This kind of release schedule totally ruins the entire premise of their products. The Fairphone 3 is barely four years old and you already can't get replacement parts for it anymore. And for what? Only because they slightly changed the chassis, instead of offering a new base version with more modern components. On top of that, the 3 will also lose security updates in 12 months. So you will be forced to trash your phone after 5 years tops. Compare that to Apple, who still support their seven year old iPhone 7 with parts and security updates. The problem is that a "real" Fairphone, that actually stands up to its values, is a terrible business idea. So no profit oriented company will ever be able to fulfill that promise.
The bottom module has been out of stock for a while[1], and is also the part that's probably going to break first due to the amount of use it gets when charging daily. As someone who needs to put their FP3+ in _just_ the right position for it to charge, I'm very tempted to buy a new phone so I don't have to deal with the anxiety of wondering if it's properly charging when I go to bed.
Before anyone says: yes, I have cleaned the USB port out. Cutting a triangle off a credit card and using the corner worked the best in my experience.
I still would pay for the other "fair" aspects of the Fairphone, but until I can actually repair it I'm not going to consider it a repairable phone.
> Before anyone says: yes, I have cleaned the USB port out. Cutting a triangle off a credit card and using the corner worked the best in my experience.
Are you sure you got all of the lint out?
I'm asking, because I thought I had, and my phone still wouldn't charge reliably.
As a hail Mary (I was ready to buy a new phone anyway) I tried a thin metal needle. I couldn't believe the amount of gunk I got out of the port.
In my attempts to get it charging I had compressed the lint so hard that none of the other softer tools I'd tried before could get it out.
While I didn't try your method specifically, I'm quite sure a credit card would've be too thick and soft to do it.
Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I've tried all sorts, from compressed air (useless) to toothpicks (not quite small enough) to thumbtacks (really hard to do carefully). You've reminded me that the other successful tool was a SIM eject tool I found lying around, but even then it's still not reliably charging. It's better with the USB cable one way round compared to the other, which makes me wonder if I've managed to scratch it with the thumbtack.
The irony is one of the main reasons for buying this phone was I didn't want to have to get a new one and transfer everything due to some tiny problem with it. The latest ETA is end of October so I guess I'll wait at least that long before giving up...
Just experienced the exact same thing! Performed the miracle on the phones of several family members. I used the sharp end of a push-pin to lift it out, and was in awe of how much material had been compacted in there. Now my phone has that satisfying "click" when you put the cable in again.
I had the same issue and found floss picks worked well, but after a while the pins just became too worn. Thankfully my new phone has wireless charging.
Actually fairly incredible that you can still get spare parts for a 8 year old smart phone (the Fairphone 2). The problem from my POV was, that the hardware specs were already way past their expiration date when I sold mine 3 years ago, even when using rather unexciting apps, making spare parts somewhat obsolete.
Are later FPs set up to offer chip upgrades to avoid this dilemma?
It's sad that the Fairphone 3 is losing support already, though I think that's much more down to upstream vendors of the hardware not providing support for the chipset, not Fairphone themselves
In terms of the release schedule I think it's important to continue to have a "jumping on point" for customers who want to switch to a Fairphone. It's hard to convince someone to replace a 3-5 year old phone for another 3 year old model
As long as they keep providing 8+ years of support for newer models I think it's the best option, since the company also need to have a continuous revenue stream to exist for the full lifetime of their phones
As far as I can recall the fp3 was sold with a promise of five years of software updates and parts. I think they're still honouring that and haven't backtracked on any such promises for any of their models, so their track record is good in terms of keeping promises
I couldn't find any mention that they backtracked on their promises, but if that were to be the case, that would indeed be a very strong disincentive to trust them on their commitment to the fp5
I was sad to see that parts for this new phone are also incompatible with the Fairphone 4 [0]. Granted, they do specically say "repairable", not "upgradeable", but it does kind of rub me the wrong way.
I'd love to see Framework make a phone. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion, it doesn't mean not selling anyone anything for years, it just means selling upgraded/alternative/replacement parts instead? But the desire for it is pretty niche.
I'd like to see a list of compatibility of parts between fairphone versions. I couldn't find any Fairphone's website. If there is nothing compatible, I really don't see the point either. Like if I had a 4 and was only interested in the upgraded camera, why can't I just put a camera from the 5 in the 4th? That would be actually game changing.
There were some prototypes like phonebloks (later named project Ara) ten years ago, which sadly was cancelled
Interchangeable parts between models is really hard, since your support burden kind of explodes when you have to support several parts for several models, so it would probably not be sustainable for a smaller company like Fairphone
With that said, I remember a Fairphone representative saying they were looking into if they could provide upgrades for the FP5 down the line, as the longer lifespan of this model might makes it economically feasible for them
I wouldn't base any purchase on that until there's an official announcement though
Personally I'm happy enough with the value proposition as it is to be getting myself an FP5
I must admit I'm having trouble relating to the strong desire to have a phone that's more repairable than an iPhone.
There have been a couple times I've had a problem with my iPhone under AppleCare. I've gone to my nearest Apple Store, and pretty quickly walked out with a new iPhone that works perfectly and contains all my data and, for all practical purposes, is exactly as if my old one never broke. That seems pretty repairable to me, on the axes I care about.
It does mean I have to pay for AppleCare, but my guess is that on average you're not going to get away much more cheaply with years of use of a more "repairable" phone.
I'd be interested in seeing counterarguments. I'm not trying to dispute anyone's claims about repairability. I just honestly don't get it.
[Update: the main thing I'm getting from responses is that people care about their being low-cost, easily repairable phones for people who can't afford iPhones and Apple Care; the enthusiasm is empathy-based. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know of a source for actually comparing long-term costs, though. Are you sure the repairable phones are actually cheaper to own, long-term? Arguments about the environment make less sense to me since the broken phone is refurbished and used again. I asked, and I got useful answers. Thanks, HN!
I've gotten a lot of downvotes for this question, though, which mystifies me... why downvote an honest question? It seems unfriendly and uncharitable.]
It's about making it accessible to everyone, not just you who can afford an iPhone and AppleCare.
It creates jobs by letting independent repair shops legitimately fix and repair your devices. Small business is important to our economy. It also creates competition for service. Your AppleCare service is good... for now... how long before Apple becomes like IBM? Maybe it'll never happen, but it might!
Also, by making the iPhone repairable, it sets a standard (and possible legal backing) to make every device repairable. This applies to different phones, your laptop, your car, the speakers you bought.
It also allows someone to buy a part and replace it instead of chucking the whole device when some small part breaks. This helps reduce e-waste and general landfill garbage.
It also allows folks who come under tough times to just buy a knock-off battery and have their cousin install it until they get their next pay-cheque and can afford to take their phone in for Apple Care.
You're thinking only about yourself, what about people less privileged than yourself? What about people who rely on Apple to do the right thing so that their manufacturers follow suit (Android)? You can't just trust a company will always be good, sometimes you have to enforce or push for good.
I supported a few fleets of smartphones back in the windows mobile and blackberry days, when they all had replaceable batteries.
Do you know what people did when the batteries died? They overwhelmingly bought a new phone.
Just because something is technically modular doesn't mean that:
1. other people know how to diagnose the problem
2. other people want to spend time or effort repairing the phone
3. other people don't just want a new phone anyway
While people on this forum are often power users or technically minded people who like spending mental cycles on their devices, this is not what other people are like. People who are purely users delegate the fixing of their devices to others.
Back in the day, phones were improving so fast that upgrading often was naturally incentivized. These days, the tech has plateaued and phones are a commodity. How often does the average person replace their fridge? How often does the average person replace their hot water boiler? That's how often I want to replace my phone; closer to every ten years than every two years.
True, and people still do not repair their own fridge when it breaks. They either call the warranty line, an appliance repair shop, or an appliance store.
The device still has to be repairable in order for the repair shop to do it affordably, and the same is true even if you then choose to buy a new one, because an old appliance that can be repaired and resold has a higher trade in value. The lack of repairability costs you money whether you do the repairs yourself or not.
In most of the US, I would bet that skilled labor willing and able to do the job of going to people’s homes to do appliance repairs will be expensive enough such that any ~$1,000 appliance just gets replaced.
