Thoughts?
I had the Fairphone 2 and I loved it. It was like Lemmy, you never really knew if it would work the next morning but the community was great.
After replacing the battery once, without any tools whatsoever, and upgrading the camera, with a small screwdriver, it lasted for more than five years.
Since then, I’ve had a company phone but when it breaks, I will check out Fairphone first. Of course there is no such thing as a sustainable, or “fair” phone, but at least in 2016, this was often discussed in their trancparacy reports? The official forum was also very aware. Some raw materials where sourced to the exact mine, others thei openly said they couldn’t control at the time.
Additionally, they offered the phone with root acces so trying out alternative os was never any problem. It’s the closest Ive ever been to a Google free life.
Reading through the comments, almost everyone missed the elephant in the room. The big problem with long term support is not on the phone or chip manufacturers.
…::: It’s GOOGLE! :::… Just compare the history of Android with Windows. Windows 10 is still supported for another 2 years, yet it was released in mid 2015. Every Windows 10 capable device is still receiving updates till then.
Contrast that with Android. Android 6.0 came out in October 2015. Yet very few devices from that era are supportable today. Why? A large part of that is based on Google’s never ending -> breaking changes <- and random new requirements that make older devices incompatible.
This got me personally when I bought a Sony Z3 with the intention of having a “future proof” phone. It was openly advertised as being a dev device for Android 7, so much so that a preview release was downloadable for it.
Only for Google to drop a new requirement for the GPU to have minimum OpenGL ES 3.1, while the GPU only had the instructions for 3.0. WTF?! I might add, the specification for 3.1 was only released to the public 2 years prior.
I seriously hope that some alternative to Android will establish itself again. We had Windows phone, which Microsoft utterly butchered. IOS is not an alternative as that’s tied to one manufacturer.
I’m still in mourning over the Ubuntu phone OS :(
Yup. While I have a sceptical opinion of Ubuntu, it did find it sad that it didn’t gain any traction. A possible contender is still Tizen OS. It’s essentially an entire OS build around Chromium, while not owned by Google. Samsung use that a lot in their smart TVs.
Sure, it’s not as performant as running native Android.
But boy have we seen some massive improvements in browser tech and performance increases on mobile devices. Developing web-applications is certainly a ton easier than native Android and IOS. Wrapper toolchains like React Native aren’t helping much.
Unless you really need calls to some device APIs, there isn’t too much left that a Browser can’t do compared to what the native OS permits. I’ve been developing web-apps for robots and also developed equivalent native apps in Android. In the browser you now have access to some impressive 3d capabilities, which are extending further (BabylonJS). You’ve got the ability to interact with files via tool-chains that are not too dissimilar to what you see in native Android (Google has been clamping down file-system access to app devs quite heavily in recent releases). You can also gain decent API access to the devices battery and GPS status. Add some nifty UI libraries and you can provide a more pleasant experience, faster than with an actual native app. Even video streaming works remarkably well since you can interact with multiple cameras, microphones and even the screen (Google Meet does that).
It’s now that we’re seeing PWAs (progressive web app) to gain traction. I’m using Voyager for Lemmy, which works lovely in Windows and my phone.
In the browser you only miss on some native capabilities on some hardware component and a few legacy systems. Mainly serial communication and native UDP support. Although the last one will see some more improvements with HTTP3, which is gaining traction.
The one thing I wish google never did was introduce SafetyNet without enabling us a way to essentially say “I modified my own phone, so let me use my damn banking and tap-to-pay apps without issue” and reenable it.
In fact they’ve actively made safetynet more invasive by adding CTS profile matching alsongside basic attestation, with a system for telling what phones are compatible with the new profile matching so you can’t force disable it.
If they never added that I could’ve bypassed basic attestation and gotten google wallet back. But no. The most I can get back is banking and Pokemon GO. But there’s still a risk one of them will decide to use CTS and therefore making it impossible to use that app on my current phone, all in the name of “security”
It’s my phone, stop trying to smother my attempts to do what I want with it!
i use e/os, that replaces like everything google has like the google micro services with something else. Some apps, newer ones with more trackers, tend to break but it supports some phones from 2013. I suggest taking a look when you have phones that are not supported anymore
It seems to support Sony Xperia Z3
https://doc.e.foundation/devices
That is amazing! I had a Fairphone 1 and used it until the ‘on’ button broke which was about the only thing not available from the parts store. Now I have a Fairphone 3, have had it for a few years now. I might get the camera module upgrade as I still have an old one and it’s the only disappointing thing about the phone. I’ve been looking forward to fixing my phone because the modular design they made is amazing, but absolutely nothing has broken yet in my 3 years of use!
