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.
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.
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.
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.
From what I heard many Fairphone 3s didn't even survive that long. Quality, audio quality and performance all seem to be pretty bad. That combined with its very high price point kinda defeats the point of it. The idea is great, but the execution isn't.
I’m using a FP4, and here the signs are reversed. The hardware is working so far, but the software is incredibly buggy and instable.
Add to it the very mediocre hardware (slow, outdated SoC, terrible camera, bad battery life) and it’s not a fun phone to use. Especially not at that price point.
You can get a pretty top of the line smartphone for that price, which I'm also not willing to pay for either.
Let's hope EU regulations can make smartphones generally a bit more sustainable.
Yeah, the high price point kinda destroys the repairability aspect for me. I could get a similar phone from Samsung or Google for €200-400 less. For that money I can get the battery/screen replaced multiple times.
I hope, the EU regulation makes repairability mainstream.
I renewed phones late last year and I pondered on getting the FP4, but I was unhappy with the camera and even though it’s replaceable it is not upgradeable. I got instead a Pixel 6A and it’s a pleasure to use (tolerating all the Google stuff).
I bought my FP3 at release in September 2019, while it does overheat from time to time and I'm on my 3rd battery (kinda the point of it), I'm very happy with the purchase overall, when it dies I'll move on to the FP4 or 5 if it is released.
TBH, I was also surprised to see support for Android 13 was out
Going through a battery each year doesn't really sound like the point of it though? That's a lot of excess waste. I use my Pixel 4a for about 2 years now and the battery is still good.
I’m still on my original FP3 battery (2021), although I am rooted and changed the PD charging speed to 2.5W…
What kind of torture are you doing to your device for it to overheat, damn 😳. I’ve only overheated my device once and that’s mainly because I was using it as a bike computer in hot weather 😅
Ive been using my Fairphone 3 every single day since January 2020. I did have a vibration motor wear out, but its replaceable so its fine. My battery is a bit iffy now. According to a battery scan app I use, its at 63% health. I’ll be replacing that soon too since sometimes it will only charge up to a certain point etc. Still though, on any other phone, that would be a deal breaker, but since I can order a replacemt battery for like 25€, its not an issue.
Only other issue I have is sometimes the screen experiences ghost touches, where it will register a touch on the screen even when I’m not using it. Again, this will be fixed with a replacement later on.
I love my Fairphone and I strongly reccomend it for its repairablity alone. The sustainability and FairTrade aspects are just a bonus IMO.
If you had gotten a high quality phone from another manufacturer it is unlikely you would have had this many hardware problems requiring a replacement. This seems like a toss up.
I’ve had my FP3 for the same amount of time, still on all original components. Battery lasts through the day easy. The camera is bad, so I might replace that for the upgrade, but other than that I have no issues. My partner buys fancy phones and he is on his third phone in the same timeframe because they all broke. Shame your FP3 is not holding out as well as mine!
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
I wanted to get a Fairphone 4 until I saw I saw it didn’t have a headphone jack. Made me think all their “sustainable” mottos are just marketing.
Purism with their Librem phones took people’s money and didn’t send them the product so I didn’t want to chance it or support a company that does that.
So in the end I got a Pixel 7 instead and put Graphene OS on it. Not particularly happy but didn’t seem like there was a better choice.
Recently found out from a Louis Rossman video that the lead dev of Graphene has some mental health issues that don’t make him a very trustworthy individual. Supposedly he stepped down but he’s probably still contributing code.
His code contributions have always been high quality, and they’re audited by his peers. Its very unlikely malicious code would come from him, and even more unlikely it would make it through on to your phone.
While he’s certainly unhinged, it’s clear that he cares deeply for the project. I can’t see him doing anything intentionally malicious.
I really wish him the best, and I’m glad he stepped down. Much better for optics with him out of the way.
This might age horribly, but I never really understood the worry that a high-profile open source developer might ‘smuggle’ some dodgy code into a repo. Sure, it’s possible. Especially in large projects, but the risk/reward ratio is simply ridiculously bad and there are so many other/simpler ways out there a malicious actor could use to make a profit.