My brother in law just called his 3 year old washer’s extended warranty line, and they didn’t even want to verify the issue. Immediately told him they were sending him a check for the amount he purchased the washer for, and all that was left was for him to buy a new one.
I imagine the labor itself costs $100 per hour, and including travel time, you are looking at $300 just to diagnose the issue. Then a couple hundred for the part, and if they have to wait for it, come back, that’s another $300. And you are already losing money.
I imagine that is why Citibank got rid of their 4 year Costco appliance warranty.
That's for the new stuff that isn't designed to be repaired.
My circa 1990s freezer broke a couple years ago. First guy quoted us "not worth repairing". Second guy did the job for two hours of $100/hr labor and a $60 part. Told us that if it were a modern device it wouldn't have been worth it because of the labor, but the freezer was old enough that everything that can break was designed to be easily and quickly repaired.
The unfortunate irony in this story is that repairing stuff usually helps the environment, but in this case probably not, since older freezers consume quite a lot of energy, they were built when electricity was cheaper and using less optimized technology.
That being said, I'm fully in favour of repairable phones, the energy cost is not such an issue for such low power device.
I also think that todays dishwashers, washing machines, cooking plates, which are typically thrashed witin 10 years would benefit a lot from repairability if they are built to last.
It's a hard to say, but it's generally better to keep something at the consumer level running because of the cost of carbon manufacturing and shipping the product.
Additionally I happen to live in an area with a very heavy use of renewables, so the carbon cost is even lower.
But now you're just making the argument for repairing it yourself. How many people could make enough money in even a full day to recover the replacement cost of a $1000 appliance, rather than spending up to that long to fix it themselves?
And the parts are only hundreds of dollars because the appliances aren't repairable. Obviously if you have to replace a third of the appliance instead of just the bearing because that isn't sold as a separate part, repairs will be much less cost effective.
Mainstream phones today can generally be repaired commercially, even if they are devices criticized as not being self-repairable.
> the same is true even if you then choose to buy a new one, because an old appliance that can be repaired and resold has a higher trade in value. The lack of repairability costs you money whether you do the repairs yourself or not.
TCO is a complicated subject. A more repairable device does not necessarily have a cheaper TCO. Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially. And they tend to depreciate logarithmically. Based solely on TCO, there is an optimum expected lifetime, and it mathematically isn't "as long as possible"
> Mainstream phones today can generally be repaired commercially, even if they are devices criticized as not being self-repairable.
Doing this raises the labor cost to the point of making it uneconomical in many cases that it wouldn't be otherwise.
It also raises the parts cost (and the amount of waste), because a failed logic board that has every chip in the device soldered to it is going to cost more to replace than a card with only the bit that failed on it.
> Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially.
Which ones scale exponentially? How come a Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than an iPhone?
> And they tend to depreciate logarithmically.
Depreciation on existing devices is precisely because they can't be upgraded or repaired. If your phone has a 3G cellular modem in it, it stops being useful as a phone when they shut down the 3G towers -- unless you can replace the modem.
Compare this to PC components that don't depreciate quickly, like a standard ATX chassis or power supply or monitor. Or an AM4 system board that could have been purchased in 2016 yet supports 2022 CPUs that could viably still be in use for five or ten more years.
And a decline in value of a component only makes the repairs more affordable. A Ryzen 7 2700X has lost half its value over 5 years, which only means that if you should need to replace one it costs half as much -- or can be replaced with a faster model in the same system.
>> Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially.
> Which ones scale exponentially? How come a Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than an iPhone?
Nothing that they've chosen. The Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than other phones because it really isn't dramatically different. They don't have any modular parts that aren't already available on other phones in various combinations. They are just offering a slightly different box of COTS parts with a promise to support it. This is relatively cheap to do. It still suffers from some of the problems you mention and more: the logic board is all soldered, the modem is not modular, the software support promises are reliant on third parties, etc.
They built something which is repairable but not upgradeable. The modular parts are the ones most likely to fail, not the ones most likely to become obsolete. But that doesn't seem to have increased the cost by any significant degree, so why doesn't everybody else do at least that?
Meanwhile many PC laptops do make the upgradeable parts modular. Laptops with modular memory, CPU, wireless etc. are available for less than a Macbook or iPhone. So where is the exponential cost?
> the software support promises are reliant on third parties
This is a "current vendors are crap" problem rather than any kind of technological barrier.
And that can't be the reason that Apple can't do it.
> They built something which is repairable but not upgradeable. The modular parts are the ones most likely to fail, not the ones most likely to become obsolete. But that doesn't seem to have increased the cost by any significant degree, so why doesn't everybody else do at least that?
It's a few cents, and it makes packaging more difficult. If Samsung shaves a single penny off of each phone they sell, they are more a million dollars more profitable per year.
But most mid-to-high end phones do have a significant number of modular parts. Battery, camera, speakers, displays, and sometimes IO are modular on many phones, and repair shops will fix these for customers.
> Meanwhile many PC laptops do make the upgradeable parts modular. Laptops with modular memory, CPU, wireless etc. are available for less than a Macbook or iPhone.
Modular CPUs are generally not available on laptops anymore, that's a thing of the past anymore. Modular memory and wireless are starting to disappear, in part due to latency requirements for the later memory standards, and packaging and power requirements for popular thin-and-light segment devices.
If you're asking why phones don't have modular memory, the answer is simple: they're optimized for small size and low power, and adding a connector would compromise on that. Also, it would require inventing a new memory standard since modular LPDDR does not exist.
> So where is the exponential cost?
You see exponential costs if you look at devices that actually have extended lifetimes. I'm not talking about one consumer phone compared to another. In the scheme of things, they really all have expected lifetimes around a handful of years. Compare the redundancy and expected lifetime of consumer products to industrial products to aerospace products if you want to see how making something last a long time can be very expensive. If you want to double a product's lifetime, you are often looking at 10x the cost, if not more.
> This is a "current vendors are crap" problem rather than any kind of technological barrier.
Well, it's not possible to make a phone without relying on vendors for some parts. There are too many specialized parts. Not even Apple has enough resources to in-house it all, and they have been trying.
> It's a few cents, and it makes packaging more difficult. If Samsung shaves a single penny off of each phone they sell, they are more a million dollars more profitable per year.
Or they could just raise the price by five cents and make even more money per unit and get more sales because more people are attracted by the upgradeable device than are deterred by a 0.01% difference in price on a $500+ device.
> But most mid-to-high end phones do have a significant number of modular parts. Battery, camera, speakers, displays, and sometimes IO are modular on many phones, and repair shops will fix these for customers.
Modular in the sense that they're intrinsically separate components you have to go out of your way to stick together, not in the sense that they're attached with standard modular connectors and are easy to replace.
> Modular CPUs are generally not available on laptops anymore, that's a thing of the past anymore.
This is basically down to Intel changing their CPU socket every ten seconds, not any actual cost reason. Nobody cares if you can replace the CPU if the upgrade isn't compatible with the socket. The laptops that previously had this didn't have a significantly higher cost.
> Modular memory and wireless are starting to disappear, in part due to latency requirements for the later memory standards, and packaging and power requirements for popular thin-and-light segment devices.
Dell has sorted this and it's on track to become the standard:
> If you're asking why phones don't have modular memory, the answer is simple: they're optimized for small size and low power, and adding a connector would compromise on that. Also, it would require inventing a new memory standard since modular LPDDR does not exist.
So invent a new standard. All new standards are invented by somebody; see above. If Dell can do it, why not Samsung?
> You see exponential costs if you look at devices that actually have extended lifetimes. I'm not talking about one consumer phone compared to another. In the scheme of things, they really all have expected lifetimes around a handful of years.
You can run the latest version of the Linux kernel on commodity PCs from the 90s. Why can't you do that on a phone half that old? None of the reasons are good.
> Compare the redundancy and expected lifetime of consumer products to industrial products to aerospace products if you want to see how making something last a long time can be very expensive. If you want to double a product's lifetime, you are often looking at 10x the cost, if not more.
These products are expensive because they're purchased primarily by bureaucracies and everything purchased primarily by bureaucracies is cost inflated. Which part of extending the lifetime is the part which is supposed to make it so much more expensive?