Here is a pic i done with the libre camera app on the FP3 with the newer camera module i did a few days ago without zoom at three mice
I think it is better to have a seperate camera but for the normal everyday use it is okay
Ngl but that looks terrible.
the thing is that the cam has no system that proccess the raw fotage to something better. A few years ago samsing and apple had the same camera hardware but the quality of the samsung pics where better because they had an better ai or something
Fairphone proves the usual excuses for ending Android support aren’t valid.
That alone is worth a lot. Their endeavour for longevity is also great. I hope they get the attention they need.
By supporting the very manufacture to blame for short support times? Qualcomm is the root of the problem.
They don’t provide the bloody drivers for newer Android versions.
Manufacturers can only provide security updates after 2 major updates.
Are other Chipmakers better? It’s not like they could just have no chip at all…
Ok, than they are alright and green, very fair much phone
I guess having only one phone every year makes it immensely easier to support than having multiple models at every price range every year. Apple does it, why couldn’t Android phone manufacturers do it?
Because they want to corner every price target.
You think the masses care about how long the devices are supported? This is a topic from back in the early days of Android.
Apple does it by introducing new models while lowering the price of older ones. That effectively covers the lower budget price tier while not having to make a whole new model for it.
I bought my Fairphone 3 at the start of 2020. I love it. I love the fact I can dissamble it with the provided screwdriver in two minutes.
I love that I can buy replacement parts for it if anything breaks without having to get some kind of expensive repair from Apple or Samsung. Ive replaced the charging port on this phone and I’ll be replacing the battery soon too. Giving people the ability to fix and maintain their own devices is fantastic.
I am hoping to get a decade out of this device and I’m nearing 4 years with no complaints so far. I’m a little bit dissapointed they got rid of the headphone jack on the Fairphone 4. While you can get adapters etc, it shouldn’t be necessary imo. That alone is my biggest gripe with that device. Aside from that though, they make great devices and I highly reccomend them
The removal of the headphone jack is what made me call complete bullshit on their whole “repairability and sustainability” schtick. At the same time of the removal, they began selling their own wireless earbuds. So now you can’t use wired headphones with their phones, and instead have to buy a pair of wireless ones (which they conveniently sell to you) which will eventually have their internal batteries die and need to go to a landfill because none of it is repairable. I initially thought they were a pretty good company with decent values, but ever since they did that I no longer care about them.
I disagree with this choice, but I don’t think they are bullshiting, I think they are walking a difficult line of trying to be sustainable, up to date with the technology (adding 5G this early is also very questionable IMO), attractive for consumers and not completely unaffordable, which leads to difficult compromises.
None of those points demand the removal of the headphone jack as a compromise.
Here are some: making the design easier, making reaching IP rating easier. Again, I’m not saying it would not be possible to make those with a jack, but maybe considering the aforementioned compromise, it was easier to ditch it.
Exactly. It’s a bullshit excuse to sell headphones. So fuck that.
Love the phone otherwise but won’t buy without a jack.
Wireless is future
Yeah that was a disappointing moment. Though I think you can still use wired headphones with an adapter that connects them to USB-C.
Well, when I ordered my FP4 last year the wireless earbuds were included for free. Still bought an adapter for aux that i keep in my car. I think this is fairly acceptable. Now my only problem is that they didn’t offer an adapter with both aux and USB for charging.
It’s still more waste. An adapter is a bigger use of materials, extra cost, and another point of failure. Hardly a sound decision for a self-proclaimed “sustainable” manufacturer.
The removal of the headphone jack is what made me call complete bullshit on their whole “repairability and sustainability” schtick.
I have a similar opinion. I feel Fairphone is simply using the vegan/green/ecofriendly schtick to target those buyers for making money, as we can clearly see their BoM is very much similar to any run of the mill phone OEM.
This is awesome, but makes me salty. When I first heard about them I was stoked and wanted one. But at the time they weren’t selling in the US. I needed a new phone so I caved and went with Samsung for the s23. And recently they announced they’d be selling to the US. This is great but hind sight is 20/20…
Do those 7 years of updates come at a steady clip for the Android security patches as Google and Samsung mostly do it, or is it a patch here and there with massive swaths of time with no patches more like Motorola?
The former is progress, the latter is functionally not much better than every other OEM.
