't run the same apps as others.
[+] [-] ben-schaaf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phh|2 years ago|reply
Yes the hardware is the bottleneck.
This pains me, because what I can do is software, not hardware, where I spend all of my time is software.
An app just needs to target Android 7 to target 95%+ of users (so "only" 5% additional e-waste). And for app developers, targeting Android 7 is fairly easy (and the vast majority do), because Google provide androidx which is a compatibility library that provides backward-compatible APIs for every new shiny things. It's not 0 effort, and I understand app developers preferring Apple ecosystem here, but most of the Android app developers I've seen do use androidx and do target around Android 7. [1]
So, you get reasonably 5-7 years of app that are still working. The average renewal rate still barely bulged and still is around 2 years. People are not renewing their devices because of apps that are no longer supported.
IMO things that make people renew:
- Things that are a bit broken but annoying enough and accumulate: Too many apps leading to slow down, USB-C port getting dust making the connection harder
- The phones always look shinier in-store (because of over-saturated, over-brightness-ed screen amongst other things), so I'm pretty sure stores would manage to sell the same device over and over again by just changing the name.
- Kinda the same: Despite Gorilla Glass 424 Ultra Pro Max, screen's glass do wear, and phones' screen look worse and worse over time (if you have a screen protection, the screen will still look shinier in-store, if you don't your screen will be weary, and the screen in-store will look shinier) -- I like what Rebel Tech is trying to do here, they are trying to replace exclusively the glass part of the screen. That's so much cheaper that you could do it every 6 months to make your device look new again.
- Completely random software bug (which could very well be BECAUSE the device got a software upgrade, or could be just a bug in the app, or just Google decided that this was the new Best User Experience) that make people think "yeah well I get it, my phone's old"
[1] I do know of one exception: Slack app. They are deprecating Android 7 and Android 8. They suck.
[+] [-] mhotchen|2 years ago|reply
The software can be improved iteratively. Hopefully as they grow in new markets we'll see more investment in e-OS and (hopefully) find a viable competitor to Google that's open source
[+] [-] mrpopo|2 years ago|reply
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/997918043739...
> For Fairphone 4, we guarantee software support until the end of 2026, this includes an upgrade to Android 12 and, later on, Android 13.
[+] [-] opan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroCalories|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] passwordoops|2 years ago|reply
And of course they all have PR and websites devoted to how much they care about the environment, even positive ESG scores in some cases
[+] [-] S4mb|2 years ago|reply
Q: Wasn't the point of Fairphone to have ONE phone and then buy "extensions" or/and replacements only, aka modular - for the sake of preserving the environment, etc etc?!
A. No, it was always for repairability to ensure people can keep it for around five years without needing to replace the entire thing at once because the screen cracked or the audio jack broke.
This whole upgrade part stuff is something that get's hyped a lot in online discussions but from the very beginning Fairphone has been very honest and cautious when asked about possible upgrade modules in the future. They would love to offer crazy upgrade paths but cmon it's a small company in Amsterdam with limited resources.
However they did introduce an upgraded camera module in 2017.
I think the main takeaway I have for everybody regarding the Fairphone is: Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I've preordered the Fairphone 2, got it in 2016. People ask me about it often. They usually get very excited only to get disappointed when they realize that the team behind it has to make compromises just like every other phone brand has to.
The fact that they got this product designed, launched and supported with <100 people is really amazing, so please don't feel disappointed by the fact that it doesn't offer something even Google couldn't get market ready.
These guys make really good phones that are not only as fair as it gets but also as innovative as it gets when it comes to the overall design. They introduced a camera upgrade module in 2017 which is amazing, other than that it's really just making your life easier when you want to replace parts.
I replaced the screen and the audio jack, the phone is still rock solid.
Q: What about Software? I keep my phones mostly 3 years, because even after 3 years, many LOS devs are jumping ship...?
A: They definitively do their homework. Security updates come usually ~3 weeks after Google releases them. Fairphone OS still gets bigger updates every ~2-3 months. They still support their Fairphone Open OS. Lineage OS is really popular on it and is well supported offering Android Pie for the Fairphone 2.
For the Fairphone 3, the manufacturer guaranteed five years of support. This means that replacement parts are available for five years and security updates are offered. In addition, the manufacturer promises a feature update to Android 10, but does not call for a date. Additional feature updates are planned but not guaranteed. For the sold out since March 2019 Fairphone 2 (available since the end of 2015), the manufacturer will continue to publish security updates and reserve spare parts for at least another three years.
The Fairphone 2 was delivered with Android 5.1, later came updates to 6.01 and 7.1.2 - the latter with great effort, because there were no official drivers for the Snapdragon 801 chipset used.
"Q": What an awful phone. Anyone who buys this is an idiot, you aren’t saving the world and all you’re doing is making yourself feel holier than thou because of your “ethical” decision which you can’t be quiet about.
Save your money and get a REAL phone with much better specs for the same price.
A: It's still a step in the right direction.
I also don't see the problem with feeling cool about "ethical" decisions.
I definetely think my Fairphone 2 is cool. I think it's tacky, chunky and technical look is beautiful and it sparks interesting conversations with other people that think it's cool. If fair and open... If having a seven year old phone that looks absolutely worn out becomes the new mainstream cool that would be the best thing to ever happen to us.
I for myself feel pretty cool when people ask me about my phone and how old it is. I also feel better, yes.
"Q": We shouldn’t care about the conditions our phones are made in. We should care about the best value for our money, performance and quality.