> Well, it's not possible to make a phone without relying on vendors for some parts. There are too many specialized parts. Not even Apple has enough resources to in-house it all, and they have been trying.
You don't have to make your own DRAM or display because those were never the issue. The lack of support comes from the SoC whose vendor has published neither driver source code nor documentation sufficient to write one, so when the kernel they gave you a binary blob to go with falls out of support you're screwed.
Qualcomm has been a major offender here and is one of the only suppliers of performant SoCs for phones but they're supposedly getting better. Samsung has no excuse because they make their own chips.
There is a lot of excitement around RISC-V because it could potentially do something about this, if not by actually producing a competitive chip then by putting pressure on the incumbents to get it together and publish open source drivers.
I'm arguing against making a repair that needs to be done 3% of the time cost $200 more in order to save $0.05 on the price of the device.
Labor specialization is supposed to make things more efficient. You have some expert who can do the job in five minutes that would take you an hour, and then you can justify paying them ten times your own hourly rate for those five minutes.
It doesn't do any good to cause something to take the high-paid expert an hour instead of five minutes, all it does send the device to the landfill because the repair becomes uneconomical.
I think you're applying a metric of well-to-do corporate workers over the needs and wants of folks who are less fortunate and don't work for a big company like you clearly did.
What about poor folks just trying to keep their phone running and quite literally can't afford to buy a new phone because they live paycheck to paycheck?
Or lets look at it more self-serving from your corporate perspective. Say, your company is coming under hard times. You need to find places to cut. With repairability you can opt to just replace batteries, no upgrading, save some cash across your fleet of thousands of phones. Your boss is happy and you save money to survive another day.
This stuff doesn't have to only be for power users, that's just how it's marketed to you.
> I think you're applying a metric of well-to-do corporate workers over the needs and wants of folks who are less fortunate and don't work for a big company like you clearly did.
And you think the less fortunate are going to buy a niche $730 phone just so they can buy a $105 screen for it later?
No, they're going down to the Boost/Metro/Walmart/DG and picking up a whole new BLU, TCL or Moto G for less than $100.
No. I don't think they're going to buy a niche phone. I'm advocating for repair-ability in general. All of my comments have been in response to the original comment I replied to, which was about AppleCare and iPhones.
Also, as for poor folks. Many of them buy iPhones. They do this because appearing poor with a cheap phone from Walmart hampers your career trajectory. These folks are essentially "faking it til you make it". This isn't even wrong, it's just a fact of the way society perceives people. Unfortunately, folks look down on you if you don't own a Samsung or iPhone and wonder why you have a budget flip phone.
These very people are those who would benefit from affordable phone repair. They can easily replace a battery or a screen without paying another $1000+ for an iPhone. This helps them keep up appearances while saving money. I know many, many folks like this. It's important we fight for these repair options to help all of us out.
Yes, there is no denying that self-service repair would help the people who are willing and able to do so.
However, I'm just saying that market is not incentivized to do so. The BOM cost would be too high and the volume too low for it to be a cheap phone to begin with, so the affordability angle is a non-starter. Cheap high-volume glued-together phones will always be cheaper.
If people really can't afford a screen replacement at a repair shop, the market will sell them a <=$50 phone. If people really don't want to buy a $50 phone and want to spend more for an iPhone, they have demonstrated that they are willing to make the sacrifice to do so.
If people want an iPhone, then the Fairphone is not a solution to that problem either.
> Cheap high-volume glued-together phones will always be cheaper.
I appreciate your cost focused perspective on this. I really do. What I'm trying to argue is that it is necessary to stop doing this. I foresee that just like the EU forcing USB-C into the iPhone, we could also see more repair-ability to combat climate issues, e-waste, etc.
The world is going to have a hard pill to swallow, not everything is about profits. Sometimes things need to be done because they are good for us and our society.
> If people want an iPhone, then the Fairphone is not a solution to that problem either.
I don't think the Fairphone is necessarily the solution either. That was never what I was arguing about. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop bringing it up. I'm not talking about the Fairphone. I'm explicitly talking about why an iPhone user might care about repair-ability.
Cost is a good proxy for resources expended. How many devices exactly are thrown away due to damage vs being EOL'd for other reasons, like vanity, or other obsolescence? Repairability does not equal infinite product lifetime, however it does increase material on the BOM and increase the energy required to manufacture the device. Are you sure that those additional increases in material and energy would be offset by a longer observed lifetime of the device?
I mean, I'm not against repairability laws as a matter of consumer protection, but I think it's pure conjecture to jump to the conclusion that it is undoubtably better for the environment.
If you add 10% of material to the average device to gain 5% average lifetime, you're not decreasing waste. I don't think it would add any lifetime personally, as repair and refurbishment shops already know how to open phones that are glued together and there is a huge industry that refurbs these phones already. I doubt screws will increase the average lifetime of the average phone, it'll just increase the number of screws in the landfill.
If people can't be seen with a cheap phone, a $730 Fairphone will satisfy the "people can see you paid a premium for this" bar, but then if a piece of it breaks the cost is $105 instead of another $730.
It looks like it's made of quality materials (because it is), if anyone looks it up they can see that it isn't a cheap device, if anyone asks you about it you can earn status points by telling them how much you care about the environment etc.
I'm honestly not intending this to sound snarky, but this sounds like something someone with a green bubble would say. If those things matter to a person's audience, they weren't the iPhone crowd anyway.
And it's the exact reason that people keep wanting Apple to make a repairable phone. Someone else can do it, and do a fine job, and you say "green bubbles" and turn up your nose. Well then, where's the repairable phone with blue bubbles, pray tell?
You're dangerously close to an admission that "the iPhone crowd" wants the logo as a status symbol and excluding underprivileged aspirants by increasing the cost of entry is the point.
I'm not doing it, I'm saying that the crowd that cares about iPhone brand image, cares about iPhone brand image.
> You're dangerously close to an admission that "the iPhone crowd" wants the logo as a status symbol and excluding underprivileged aspirants by increasing the cost of entry is the point.
I don't know why you think I would pretend otherwise. Apple's brand image is as a premium product, and Apple has been openly hostile to unauthorized repair for the stated reason that many aftermarket parts are of lower quality than OEM parts. Apple obviously doesn't want low quality refurbs floating around and diluting their brand image.
> I'm not doing it, I'm saying that the crowd that cares about iPhone brand image, cares about iPhone brand image.
The company obviously has a bit of a cult following, but the point is that there are crowds who would have no objection to any premium phone whether it be iOS or Android but would put you in the outgroup if you showed up with a flip phone or anything else that cost <$200. A repairable premium phone checks the box.
There are also crowds that want to see the Apple logo or they'll cast you out. Which makes it hard to argue that there is no market for a repairable phone from Apple -- because there are clearly people who would buy it.
> Apple's brand image is as a premium product, and Apple has been openly hostile to unauthorized repair for the stated reason that many aftermarket parts are of lower quality than OEM parts. Apple obviously doesn't want low quality refurbs floating around and diluting their brand image.
That is indeed their stated reason, and yet Toyota maintains one of the highest brand ratings for reliability even while anyone can have their Prius repaired at an independent shop with third party parts.
> You're dangerously close to an admission that "the iPhone crowd" wants the logo as a status symbol
That's all it is in the US and has been for a long time.
Android was superior for the longest time. I was shocked when I used a friend's iphone and saw they couldn't create folders to organize apps, didn't have widgets, etc.
People in the US just want to be in the club, which is where the ridiculous 'green bubble' snobbery comes from.
I think it is better to buy a 500 dollar phone with replaceable parts than a sub 100 that either does not function well from start or starts to deteriorate (typically less quality and glued battery or under dimensioned charger) within a year.
It does not need to be a 1000 dollar iphone to consist of quality parts. We can wait for 5G to become main stream before requiring it.
> ... fleets of smartphones back in the windows mobile and blackberry days ...
In a completely unrelated world, where smartphones were not prohibitively expensive but still expensive enough to be a rare purchase, people in my country repaired old phones by buying new batteries. Those used to cost only a quarter to a half of the price of a new smartphone, and street-side cellphone accessories shops used to carry both original, branded batteries and cheap, knockoff batteries. The knockoffs were only about $10-$20 cheaper, and people were smart enough to know the difference it'd make.
