Sadly yes, I like the company philosophy, and I understand that - with regards to device size - due to them being small, they can only run 1 product line, no parallel small phone. But what I do not understand then is how they feel they have to release a new model every 2 years, which also drives switching the production lines for older model spare parts. That’s not sustainability in my eyes. I was severely disappointed after Fairphone advocated for repairability with “the most sustainable smartphone is your old one, if you continue using it”, and still having my Fairphone 1(!) in tip top condition (the only part that broke was the power button, which I repaired myself with an iFixit tool & a soldering iron) but no longer being able to use it because SW support is discontinued. I was even more disappointed when my FP2 finally started having problems charging because the USB port was becoming wobbly / loose, and not being able to purchase a new bottom module because “sorry, we’re on FP4 now, only spare parts we still ship are FP3 and higher”.

So now I am on shiftphone 6mq - which is not necessarily smaller, but might be usable with free OS + docking station sooner than a FP ever will.

As you say - a good gimmick, but a gimmick nonetheless.

I always think about auto repair when repairability comes up. I could still get parts for my 30yo jeep. Hell people make parts for collector vehicles, even 90 year old Model A cars.

Now, you might say modern cars are less repairable but I can also get software to diagnose and configure my 5yo Toyota 4Runner. And if I upgrade some parts it doesn’t void the warranty because of consumer friendly laws.

Tech would be very different if it followed these patterns.

From other people you would only get used parts. To be fair, the Fairphone community is quite good and supportive, and there are people there that collect broken phones from users, salvage them for parts & repair phones for users. But if you would like to procure original, new parts, you should not count on the FP company to provide any beyond the support duration that they promise in writing (not sure what that is right now).

You mean FP2 parts? I could have gotten them only from the Fairphone community. But I spent some time waiting for an opportunity where we would have met anyways, and I found no battery replacement, because tjat was the first component in most FP2s to fail (apart from a Display problem which was early on though and fixed under warranty)

Ultimately the problem is Google. The minimum system requirements for Android keep going up with every release and Google stops providing updates to older releases at some point (typically 5 years after that version was initially released). That effectively puts an upper bound on the lifespan of any phone as at some point the phones CPU and memory aren’t good enough to run the latest Android version at acceptable speeds. The lower end a phone was at original manufacturing the faster this all happens as well.

Apple is just as bad (far worse in some ways).

I’ve tried to find a solution, and the best I’ve seen is Linux phone, but that comes with some major downsides that are going to be deal breakers for most people. The two biggest ones are that battery life is abysmal unless you enable hibernation, but doing so, at least a year or so ago when I looked into it, disables your ability to receive calls while the phone is in hibernation. And secondly that NFC essentially doesn’t work, or at least not for anything you care about like being able to make payments.

The FP2 rubber casing was discontinued for that reason, but the cheap plastic shells also broke quickly (well - from falls, mostly :D so they did accomplish what they are there for: protect the phone itself from breaking). I think beyond the initial rubber shell (which also disconnected from the harder plastic shell for me) I went through 3-4 hard shells, all of which I got for free from FP though on community meetings @ the FP HQ.

Oh did they? That is insanely dumb… :(

Yeah. Buy Nokia.

Let’s also support European companies over Chinese ones.

Yes you are right, I just remembered it was small for the price, especially considering it does NOT have micro-SD.

It makes no sense to me, their whole deal is sustainability, by removing the headphone jack it forces me to buy Bluetooth headphones that all have batteries in them and are presumably not up to Fairphone standards of sustainability.

And saying we’re just following market trends sounds like a shitty explanation to me. I have the 3, I’ll use it for as long as it works but after that no Fairphone for me.

I’m not buying it, I have a Fairphone 3 and I’ll use it for as long as it works

That seems to be most people, but for me it’s a deal breaker.

Good for you.

Damn words sounding the same

Thanks to the verge I now know to always carry a pocket knife to build computers with.

I mostly can’t get over paying more for worse specs. It doesn’t have to feel bad now but with 8 years of support it could very easily not feel good in the future. It’s a $760 phone that benchmarks close to the Samsung A54 a $400 phone.

The selling point is the ethical value of the phone but it’ll never top how much waste buying a used phone saves.

It’s not about the processor, it’s about the official software support. Some people don’t want to have to flash a custom ROM to get decent performance, some people want good performance out of the box from the official software

Unfortunately that adds significant cost.

That’s not unfortunate, that’s logical. Unfortunately, other companies are allowed to exploit humans and the environment for more profit despite lower prices.

They only harvest from sustainable phone forests. 👍

Yeah, running custom roms means you wouldn’t have been affected.