I’m not really conviced by fairphone. They claim they have an ethical and ecological supply chain / manufacturing but there is very little on their website to support that claim. The phone is made in China like any other smartphone. The “Fairtrade Gold” label doesn’t mean Gold-rank fairtrade materials, it means that only the actual gold that’s inside the phone has the fairtrade label. The amount of gold in a phone is ridiculously small and doesn’t represent the major part of the phone’s emissions footprint. They have another label which name I can’t remember but I looked it up and the terms are very vague. After all the electronic components are still electronic components : copper wires made from copper, qualcomm CPU made in the same qualcomm factory, etc. I don’t think a label changes that.
All in all I don’t think that buying a brand new, 580 € smartphone with subpar performance is a good move if you care about the environment. Buying a used phone sounds like a much better option to me : cheaper, better performance, probably not as serviceable BUT it’s already living a second life anyways.
I tried to be enthusiatic but FP looks way too much like a cash grab aimed at people that care about the environment
You’re right that Fairphone’s supply chain is not fully sustainable. In fact, I remember reading an interview with the founder where he admitted that poor sustainability and labour practices are so entrenched in the industry that it was impossible to actually make a “fair” Fairphone. (Incidentally, this is why the company uses the word “fair*[er]*” to describe the phones.)
Yeah, I would definitely agree that a used phone is a much more environmentally-friendly choice than a brand-new one. The amount of customers who are going to ditch their 1 or 2 year old phone for this “sustainable” phone will unfortunately not be zero…
Greenwashing is the term for something like this.
Greenwashing refers to ecological sustainability claims. Regarding the manufacturing process, Fairphone primarily claims to be more socially sustainable, not environmentally. Their ecological claims are solely based off of their phones extended software support and easier repairability, which is undeniably given.
They are a European company. If they lied about any of this, an NGO would have already bisected them since then.
They’re not literally lying, but presenting the information in a biased way
Promises, promises…
Here’s hoping they’re still around in 7 years.
Updates on a phone is a important topic. When i choose a smartphone i look for software support period. But i think software updates sometimes make graphical improvements and that causes performance decrease. Or the company wants to slow that thing down. Nowadays you can’t see the difference.
I would like to support them, but it is lacking in several features. Kinda wish they would take their modular and user-replaceable components and let us upgrade, like a better camera module for example.
that said, it’s missing the most important thing… Network compatibility.
the fairphone 5 is rumored to come out this year, hopefully it will address those issues
I wish they were more similar to Framework except in the smartphone space. Because when I buy a Fairphone I’m still stuck with the specs I bought and when I want to have better specs I need to buy a new phone regardless of how repairable it is. WIth a Framework laptop I can upgrade the mainboard to one with better specs and can keep the rest.
I’m so tired of phone without bezels and tiny batteries.
I really really want a phone that has like 12 screws on the back, around the edge of the device that pinch down on a gasket for the seal instead of adhesives and plastic clips. Phones are plateauing in power now where most people don’t need to upgrade the SOC or memory for the better part of 5-10 years. The only reason I ever really need to replace a phone is because the phone isn’t getting updates or the battery is cooked.
If done well enough, the screws could even allow modular backs and shells. You could mount your phone’s internals into a shell and lock it in with a different back. So people could have phones with a big ol ass on them and a big ol battery if they want. The SOC, memory, and storage could all be on one singular board with headers to all of the buttons and shit. Because it could be user serviceable you can even put the SIM card, SD card or whatever onboard and not have to deal with a water tight seal for those.
Boy do I have a phone for you!
I’m not sure the fairphone is even waterproof. Plus for what it offers it is way more costly than it needs to be. 20W charging, 3904 mAh battery, and for some reason no headphone jack.
Plus I’m American and I don’t think they even sell the thing over here but for nearly $700 it’d have to be a very convincing phone for anyone who isn’t thinking “I will fight climate change and ewaste by buying a phone” because you can buy a pixel 7a for $450 currently.
The only reason I ever really need to replace a phone is because the phone isn’t getting updates or the battery is cooked.
This solves both of your problems and means you have to buy a third as many phones.
This is commendable, but is 7 years really necessary? I think 5 years is plenty long before phones get outdated.
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Whoch laptop has gotten 20 years of updates?
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Only if you are adept enough or know someone who is.
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Try teaching my granny or even my mother that
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The whole philosophy of Fairphone is keeping it as long as possible through long term maintenance and access to spare part for self repairs. Fairphones are “outdated” almost at launch in terms of hardware in comparison to most phones on the market because this is not what we (fairphone customers) are looking for.