Back in blackberry days a new phone would support stuff that wasn't even dreamed of on the previous device. Do people not remember the original iPhone didn't have an app store?
Points 1 and 2 still apply. People outside of forums like this don't care to fix their own phone. They don't care if you can open it with a screwdriver or not, they're not going to open it either way.
A refurbished iPhone 12 is $449. A brand new iPhone SE is $429, $17.87/mo. for 24 months... or $11.91/month from a carrier.
AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss is $7.50/month
So you're looking at ~$20/month for a phone that Apple will replace instantly if it breaks or gets stolen. Is someone who doesn't have access to credit really going to be able to afford a cheaper android phone and the tools to repair it and the parts to repair it?
Fairphone offers a "Fairphone Easy" plan (in the Netherlands only, for now) for €14 per month for the 60 months plan (€19 per month for the 36 months plan), which includes repairs etc. So if you're planning to keep it longer than 24 months, it'd be cheaper, yeah.
> not just you who can afford an iPhone and AppleCare.
I’m not sure I understand. An iPhone SE is cheaper than a fairphone, with longer support and far better specs. From a quick search, third party knock off replacement screens and battery replacement kits are cheaper for an iPhone, I assume due to the orders of magnitude difference in scale.
The math isn’t working, from my simple perspective.
The person was asking about why they should care about repair-ability as an iPhone user. I wasn't trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of iPhone vs FairPhone.
I personally don't really care what FairPhone does. I care about general repair-ability of all tech and what benefits that has for flexibility, affordability, and competition in the economy and for the end user.
I had a Fairphone 2 in Germany (where the next Apple Store was four hours away). I dropped it onto the metal blades of our radiator, which shattered the screen. I was due to go on vacation in two days.
So I express-ordered the replacement screen from Fairphone, which arrived the next day, case closed. (A similar thing happened with a Pixel 4a a few years later, which had to be mailed in, and took a week.)
My wife also had a Fairphone 2, and her headphone jack was a bit flakey. So after a few months we ordered a replacement module, which fixed the problem (for €30!). Afterwards, I emailed Fairphone as this issue had existed from the start. They refunded us the module.
And I also fondly remember the updated camera module they sold for the Fairphone 2.
Alas, these phones are too big for my tastes, which is why I no longer have one.
> Imagine if you didn’t have to replace an entire phone over a broken triviality.
I can imagine it. It wouldn't make the slightest difference to my practical experience. And then, as another commenter mentioned, my phone is refurbished and used for someone else.
I only had an issue with an iPhone once (yellowing around the edges of the display), I took it to the Apple Store and they replaced the screen. Probably the bulk of repairs (display, battery, shattered glass) don't entail a full replacement.
AppleCare is a great service. I’ve had the exact same experience!
The problem is then also ensuring all other options are artificially worse than AppleCare. Your local “mall guy” is just as capable of swapping out a battery, in theory.
It is insanely expensive. Remember that the median household income in the US is less than $70k before taxes. That means half the people are making less than that, sometimes very significantly less than that. I assume your household makes more than double that, correct?
And that’s just the United States, which is very high income compared to most of the world.
Yes. I can see that having inexpensive, repairable devices could be good for people who can't afford iPhones or AppleCare, whether in the US or elsewhere.
What I'm wondering about is the enthusiasm for them among the HN crowd. Maybe many in the HN crowd are still students, or "Ramen-profitable"...?
I need a phone to be able to perform every day things like 2fa for my banking, just like I need other things like a fridge for my food
I want to the keep the cost per year for these things as low as possible while fulfilling my base requirements. For the phone that's no vendor lock-in, cheap repairs, and ability to play YouTube, browse emails, and check the news
The Fairphone is the best option for me. It does what it needs to and is reasonably cheap per year, so I can spend that money on things I actually care about
Not arguing with you, but asking: have you compared the price of the cheapest iPhone + AppleCare with the price of a corresponding Fairphone plus the cost of parts for likely repairs?
Yes. The Fairphone wins hands down. The cheapest iPhone has six years of remaining software updates and cost approximately $590 where I live. Thats a little more than $98 per year
Apple care+ is approximately $40 per year plus another $80 for each repair due to "accidents" (unless it's the screen or case in which case it's $30)
That's a minimum cost of $138 per year if I don't suffer any malfunctions or accidents
The Fairphone is approximately $750 with at least 8 years of support. That's a minimum cost of $93.75 per year. That means that I'd have to crack my screen every 18 months or so for the iPhone to be more price competitive. Given that I've never cracked a screen that seems highly unlikely
For the battery I can replace it every 11 months and still spend less money with the Fairphone (plus I get to keep the old battery as a backup)
Any other part breaking is a massive expense on the iPhone. Not including the screen, every spare part for the Fairphone is less than the service fee with apple care
If Fairphone ends up providing 10 years of support for the device, that just pushes the math even more in its favour
And all that is not even considering that the Fairphone comes with a 5 year warranty which would already cover any non-accident/wear+tear malfunctions
I’m going to butt in and say that yes, I agree with you that Fairphone hasn’t completely succeeded in the goals they have set out. The price is definitely still a problem, but at least they are trying.
I just had a discussion with an Apple fanatic on HN where I tried to explain that to him, in response to him claiming people in the US make more money than most other countries which is why everyone buys luxury iphones.
> a new iPhone that works perfectly and contains all my data and, for all practical purposes, is exactly as if my old one never broke.
That is a very compelling convenience that all (phone) OS-es should strive for. I try out different phones and operating systems, but syncing the data and settings via a self-hosted device are not convenient yet.
`adb backup` will give me an archive but it's a deprecated command and so far I've never been able to restore data with it.
A system like NixOS is getting the applications in exactly the same version and configuration, but the same rigor is not there for the associated data.
Ideally, I'd be able to run a plug-and-play server at home, link it to my phone and have it take backups without ever being visible until there's a problem with running the backups. Then, when the phone needs to be replaced, link it the new phone and continue where the old one left off, including all contacts and contact history.
What? I just got a pixel fold and during the setup it asks to connect my old device (pixel 5). After a few minutes I have a carbon copy of my old device save a few apps I sideloaded.
That sounds like a smooth experience. It would be great if FOSS operating systems would work just as well.
I'm assuming you were going from functional pixel 5 to a pixel fold and that both were running a Android with a lot of proprietary software that allows Google to track you so they convince you to buy the products of the customers of their advertising business.
It's hard for competitors to offer an equally smooth experience.
Would the data transfer worked as well if the original phone was broken or stolen?
Its completely the freedom aspect for me. Sure, Apple wont let me down because that would impact their business, but what if they did? Its also a thousand times better to be 100% sure you can modify your electronics without any fear of getting rejected like its vehicle insurance.
For some convenience is a factor. Apple stores tend to be in crowded urban areas or fancy shopping malls. In less central locations small operators and components shipped directly may be competitive offerings.
> I must admit I'm having trouble relating to the strong desire to have a phone that's more repairable than an iPhone.
I have a Fairphone for one reason & one reason only: it's not repairability, environmentally friendly material sourcing, nor software freedom. It's wages. They pay living wages in Fairphone factories.
Fwiw, that's also the substantive contributor to the price bump.
I actually want a durable phone more than a repairable phone. No need to repair a phone that doesn't break. But there is one exception, and that's the battery. Phone batteries always fail at some point, they are consumables, for chemical reasons.
A user replaceable battery makes it much less of a problem. Even with non-standard form factors (a 18650 is not very practical for a phone), even if the manufacturer drop supports, someone will make a compatible battery. Plus, you get the option of backup batteries.
So I don't really care about all the fuss about the Fairphone, except with that one feature that was once the norm, and that's the removable battery. Hopefully in a few years, it will be the norm again thanks to EU regulations, but I am not holding my breath for it.
I replaced the battery of my FairPhone last night.
I didn't need to make an appointment. I didn't need to travel. I didn't need to have yet another overpriced subscription. I didn't need to do it within business hours. I didn't need to get a massive pelican box of equipment shipped to me. I didn't need to make any expensive deposits. And I didn't need to beg anyone to please please please let me use the thing I bought.