A: Well you know that's just like your opinion man.
"Q": YEA lol pay [price of the prior Fairphone] for a phone just to feel good about your enviromental impact. top kek.
A: As you may know the Fairphone is not only trying to improve the enviromental impact, the company is also doing as much as possible to improve the situation of the involved asian workers. I would like to use this moment of awareness created by the Fairphone 3 announcement to invite you to get a small glimpse into the live of Xu, your typical Foxconn phone assembly line worker. Please excuse that I just copy & pasted this together.
On the last day of September, a 24-year-old migrant worker in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen killed himself. Xu Lizhi jumped out of a window of a residential dormitory run by his employer, Foxconn, the huge electronics manufacturing company with a million-strong workforce that makes the majority of the world's Apple iPhones.
In most cases, Xu's suicide would have been yet another footnote in the vast, sweeping story of China's economic boom and transformation. He is one of a legion of young Chinese migrants who emerge out of rural obscurity to find work in China's teeming cities, only to end up crushed by both the dullness and stress of factory jobs, insufficient wages and a steady accumulation of personal disappointments.
But Xu was a poet. And, after his death, his friends collected his work and got some published in a local Shenzhen newspaper.
Reading through the poems, one in particular stood out to me, ‘A screw Fell to the Ground.’ While it was done eight months before his suicide, the context seems to be relatable to how he may have been feeling—mostly the sound of “someone” plunging and nobody hearing. The poems, translated at the leftist website Libcom.org, are a wrenching echo of the alienation and hardship felt by countless people in modern China and, for that matter, in other parts of the developing world. They lament the grinding ennui of the assembly line, the squalor of a migrant worker's narrow, frustrated existence.You can find more of his works here: https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry
You can also check out the complete cost breakdown of the Fairphone 2 here: https://www.fairphone.com/de/2015/09/09/cost-breakdown-of-th...
But don't let me guilt trip you into buying this phone. The Fairphone 2 was an amazing device and I am sure the Fairphone 3 will be a solid upgrade. This is a great phone line and not some shitty alternative. The Fairphone 2 definetely had some reliability issues. I believe it was the right decision to introduce more screws and flat cables to make it more reliable and decrease additional material was needed for all the pogo pin connectors that made the Fairphone 2 extremely quick and easy to disassemble but also prone to all the random connectivity issues.
The FP3 is still as good as it gets when it comes to repairability. The changes to the FP3 give me hope that it could finally become a reliable phone as well.
Every gripe I had about the Fairphone 2 after using it since 2015 got addressed in this new iteration.
[+] [-] itsacomment|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progval|2 years ago|reply
Sounds like they are confusing it with "Phoneblocks", which went viral around the time the FP1 launched. Logos look similar, too.
[+] [-] jokoon|2 years ago|reply
I also wish it was just a phone with much less performance for a smaller price.
I want something durable and repairable, not something fast, Wirth's law is very important to consider when consider software and hardware. I hope they will make such phone, one day, because I am not spending that much money for a phone.
I bought a 150 euro phone and it already lasted 3 years, because even if a phone becomes obsolete, it is still cheaper, per year, to use crappy phones, than to use a durable expensive phone.
If your really care about fairness and the environment, make lightweight hardware and software.
[+] [-] zerox7felf|2 years ago|reply
Not sure I buy that lightweight phones would necessarily be better for the environment? Surely repairability is key?
[+] [-] frollo|2 years ago|reply
As for the cheapness, I've been keeping a running tab of how much the repair is costing me vs how much it would have cost with a normal phone (ballpark estimate) and, considering the phone price, I'm currently saving about 200€, even factoring in the phone price. The biggest expense is shipping because I live in the middle of nowhere and I can easily get 10€ of shipping on a 15€ spare part (which is why I'm not replacing the protective cover even though it looks like shit).
[+] [-] jokowueu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dopidopHN|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] putlake|2 years ago|reply
4-yr warranty, stock Android.
[+] [-] itsacomment|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KnobbleMcKnees|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martin_a|2 years ago|reply
If their phones do work as good as that... Well...
[+] [-] nubinetwork|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaylittle|2 years ago|reply
If I couldn't get a truly repairable phone, then at least I could buy the one that would likely last the longest given the wide availability of official repair outlets (e.g. Apple Stores) and the history of solid software support for at least five years.
So that's where I am at. Thankfully things are looking a bit better on the laptop side of the repairability fence. I have every intention of pre-ordering a Framework 16 the second pre-orders open.
[+] [-] malf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progval|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcny|2 years ago|reply
I have two questions though.
1. Bands: does it have all the bands for GSM carriers in the US? CDMA?
2. Can you use this phone powered solely by the charger with the battery removed? With a 65W Thinkpad charger?
[+] [-] Paianni|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] res0nat0r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nologic01|2 years ago|reply
I wish they would come preinstalled with something like kde plasma mobile though. I will never warm to android, no matter how "degoogled" it might become. There is something about its architecture that seems freakish. Like the entire digital universe that was created in the last decades.
[+] [-] stevezsa8|2 years ago|reply
I think the modular aspect is cool, but seems like a gimmick that would be prone to failure. Just my opinion anyway.
[+] [-] dimitar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmdes|2 years ago|reply
The real issue with the FP4 is the camera. Ugly pictures, and under bad lightning its like taking picture on android a decade ago.. Albeit the pixel number is enough.
[+] [-] ctenb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntnsndr|2 years ago|reply