Not much to add. Saw it in another technology forum and thought it also belonged here for the solarpunks
Fairphone - listen up! (I know they’re definitely here and I’m not just shouting into the wind.)
Go find a Samsung Galaxy S5. Upgrade the internals, move the button to the side, and you’re done. Waterproof, wireless charging, swappable batteries, SD card, headphone jack. It’s the last good phone I’ve used.
No major “supported for 1 generation by the manufacturer then forgotten” hardware gimmicks (if this were a just universe, the guy that suggested the Bixby button would be reassigned to manually unclogging toilets with his hands), no notch (oh Apple, you think we didn’t look at the ‘functional notch’ and start betting on how long before that’s gone?), a satin feeling back and shiny bevel made of plastic (it flexes, doesn’t bend, and who gives a shit when it’s in a case), thin but not so much so that you have to worry about sanding 0.00001 mm off the battery to fit it (0.5mm thicker and 4 more hours of screen on time? Puhlease. My college laptop weight 10 pounds and I took it everywhere. Load up those energon cubes).
You wanna play around with the dimensions and cameras and add a retractable feline flossing utensil? Fine. The phone everyone wants already 99% exists. It’s maddening!
well, the fairphone 5 is coming so, we’ll see if the US will get that too
Unpopular opinion for this probably, but the majority of people don’t care or want to repair their own phones. On this forum, yeah, probably, but majority of people would rather just go sign another contract and get a new one or have insurance on it.
I’m a big fan of upgradable hardware, but lately I’ve found that the bigger problem with Android phones is the lack of software support. I had my last phone for 5 years and finally upgraded not because there were any major hardware problems, but because the android version was so far out of date that I was starting to feel the pain of missing out on some major improvements, plus some apps actually were starting to break. I picked my current phone specifically because Samsung was promising to support four major version upgrades which is, unfortunately, industry leading among Android OEMs despite lagging hugely behind Apple’s software support for their older models.
Fairphone seems to have a mixed track record on this. According to their website the Fairphone 2 got 5 major updates (great!). But the Fairphone 3 got only one update (bad). And the fairphone 4 has received one update so far with a second one promised. After that they say that they’ll try to provide two more updates, but they’re not making any promises because the processor will be out of support with Qualcomm by then.
This is, unfortunately, a very understandable position to take. The fact that Android OEMs rely on third parties like Qualcomm to design and support their processors is definitely the major problem here. Big guys like Samsung and Google can throw their weight around and squeeze a year or two of extra support out. But for small players like fairphone it’s not surprising that they find themselves in this position.
The fact is that any sane company would prefer to make money selling new chips, rather than spending it to support old ones. This problem will persist until consumers start demanding longer software support on their devices and making it a major part of their buying decision.
I’ve posted about this elsewhere on this instance, but LineageOS has made a good start on supporting Android phones beyond their official support
I actually flashed lineage onto an old (5th gen?) Amazon Fire tablet I had gathering dust recently. I’ve been very satisfied with the result, but I’m personally not at the point where I’d trust it as my daily driver OS. My smartphone holds sensitive bank data, I rely on it to call for help in emergencies, I use it as an alarm clock to ensure I get to work on time, etc. There’s just too much at stake for me to trust pulling a build off some thread on XDA-developers and hoping for the best.
quick edit: Maybe there’s collaborative a way forward though, where the LineageOS community and Fairphone work together to extend support through Fairphone approved Lineage releases. I’d totally be down for that.
Only thing keeping me from being interested in this phone is the lack of 3.5 mm headphone jack.
After my last phone upgrade where I chose a phone with a headphone jack, I found that I just did not use it that often. But when I did use it, it was absolutely critical. Being stuck with on a flight with bluetooth headphones without charge is awful, but aint no problem when you got a headphone jack (and the wire to connect your dead headphones). I could see myself getting a phone without it, but there would have to be a really good reason for it, and so far there has not been one.
Conservatives will be calling this the “wokepbone” and will outlaw it in red states claiming it can only call pedophiles and immigrants.
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I really like my Fairphone 4 :)
Me too. Happy Fairphone 4 user here reporting as well! 😀