"The counterargument is that you have to pay for AppleCare. I don't pay for anything for my phone
"
But you have to pay for the new parts, don't you? What I'm saying is that I don't know of a head-to-head comparison of long-term maintenance of a Fairphone, including buying parts to fix it, compared to buying the cheapest iPhone and Apple Care.
And when they give you a new iPhone, they refurbish the old, (and the "new" one they give you is actually refurbished), so I don't see how it adds to e-waste.
I bought a screen for $70 for an iPhone third-party screen and paid some guy in China $10 to fix it. You probably pay $199 for two years, yet they still charge you $29 for it
I mean... no. Apple publishes breakdowns/reports of their recycling efforts and it's pretty damn good for what it is, and these devices now last a very long time if you don't feel like chasing the yearly upgrade train.
The selling point of the Fairphone is moreso that it's:
- Attempting to pay fair wages to workers
- Not Apple, for those who just don't want an Apple device
- More (user) repair-able
These are all very valid reasons to want to use something like the Fairphone and I am glad it exists, and it might even be my next phone - but to imply that it wins out over the iPhone trade-in-and-get-it-recycled flow is just bonkers.
> and these devices now last a very long time if you don't feel like chasing the yearly upgrade train.
But they constantly make new devices with incremental improvements and advertise/market for people to upgrade when they don't need to - and people do exactly that.
>to imply that it wins out over the iPhone trade-in-and-get-it-recycled flow is just bonkers.
I made this point in another comment already, but for many people, it isn’t easy to access an Apple Store, and Apple is notoriously stingy with third party authorized repair
I'm not talking about the Apple Care/App Store get-it-fixed flow, I am talking about how when you buy a new iPhone you can quite literally just mail your (hopefully data-cleansed) phone to Apple and they'll recycle it properly. If you're buying your phone through Apple - which you should do, just because phone carriers are ripoffs - then you generally get a credit back to boot.
For the average consumer this is great and encourages sustainable reuse of the core materials throughout the iPhone lifecycle and generally means there is no good reason for iPhones to bloat up landfills or anything.
> For the average consumer this is great and encourages sustainable reuse of the core materials throughout the iPhone lifecycle and generally means there is no good reason for iPhones to bloat up landfills or anything.
But they do though.
A lot of this stuff is corporate PR. For example, recycling aluminum is the default -- it costs less than mining it. You don't get credit for that, it's saving you money and you were going to do it anyway. And the reason it's so cheap is that you can source it from things that are basically pure aluminum, like aluminum cans, even though they're then making something out of it that has to go through a complicated process to separate the diverse materials from each other again.
They have a recycling program for their old devices, but to use it you have to buy a new one. And there's a reason for that -- it's not otherwise cost effective to do it. It's a promotion to drive new sales, because the process is complicated and inefficient.
Because they're trying to turn the device back into raw materials after gluing and soldering them all together. Which is why they go into the landfill unless someone is subsidizing it.
Whereas the best way to "recycle" a piece of electronics is to continue using it as a piece of electronics. Allow the memory or storage to be upgraded to extend its usable life. Have modular parts to minimize the materials necessary to replace before it can go back into service after being damaged, and minimize the cost of such repairs to increase the number of repairs that are economical before a new device has to be manufactured.
It isn't both because they do PR about building a robot that can disassemble iPhones, but there are only two of them in the world and even if they were run nonstop they could only recycle 1% of the iPhones Apple manufactures in the same amount of time.
In the meantime most of the iPhones people trade in are sent to third party "recyclers" who don't recover nearly as much of the materials and are contractually required to shred the devices without recovering functional parts for reuse, even though that would reduce the amount of ewaste by several fold -- once for the device already on its way for the shredder, and again for each of the devices that could have been repaired from its operational parts.
It's a cynical take because it's a cynical marketing ploy.
> Apple is only operating two Daisy models—one in the Netherlands and another at the company’s Material Recovery Lab in Texas—that each process up to 1.2 million iPhones per year. Achieving circularity may seem futile considering how Apple sells 200 times as many iPhones annually...
I swear it's like nobody reads the actual reports that they put out. There is a lot to knock about the Apple/iPhone experience but frankly sustainability just isn't it.
And I will note again, to be clear, that I still think the Fairphone is a good thing. I just don't think it should be held as the highest regard when it's not.
> I must admit I'm having trouble relating to the strong desire to have a phone that's more repairable than an iPhone.
It's good to have competition, and not many Android phones get 5 years of warranty like the new Fairphones.
iPhones are great in that they get security updates for a long time, and they can be repaired if you can afford it. Fairphone is just a different, cheaper option.
It’s a great user experience if you fall into the happy path. If you don’t (water damage on a MacBook, older than 3 year iPhone, …) it’s preposterously expensive and impractical.
At that point, you don’t have any third party alternatives, because of all the intentional anti-competitive measures they take to snuff them out.
regarding the price, it is possible to replicate a third-party solution for a cheaper phone but with some compromise.
can buy a budget phone and buy third party damage insurace (unsure how many scenarios they support and real-world experience) instead of this and compare the costs associated.
i won't be surprised if that makes more sense to more people than not, besides the abysmal software support of course.
I understand why some people don't want to pay this amount of money upfront based on the specs alone. From a "per year" cost I still think it's competitive
If they really manage to support this device for 10 years, that's $75 per year, which I think is relatively cheap
My use-case for a phone does not need a lot of processing power. I use it for messaging, checking emails, watch a bit of YouTube, and catch up on the news. I feel reasonably confident that it will be able to perform those tasks 8-10 years down the line
On top of that I also appreciate that I can buy a device that is sourced with consideration for workers and the environment. It's never good for the environment to produce new devices, but the option to limit the impact is important to me
Agreed. Though I'm personally more in favour of adding the cost at the other end. I think companies should be taxed for the cost of restoring the damage their products cause to the environment, as this would encourage competition towards more sustainable practices
I think it's still hard to say which policies would be effective. I think CO2-equivalent emission taxes are a good starting point
It might also be possible to put a recycling fee on each produced device based on the retail price and the amount of damage it would cause to the environment if the device was dumped in the environment
When a device is then handed in for recycling the company is refunded the fee minus the cost of to handle it at the recycling facility
On the downside that could also encourage companies to create products that are replaced before they are no longer usable, though honestly we already have that problem. It could maybe be prevented by lowering the fee based on how long the company commit to supporting the model with software and replacement parts
If we can measure the near infinitesimal gravitational waves from black holes colliding across the universe, surely we can at least get close to measuring this.
Nobody loses money when you measure infinitesimal gravitational waves from black holes colliding across the universe. If it affected climate change, it would be a different story - the conspiracy of astrophysicists who also traffic baby goats, Einstein was a hoax, black holes aren't settled science, why don't we measure gravity waves in America/UK rather than foreign gravity waves, etc.
Sure, if your use-case requires a lot of computational power it might be a bad fit, but as I also wrote in my post, my requirements are pretty light, in which case this phone is closer to perfect than any other I've come across
Giving Fairphone money has a much higher chance of turning the whole industry than supporting shitty companies. If it's shit you're probably going to buy another one next year anyway, and in the end spend a similar amount over 10 years
The lowest cost iPhone SE 3rd gen I can find on Apple's website is €549 with 7 years of software updates
The fp5 on Fairphones website is €529 with at least 8 years of software updates
Even if iPhones were marginally cheaper, they carry with them vendor lock-in, poor repairability, and a track record of horrendous working conditions for the workers assembling them
To me it would still be worth a small premium to avoid those drawbacks even if the fp5 was more expensive per year
Meanwhile in the real world, true convergence seems to mostly break down at the application layer. Many desktop Linux apps are not designed to work on a mobile device. It turns out that the UX in Android apps is purpose build for mobile use. This software gap seems really difficult to overcome. Not impossible, but we are not there yet in terms of mobile Linux devices being useful for the majority of consumers.... (I do think Waydroid offers some interesting opportunities here to bridge the gap!)
I agree, but first we’d need vanilla Linux working very well on laptops. If we can’t fix that, I don’t see how phones will fare better, what with their crazy amount of components and non-OSS compatible vendors.