Yup, I’m in the market for a new phone soon, and here’s my assessment of my options, in rough order of preference:
PinePhone Pro - probably not ready since I’m not confident in calls waking it from sleep; not sure if it’ll support the apps I need (mostly need a specific 2FA app for work)
Fairphone - expensive and no headphone jack
Pixel + alternate ROM - not sure I trust the devs
iPhone - don’t like the ecosystem much, and I don’t really trust Apple
regular Android - software support ends too soon
feature phones - don’t have the apps I need
I’m probably going to get an older Pixel and a PinePhone Pro, and I’ll hack on the PinePhone until it does what I need. I don’t think I can add reliable suspend/resume, but I can probably build a couple small apps I need (i.e. a lemmy client, I’m already working on one), get a few Android apps working, and tune the OS a bit. Worst case scenario, it’s a fun hobby project.
I heard the original PinePhone works fine, but the Pro is still WIP. I want the extra performance from the Pro, otherwise I’d probably already have a PinePhone.
Fairphone allows you to remove the battery, which, amongst other things, allows you to hard-reset the phone by just pulling the battery, which I did 2 times after owning the FP4 for 18 months. It also receives longer software support than most other phones. Negatives include a rattly top speaker above 50% volume, which was confirmed to be a design defect, the high price tag and, for me at least other small annoyances, such as the microphone volume being pretty low when on a call (not unusable, but you got to speak louder) and sometimes GPS issues, which either require patience or a restart.
An incredibly important detail of being able to remove the battery is that it enables both carrying extras for longer travel, and allows replacing and upgrading as it ages.
I have a samsung galaxy s5 and thanks to that i could straight up double the ontime with an aftermarket battery, which is comically large and came with a new backside lmao.
pinephone pro - is defintely getting better as the software improves. The battery life is definitely something that holds it back i bought a keyboard battery case and it improved it however the edges of the case that connects to the phone have cracked over time and ive super glued it twice (near headphone port & opposite side near type c port.) When they crack it can cause a misalignment on the pins and not charge/keyboard doesnt function so i have to press back into the case(hence the glue to fix that). It will eventually get better for me to completely jump over.
Pixel phones degoogled - works great especially calyx or graphene os. I have always bought used but if i want change to happen i need to stop funding google indirectly through the used market with buying their phones. I am speaking for myself here.
Fairphone , Teracube, Murena - i eventually want to just buy from these moving forward. They hit 80% + of the checkboxes i need and improvements come quicker when this companys market improves especially when their direction aligns with what i want in a phone.
Tl;dr - i am letting my money do the talking on where i want phone improvement to occur.
Pinephone (not pro) seems to have the most support its on the main line.
Other than that under “community” & “phone” you would decide which phone in that list meets what you need and get peoples opinion on those specific phone with usage.
your selection on which direction to take via pinephone or android based on your needs and tollerances.
If you dont mind tinkering go pinephone however if you need it to work for various uses based on what you/friends/family use and compromises need to be done then go android.
Contribution can be bug reports, donations, assistance to other users ect. Anything is possible if you want.
I do where i can and its my choice; same with you, your choices are your own.
I think I’ll want the PinePhone Pro because repairability is important and it’ll probably be hard to find parts for outdated mass market phones. The original PinePhone is just too slow for me (from videos, not hands-on usage), and the PinePhone Pro probably wouldn’t be a huge downgrade from my current phone in terms of performance.
I didn’t see a big selection of used OnePlus 6s (OnePlus 6T seems available though), and the ones that are available are in poor shape (shattered back, burned in screen, some kind of damage, etc), so it’s not going to be a long term option most likely. The PinePhone should have decent parts support for a few years at least.
I have a pinephone pro, while you can use use it touch. I recommend either the keyboard case(since it has a battery) or having a portable bluetooth keyboard of some sort. If configurartion is needed and there are issues with the onscreen keyboard(happens when i use certain apps like bitwarden) the keyboard helps ease that issue.
I still use stock manjaro plasma but if i jump i might go to sway/plasma arch/sway postmarket still checking put options though. I know i need waydroid to work so ill see what the doc support is on both.
Any idea of what phone is best for postmarketos? I intend to use it as a daily driver and potentially submit patches for things like MMS (my family still uses it occasionally).