Exactly! I don’t care that I don’t have the most modern gadgets on my phone, I didn’t have them before so I will not miss them. To me being unable to replace my battery or having to get rid of my phone because the OS is outdated is unacceptable and stupid and I will gladly sacrifice having a 1gigapixel camera or being able to take my phone in the shower.
My last phone I kept for about 5 years. I had two issues:
- software support had ended
- the battery was severely degraded
fortunately there was a local shop who’d replace the battery (it wasn’t a fairphone so I couldn’t do it myself). If it wasn’t for the software support I’d have gone that route and would be still using it now. It worked perfectly well for my use case. Unfortunately, I ended up retiring the phone and getting a new one.
This is really good to hear. The worst thing about mid range android phones is the lack of future software support. Even flagship androids aren’t anything to write home about. As much as people like shitting on apple, they support their devices for quite a while compared to other manufacturers.
Most Android manufacturers are using minimal development teams to get closed source blobs from the CPU+radios OEMs to talk to the OS. Like the article says, Qualcomm stop supporting older generations of their SoCs pretty quickly, and those manufacturers don’t invest the resources in custom development, which is the LineageOS approach that Fairphone are taking. There’s nothing to promise these updates will be stable and secure though.
Apple has a huge advantage in developing their own processors from start to finish. They’re not reliant on anyone else’s code, and if they do need to buy in certain components (like Intel modems that they’ve used before), they’ve got the size and budget to get pretty much anyone to agree to their terms. It’s why Google started the Tensor project, which is rumored to be finally going full Google (ending reliance on Samsung) from 2025/Pixel 9.
I still think that open standards would better enable long-term support than more effective vertical integration.
We need an open source smartphone.
pinephone
Would be great if it would actually be usable.
From what I’ve read from people owning it it’s unfit for any purpose at the moment and very few people actually use it as their main phone.
Pine64’s model of “we build the hardware, the community builds the software” doesn’t seem to be working very well unfortunately.
Its not even software issues (I mean the software is still very early, but improving), the pinephone hardware is ridiculously underpowered while simultaneously drawing too much power.
The Pro fixes the underpowered issue, but gives you a couple hours of screen-on time. At first I was hopeful software updates would fix the battery life, but the same operating system (postmarketos) gives me a full day of use on my other phone (oneplus6). That leads me to believe it’s largely a hardware issue.
I hope I’m wrong. \o/
So? Sell it and buy the new one
Believe it or not, some people aren’t big on over consumption and want things to last. Companies should do better and not produce crap that’s going to end up in landfill in a few years.
Have fun using obsolete tech
I believe someone else in this thread has mentioned this already, For most people the feature set on phones has been stagnant for many years. Most users have their use case met already and additional features are really just bloat (for the most part). Not all people are into tech, and a phone is simply a tool. And therefore don’t always want/need the latest and greatest.
Its not obsolete if they are providing the updates…
for me, the biggest issue with the fairphone is that they attempted to embrace everything: modular, sustainable, fair trade, etc
their competitors do none of that, so the quality/cost ratio turns out way off and that prevents their market share to grow sustainably (pun intended). the few people I know who use it, are the profile that is used to do sacrifices like that (like buying sustainable food at large markups, etc) but that’s not feasible or desirable to the vast majority
imo they should have picked a concept and perfected it - preferably the modular part which is the best thing you can do and brings tangible value to users. then move on to the other things… that’s a great cautionary tale about trying to be the good guys in capitalism, the system is not in their favour
For me the problem is the SoC they chose was too slow to be viable in 2018, let alone today.
my current phone has the same soc and there are absolutely no issues there. will report back once i get my fairphone 4, hopefully tomorrow
if you’re not gaming on your phone (and if you are, 1. why, 2. get a steamdeck), i honestly don’t see how you would notice the soc. the only time i ever noticed that my phone was weak in the past five years (and my current phone is the only one that was low-mid-range, not actual low-end, save for an iphone se 3rd gen i had for half a year) was during zooming into an abnormally large upscaled r/place image. a phone’s performance is not really something that should be a consideration for the average user nowadays, anything can run basic apps that should have been websites and play back video. the mid-tier 2021 soc in the fairphone 4 definitely qualifies.
if the complaint is about the fairphone 3, then absolutely fair, i do remember that that one did manage to be hella slow. i wanted one back then and it was one of the major issues.