Compared to laptops, smartphones have more sensors, and more complicated camera setup. That's about it. They're not significantly more complicated than laptops.
I think specific devices will have more likely positive outcome over time as chips don't become more performant = the design wont be obsolete and still sell many years later.
Modular devices (laptops are a mix of many modems, displays, sound, disk etc.) have had more edge case bugs because the volume is too low per generation to warrant fixes.
This, to me, feels like the most important comment on the page! It is great to develop a sweet new offering, but if one of the main selling points of your product is longevity, repair-ability, and long-term support, then I don't want to hear about all the Fairphone fans jumping up to by the next gen. I want a phone that folks are happy to stick with for years!
As a side note, for years I used a Nexus 6. Great phone (the battery was getting sketchy, but the rest of the hardware held up well for 7 years of use)! With LineageOS, I was getting a steady stream of software updates. I was finally forced off of the phone when they killed the 3G networks here in the USA (and apparently the Nexus 6 did not support VoLTE....).
I never want to charge an extra device again. I also never want to find a pair of plugs that fit me, again. It is a mystery to me why this use case is apparently so unique that there is no market for me.
I can only imagine the extra strain having a dongle plugged into your phone puts on the port with the phone being in your pocket. Say what you will about 3.5mm, but it is robust in that scenario. I've never had a 3.5mm port break before the cable that is plugged in.
USB-C ports wear out within a couple of years from just slight strain on a charging cable.
Which is an abjectly terrible solution. Dongles can be lost or forgotten, and you can't charge your phone while using one (a very big deal if your use case is to hook the phone to your car for a long drive).
Why would you even disconnect your 2-in-1 dongle, that allows you to charge your phone while using the 3.5 mm jack, from your headphones wire to begin with? Or disconnect your second 2-in-1 dongle, which you got because they're extremely cheap, from your car adapter? I think it's a reasonably good solution for the relatively few people that still use a 3.5 mm jack.
The audio jacks are normally on the top of the phone, the USB is normally on the bottom. Where my wife normally rests her phone doesn't allow USBC to be plugged in at the same time.
I assume GP is referring to 2-in-1 dongles that allow charging and audio out at the same time. You just leave the dongle in the car... and only plug in the USB-C. It handles audio out and charging at the same time, and is one less cable to plug in. It's better than plugging in USB-C and 3.5mm into your phone every time.
She doesn't need to charge her phone in the car generally; she charges it at night. She simply wants audio out that just works even if I used the car last.
I was not aware that such a thing existed. I've only ever seen dongles which don't let you charge. So thanks for the info, that's good to know at least.
As to why you'd disconnect - shit happens. Maybe you have an iPhone and the other person using your car has an Android phone, so you each need different dongles. Maybe someone accidentally removed it, who knows? The point is that dongles can, and will, get lost or misplaced so they aren't a good solution.
Honest question, why are you still using a 3.5mm jack for connecting to car audio? Outside of very old cars that have not been retrofitted with more modern head units, every car that I can think of in the last 10+ years has had Bluetooth as a standard feature. It's just far more convenient.
My experience does not mirror your anecdote, quite frankly. Sometimes pairing is a pain the first time, but any car I've driven in recent memory has very workable bluetooth that connects successfully every time.
I even installed a SUPER cheap head unit in a car like 8 years ago (I literally sorted by cheapest head unit that had radio and bluetooth... it was like $35) and that was essentially bulletproof.
The only case where this tends to be a pain in the ass is if you have multiple people attempting to use the bluetooth that are frequently in the car at the same time (e.g., a couple who both use the car, and you alternate who uses the bluetooth). In that case, a dongle that is connected to USB-C power and a 3.5mm aux jack directly seems superior, since you just need to connect a single cable to both charge and run audio.
> The only case where this tends to be a pain in the ass is if you have multiple people attempting to use the bluetooth that are frequently in the car at the same time (e.g., a couple who both use the car, and you alternate who uses the bluetooth).
One of many scenarios that I have hit where Bluetooth breaks down.
> that case, a dongle that is connected to USB-C power and a 3.5mm aux jack directly seems superior, since you just need to connect a single cable to both charge and run audio.
USB is on the bottom generally, headphone jacks are normally on the top. There're a lot of places to rest a phone in a car where the headphone jack is available, but the USB is not.
Not sure what the issue is with just placing the phone upside down in whatever 'resting place' is needed. Unless you're actively using it, in which can presumably you would be holding the phone... so it doesn't matter too much if the cable is above or below your phone.
My dude, my car doesn't even have aux input, let alone Bluetooth. I have to use a cassette adapter (or an FM transmitter) to get audio into my car. Not everyone, or even close to everyone, has a car made in the last 10 years.
The nice thing about a headphone jack is it's basically universal. It's been around for some 40 years now! Anything you want to pipe into most likely can accept it. I have nothing against Bluetooth, but killing off a universal standard for one which is merely common is very short sighted. It's a perfect example of why people accuse the tech industry of being out of touch with reality.
So... buy an FM transmitter that has Bluetooth as an input? Or replace your head unit with one that has Bluetooth? There are plenty of solutions that exist to solve this problem for very little money. I did this myself for less than $50 in parts on an older car I owned. Choosing a phone purely based on the outdated technology of your car is much more shortsighted in my view. At some point (which, has already happened with 3.5mm jacks largely) the world moves on.
Also, Bluetooth IS the universal standard. It's in every single car that has been sold recently, and has been for years and years. Hell, I'd argue Bluetooth has been more universal in phones for longer than 3.5mm jacks. Early phones often had fully functional Bluetooth but had weird proprietary aux jacks (2.5mm, that weird Nokia plug, proprietary USB extensions, etc).
Or, hear me out... I could buy phones which use the universal standard we have had for audio connections for 40 years. I have neither the skills nor the inclination to replace my car stereo, and I can only guess you've never used an FM transmitter if you are seriously suggesting that as an option. They suck, full stop. Meanwhile, I stick to phones which aren't designed by people so short-sighted as to think that everyone has Bluetooth available.
I genuinely have no idea how you can call Bluetooth a universal standard with a straight face. It's not even close. A 3.5mm isn't truly universal (little or nothing is), but it's as close as you can get. Ditching the latter in favor of the former is absolutely asinine.
Seriously man, 10 years ago is not that long in real world terms. It's a long time in the tech industry, but the rest of the world simply does not move on at that pace. As an industry, we need to pull our heads from our asses and realize that most people aren't techies living in a major city for whom anything invented more than 5 years ago is old, and anything invented more than 10 years ago is positively ancient. That simply is not how the world works.
We must be shopping at different stores. My experience with cassette adapters (and I tried quite a few different ones, back in the day) was always muddy, bad audio quality. FM transmitters (good ones anyways) never had that problem.
As for Bluetooth as a standard: what, exactly, is not a standard about the audio portion of it? You can take any device that supports Bluetooth audio output and connect it to an audio playback device (speaker, head unit, whatever) and it will just... work. Super old speaker to brand new phone? Plays audio fine. Super old phone to brand new head unit? Same thing.
This isn't some 'big techy is out of touch with reality' thing. We just have alternatives that are perfectly practical for edge cases where you absolutely need that aux jack, and the vast majority of consumers have moved on years ago.
And AFAICT, just like in the Lightning days, you still cannot charge the phone through the port and use the wired headphone adapter at the same time, at least without a third-party dongle.
Correct. Power delivery and analog audio are mutually exclusive. The way the dongles that do charge work is by putting a USB DAC chip in the connector.
I also am a big fan of the dedicated 3.5mm! That being said, it is definitely true that I am running out of situations where I can actually use that port on my device... sigh
There is a market for you, but it's not a very big one. Sony in particular plays to this market, but you can see from their dwindling sales, that it's rather niche.
Sony would probably have better luck if their phones weren't so incredibly expensive. As a fellow headphone jack requirer, I would love to buy a Sony phone. But I can't afford one.
If you can afford a Fairphone 5, it seems a Sony is within your budget. Sure, they make a $1600 phone, but they also make multiple phones that are much cheaper or similarly priced.
I honestly have never seen a Sony phone which was less than $1000. Perhaps I just looked in the wrong places, but that's what my comment was based on. I agree that a phone costing $400-700 is not an unreasonably high price, but I just wasn't aware of the existence of the models you mentioned.