I guess, if money were no object, which phone offers the best postmarketos experience?
When I heard the Fairphone 4 didn’t have any waterproofing I decided to skip this version. My coworker is replacing their Samsung S10 just because the USB port is getting loose but they’re an avid boater. For some, water resistance really matters.
it’s worth noting that while on android you can be like 4-5 major versions behind and still receive first class app support, on ios apple decides your phone no longer sparks joy and refuses you the next ios version, you’re slowly but surely going to lose all your apps. on the developer side, apple is extremely hostile to the practice of using older versions of their apis, they constantly push you toward newer apis that only work with the latest os and discourage using the older ones. some apps, like vlc, still manage to support older iphones, but it’s an ordeal and a half, so on the user side, not being on the latest ios isn’t really a proper experience.
the iphone 6s was actually the longest supported iphone, receiving the latest ios for 83 months after release. that’s just one month shy of fairphone’s 7 years. however, the average iphone only gets five years of real-world viability*, which is, yes, better than the 2-3 years android gets (usually with way more transparently planned obsolescence than apple does), but it’s not better than the 7 years of true viability that fairphone offers. they upgraded to android 13, that alone would last you until 2026 because of the way android apps are written.
*yes, you can use your iphone past that, hell, you can even use it after you stop getting security fixes, which tends to happen about 3 years later. but how is that different than using an old android device that’s also not receiving support?
Eh, you’re discounting the different development targets that the android and ios ecosystems use. From the jump almost all android developers are shooting for ancient versions of the api because no phone gets more than a few major versions. Ios developers are targeting the latest supported api so from the start it’s the latest thing.
But what’s in that api? It’s hard to develop optimized code for the gpu of android devices because it could be anything. Qualcomm stops sending out blobs after a few versions so there’s a big transition from first party blob bin libs to third party reverse engineered ones. iOS stuff is all just metal 1,2 or 3. So even the five year old phone is getting some level of gpu support. The metal api even has a fallback layer so if you wrote for 3 and the device only has a 2 gpu it’ll split the work and there’ll be some amount of acceleration. It’s like that one version of directx that broke hardware compatibility and had to be patched.
It’s also worth addressing what you said about apple pushing the latest api. It’s true, they do. They also encourage app developers to use the old apis to target security updates at platforms that aren’t getting major versions anymore.
That system is a lot more like Debian stable than some evil empire (although I’ve met ppl who think Debian stable is the evil empire).
Apple isn’t good. They’re out to get money just like everyone else. I think of em like Lexus. The users are pieces of shit, but the cars are prime rib Toyotas which is honestly pretty nice.
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.
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.
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.
Your example with the camera module is exactly what happened to the FP3. They released the FP3+ which featured a better camera and users of the original model could upgrade by just buying this module.
However this is definetly not the focus of Fairphone as a company as too many or regular new modules would introduce new e-waste again.
I want to love my FP3 but it loves to crap out by being slow or just crash prone. I replaced my camera because it accumulated dust behind the lense, because it is replacable.
… still wouldn’t buy any other phone, it works well enough in all aspects and is a bit like the slightly crappy car you still love <3 Next one will be a FP5 :)
I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone though. People who know how to handle the issues (i.e. how to replace the stock OS - it sucks, but /e/OS is okay) don’t need my recommendation.
For most people it’s just a pretty expensive mid-range-specced phone.
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…
My problem with FP isn’t only that their phone lacks in features and sustainability. It’s that their whole PR and marketing is misleading. They hold back a lot of essential information to trick the customer into thinking that the phone is good for the environment. I would be more enclined to support them if they were honest about it ; right now it looks like corporate BS intended to make a maximal profit, like any other phone company
Phones are never good for environment, it’s a resource sink. But it’s better than most others and it’s enough :-)
A lot of phones are disposed of despite being perfectly functional (at least some are saved by the second hand market) just because the manufacturer released a new version with a slightly better camera sensor and more RAM. It has gotten a bit ridiculous. Fairphones are not perfect, but being able to keep them more than 2-3 years without being left with an unmaintained glued brick is what makes at least a small difference.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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