The other audio problem with the Fairphone 4 is that it ranks quite low on audio tests [1]. It has playback/recording scores of about ~90, while mainstream manufacturers have cheaper phones with scores of 130+.
It is a mystery why people hate tangled cords that also get caught on things? More than leaving your pods on a charging puck when you get home? Which takes zero additional effort since you have to put them down somewhere?
Nobody's arguing with your preferences but it's a mystery to me how the convenience of wireless headphones is a mystery to you.
I get that bit. It can be irritating. But so is having an extra item to charge.
And the battery life gets constantly shorter. Lithium cells have limited life spans, they last maybe a couple of years and what do you do then?
I can accept having to change phone every few years. Modern phones are somewhat disposable. But having to change headphones would be a real drag. They are something I put in my body! It took many years to finally settle on a pair I could be comfortable with which wouldn't fall out.
And I'm not picky about sound quality. People who care about that must have it even worse. Sound signature is very personal.
For better or worse, I buy headphones for life. I would love to buy more things for life, but phones are obviously impossible. But imagine having to change your wallet or something. You probably bought jackets or trousers based upon that shape. Maybe the comparison is a stretch, the point remains that I really don't want to buy new headphones. Ever.
I have no idea what people see in wireless headphones. I have never once gotten the wire tangled, caught on something, anything like that. From my perspective, wireless headphones are "solving" a non-existent problem, at the cost of additional headache (charging) and at a higher price. They are strictly worse than wired headphones for my usage.
Headphone wires have caused me issue son packed subways before, with peoples accessories getting caught in them. Wireless is without a doubt more convenient.
I've a FP4, I won't buy another Fairphone. Repairability is a dubious concept at best, and no hardware upgrade path despite larger design.
Also see the current drama with the fingerprint and android update for FP3.
Only good thing, non android os look functional.
I must say this is the biggest issue for me too. A upgrade path for the device (like framework provides for its laptops) is the biggest missing feature for me.
Uncompromising? There is no such thing as uncompromising.
Its most defining feature, for me, is its removable battery. It that, I would compare it to the Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro.
Over the Fairphone 5, the Samsung Xcover has a headphone jack, dual sim and a IP68 rating, it is a rugged phone. Both can use a microSD card. The Fairphone has a better camera, better specs in general (but not best in class), and is more expensive. The Fairphone is generally more repairable, but because it is not rugged, probably more likely to break. The rest is about build quality, which is not easy to judge by the specs. The form factor is similar.
Software-wise, the Fairphone is, I think, much better. Longer support, and a more active and better supported community. The XCover 6 Pro doesn't even have a subforum on xda-developers.com. It has an unlockable bootloader, so in theory, one could run anything, but if no one cares...
All in all, I think both are worthwhile options, they just made different... compromises.
Does the Fairphone support de-Googling? I'm currently on iOS, but something like this is appealing to me if it can be can potentially be more privacy friendly than iOS and other Android distributions.
The Fairphone company's primary focus is on fair hardware: supply-chain ethical materials sourcing & fair factory wages. Software "fairness" is very much a secondary focus, so while they're open to de-Googling it's not something they actively support or commit resources to. e.g. The warranty is temporarily invalidated by installing a de-Googled OS but can be "restored" by re-installing Android.
They do however partner witht another company - Murena - to offer deGoogled phones[0]. They have a full breakdown of it here[1]
while they're open to de-Googling it's not something they actively support or commit resources to
I am not sure if this is entirely accurate. I agree that degoogled software is not their primary focus, but one Fairphone employee, Luca Weiss, has been pretty active in the postmarketOS community. For example, he submitted the initial port of pmOS to the FP5:
I was more talking about the company's primary focus - they may well have (limited) resources working to it (whether it's off time or dedicated), but it's certainly not one of their top priorities.
That said: even the facts that they have (a) multiple pages on their website documenting deGoogling & maintained a list of working alternative OS versions & (b) an active partnership with a 3rd-party offering this service - these indicate that this is at least a priority for the company, just not a top priority.
Fairphone would easily be a big hit in the Indian Market, i figure. If there are any fairphone folks here, please do consider to bring this phone in the Indian market. I would love to own a Fairphone.
At the bare minimum, all smartphones should allow for easy battery replacement like they do in Fairphone. (This was the norm, before the iphones and the androids took over)
It’s 699€ in Europe; not sure about the price in India. But that feels prohibitive for my budget, so I imagine it’s expensive for the average Indian consumer?
Actually, iphones which are much costlier sell well in India! In fact, all the top-end phones sell well in India.
Indian population seeks value, and are pretty smart about their choice of investment. An iphone even though is much costlier in India, has longer os / security updates than any budget phone. So over a period of time, this would translate to a higher value for the device and hence the purchasing decision. Usually Indians try to ascertain the price to value ratio (something that Nothing phone ceo has acknowledged publicly) while making these decisions.
Definitely Fairphone has the appeal of repairability (which again is valuable for the average Indian) and the longer os / security updates are a boon.
Even in Europe that's a lot of cheese. People with 700 Eruos to blow on a phone will most lively get a iPhone or Samsung flagship. The only people I know who own an Fairphone are other tech workers who browse HN a lot but that's a very small demographic.
well am in the tech industry, and i would like to own a fairphone purely for the repairability and replaceability and the extended life span. Agreed, the camera might be sub-par, but with this level of repairability, if fairphone can enable certified third-party parts, then we could replace the camera ourselves with certified better quality cameras in the future right ?
Also, the phone industry, especially the biggies are into planned obsolescence of their products in pursuit of more and more profits. I personally do not prefer replacing my phone every few years, and going through the hassle of backing up the files and setting up the new phone etc. I want a device that just works and isn't a botheration to maintain and upkeep for long.
The lifespan of products were much longer not too long ago, before the corporate interests figured out planned obsolescence. I remember as a kid, the products we purchased at our home, lasted much through my adolescence and into my adult life. For example, the radio which we bought worked for years without wasting much time of fixing it up every now and then, just a couple of batteries would last a really long time. All it needed was large batteries. I would prefer products that have a longer lifespan than being at the cutting edge, and wasting precious time chasing the latest and greatest. I have better interests to attend to :)
the lack of jack and the not great camera is unfortunately a deal breaker, although I'm not sure I would afford it anyway. but the idea is great and i hope if will find its success
Yikes, the screen is 6.46 inch . I guess this phone is not meant for people who want one handed phones. Oh well, my search for an open phone that can be used with one hand continues.
Apart from everything else, having to remove the battery to access the microSD card is a weird choice. Android has always been able to handle SD swapping without a restart, and an Android cold start takes quite a long time (unlike the old phones which this design harks back to).
Who's it for? Those very few Guardian readers that can be lured away from their iPhones by the promise of being eco-friendly.
I'm getting one. I'm currently on a galaxy note 9, which hasn't received updates for a year. The hardware is still plenty fast for what I use my phone for, but since I have my banking app on the phone, I don't feel comfortable continuing to use it without security patches
The microphone also broke around a year ago and though it's possible to replace it, it's not a simple fix, so I've accepted I need to have a headset nearby at all times
The FP5 wouldn't have the same issues. I wouldn't have to spend any money on a new phone for almost a decade and if something breaks I can fix it pretty cheaply myself
To me those are the most important considerations when picking a new phone and there's not really any other product that I think is competitive on those parameters
It's true, removing the battery is mildly annoying. But I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have added or removed a microSD card from my phone. It's just not something I do regularly--Get a new phone, plug it in, and forget. Maybe remove it every few months to back it up to my computer.
I pop mine in and out all the time, it's been the quickest way to move large files on/off the phone ever since Android lost USB mass storage support. MTP & PTP are horrible.
You're missing the use-case for folks that use it for large data transfers for video files. Having to shut down the phone to do that is burdensome. It's why the new iPhones with USB-C that can record directly to flash drives are being praised.
> having to remove the battery to access the microSD card is a weird choice.
IIRC, my old Samsung Galaxy S5 was like that too. While I would prefer being able to remove the card without removing the battery, in practice it wasn't that big of a deal for me since I only swapped out cards every few months.
from all the discussions on fp5 here, i can definitely say that they are catering to a very tough crowd.
it is a shame that they still don't seem to have found a rythmn in long-term hardware support after all these years.
given how fast the rest of industry moves between the infrequent releases, each new model ends up being so different from the previous one. so it is hard to see a future where they can reuse older parts and hence be more likely to sell them for longer.
i had a laptop that was easy to repair, but i could not find its replacement battery within two years of its release, which defeated the purpose of having that ability. if existing userbase are having trust issues with fairphone's parts supply long-term, it will be a hard sell for many who can put up with the phone's tradeoffs in the name of repairability.
i do hope for their success so that at least third parties can support the phone for the near future. maybe it will be there for my next-to-next upgrade.
I considered buying a Fairphone last year or the year before, but man was it a brick, it calls into question the whole concept of a mobile device! Why is it that only Apple can produce a reasonably-sized phone, with all Android phones (last I checked) being phablet-sized and not fitting comfortably into a back pocket? Is it in memory of SJ's iconic gesture of letting it slide into the pocket, or because Android phones are basically ad consumption devices needing as much screen real estate to even see any content at all between the ads?
> all Android phones (last I checked) being phablet-sized
Major manufacturers, Apple included, keep making phones bigger; it's frustrating. However, I think it's a bit unfair to say that, for instance, the Pixel A-series (which I've used for years) is "phablet sized".
The current flagship iPhones are 6.7" (iPhone 15 Pro Max, $1199) and 6.1" (iPhone 15 Pro, $999). The current flagship Pixel phones are 6.3" (Pixel 7, $599) and 6.1" (Pixel 7a, $499).
> Android phones are basically ad consumption devices
It's possible that this is a fair criticism of some Android devices, but with YouTube Vanced/ReVanced and Firefox with AdBlock Plus, I haven't seen an obtrusive ad on my phone in years.
There are many things iPhones do better than Android devices, but these two criticisms are basically nonsense.
Edit: Apple also has a very small phone in the iPhone SE, but they're not continuing to produce those (per latest reports, anyway) so it doesn't strike me as a fair comparison. If we include older generations of products, there are tons of small Android phones.
I don't think diagonal screensize is the most fair metric here... bezels have gotten much, much, much smaller.
Compared to an iPhone 4, which I think is a lot of people's idea of a "normal" sized phone, a Pixel 6A 32% longer, and 22% wider. It's also 30% heavier.
Oh, absolutely. I'm all for building smaller phones. If I could get a Pixel 3a new today, I absolutely would be using that.
I'm just saying that GP is being a bit disingenuous in setting this trend at the feet of Google or manufacturers of Android phones when Apple, too, has been increasing the size of their phones and cutting smaller products.
In the spirit of sporting rivalry, I imagine I see far fewer ads on my Android than an iPhone user - GrapheneOS+Firefox+UBlock Origin means no ads in OS, no ads on the web. I don't remember the last time I saw an ad on my phone...
Not even Apple sells reasonably-sized phones anymore, I'm hoping my Mini 13 will last until they start making them again but there's no guarantee they ever will.
$750? No offense, but I wouldn't pay for it more than $200
> What truly makes the Fairphone special is the fact that you can fully disassemble it yourself in a matter of minutes, using a standard screwdriver you likely have at home already
I disassembled my cheap Xiaomi Poco twice, replaced screen and broken camera. I had no issues with that. The phone itself was damn cheap, and good enough so I don't have to worry about breaking it, or thinking about it too much.
I wish Fairphone all the best, I am just wondering what the market is. Who is going to buy it for that heck of a price?
The point is their materials are more ethically sourced and workers are treated better than with those other phones (hence the name). It costs money to do that, because you are internalising social costs that other manufacturers are externalising. That explains the price difference and to answer your question the target market is people who care enough about such things to pay it.
Slight nuance is that that partially explains the price difference, but I'm fairly sure that it's also largely due to just lacking economics of scale, unfortunately.
But they are paving the way, showing how things can be done, setting up the required tooling and documentation, and hopefully thereby influencing (legislation for) the big players to improve. In fact, that's my main justification for spending the money.
My thoughts exactly. Chinese phones have great repairability and come a lot cheaper than this. And advancements have kind of stagnated so it's starting to make sense to buy older models. For 700 I don't care if it's repairable because I could've bought 3 separate phones for that price.
It's a great name. It means "fair" as in fair trade. As in not buying, or minimizing as much as you can, buying conflict minerals.
First off, the people buying this or even considering it, already know what Fair Trade is, to some degree, even if all they know is that, "It's trendy!"
Second, the name isn't bad just because someone is ignorant of what it means. Oracle is called Oracle because the Oracle of Delphi was supposed to have exceptional insight to the point of being all-knowing. Just because someone doesn't know what the Oracle of Delphi is/was, or is aware of the broad usage of the term "oracle" doesn't mean it's a bad name.
How many people know Nike is the Greek goddess of victory? Doesn't mean it's a bad name just because we refuse to educate people properly.
I think the name is fine. I don't often see it used the way you describe it, and when it does I'd say it means something like adequate, average or acceptable. Mediocre has a more negative connotation to it.
I've been using a FP4 for the last year it is fine as a basic phone however:
- I've needed to have it repaired under warranty as some of the mics didn't work.
- I've needed to get their long life usb cable replaced under warranty. The connectors on the ends seem pretty flimsy and will break over time.
- For software updates they tend to be every 1-2 months with bug fixes and security patches, major Android versions take more than a year so when they talk about 5 years of software support it is more like 3 year stretched out to 5.
On almost every phone I have owned, battery degradation is the primary complaint that I have after the first few years of use. Unfortunately, when the battery is just glued to the back of the screen, what should be a cheep and easy fix, has become impossibly risky. Instead, I am left nursing a dying battery to the point where, for one phone, I would carry an external battery pack everywhere since my phone battery could not last the day...
When I travel I bring a spare battery. Then I don't have to keep charging the phone all the time, and sometimes it might not be possible. With a spare that's one thing less to worry about.
The second thing is battery degradation. After a while the amount of charge will drop, and replacing it with a new and fresh battery feels like giving the phone new life.
This is why I'm very excited at the prospect of an OpenAI phone.
Without billions in funding, its impossible to build a viable alternative to the android/ios duopoly. Heck, its near impossible even with the billion (RIP windows phone) but that where OpenAI software side comes in.
AI is really becoming the new meta or crypto. Suddenly everybody is thinking it will change the world and be integrated with every existing technology we have.
People have to stop buying into these fabricated tech hypes.
Suddenly everybody is thinking it will change the world and be integrated with every existing technology we have.
That's an argument against all technological progress. You had a crowd 20 years ago asking why you'd want a smart phone - a phone should just be great at making phone calls. Sometimes integrating new tech will be a huge leap, and sometimes a flop, but its hard to predict so you have to try it to find out. There is a reasonable chance an always available AI assistant in a portable device will be a big deal.
I should clarify, I believe language models will have an enormous technological impact. But the media and companies with a stake in it are blowing it way out of proportion. Like nvidia saying that they will create AI games. And it has caused people to extremely overestimate what a language model can do.
There is no reason to believe OpenAI will magically change the phone industry by making "OpenAI phones" whatever that is supposed to mean.
AI assistants in phones were a flop, and though their quality could change much with the use of language models this doesn't mean that people are going to use them this time. Currently it's not even possible to use language models in that sense, they are useful for generating text but it's near impossible to have them communicate to some external interface.
I've once talked to someone who gave a talk on an absolutely enormous call support framework for a bank, and he told me that they had no plans to ever integrate actual AI with their chatbot. Because those models can't be controlled/consored strictly enough.
What I am saying is that the actual technological advancement of language models has completely disassociated with the buzzword "AI" that is being thrown around a lot right now. And it's not dissimilar to how Meta or Web3 were discussed.
They got billions on their balance sheet and the are rumours of a new phone company with Jony Ive.
The bankroll along with the dynamism both parties bring to the table might just cross the threshold for becoming a viable contender against the Apple/Google duopoly.
Lets not forget the AI advantage, Apple has a lot of catching up to do and this opens a small window of opportunity.
