I get the criticism, but the Fairphone really shouldn’t be compared to other (especially Chinese-made) phones in the same way. It’s about sustainability and fairer labour (hopefully anyway).
So far the main issue I see is with the battery life, 4200 mAH battery on a 778G-class SoC should be doing better than this.
Seriously, what’s “sustainable” about a one off phone, that most people have never heard of, that you won’t be able to get your replacement parts for in another couple years, assuming theyre even still making them?
I know sustainable is a buzz word talking point these days, but c’mon. I’m all for the free market, competition, and everything built not coming from China, but at some point reaility needs to be part of the equation.
It’s still easy to get parts for Fairphone 4 and most parts (some out of stock, unclear if permanently) for Fairphone 3, and some parts for Fairphone 2.
And how is fairphone supposed to get people to hear about the phones without making the phone in the first place?
And it isn’t really a one off since they have made 5 different phone models and some other stuff in the last decade.
They also support their phones software for a relatively long time.
It’s just amazing how many people comment under fairphone post without knowing anything about the brand. I guess it’s mostly American user because it’s not sold in North America.
But fairphone has been operating since 2013, they are not a one off.
It’s really awesome what they are doing especially as they are the only one doing this. The right to repai is super important for consumer. It’s very sad to see people calling those issue “woke”.
When people of every background and political spectrum are victim of corporation preventing them to easily fix what they buy.
Talk to any farmers about jon dear! Or any buy it for life enthusiasts.
If you know nothing about the fairphone just say that
Yeah and the reality is this ain’t a great phone by any metric. Who the fuck buys phones based on woke virtue signalling?
Christ. They’re aimed at solving the problem of hardware that falls out of software support long before the hardware fails AND phones that need entirely replaced instead of being repaired.
Anyone know how well the Fairphone 5 compares against the Samsung Galaxy S10? I know the specs are pretty public but I don’t follow this stuff that closely so find it difficult to draw comparisons between different chips etc.
My S10 is on its last legs so I think a bit about what I will buy to replace it. I really like the idea of the Fairphone but of course you pay a lot (relatively speaking) for the ethics. One of the worries is that the phone will become unusable in a few years anyway, either because parts are unavailable or because software has become too heavy. The other option I am leaving towards is a second hand Pixel.
You don’t actually pay a lot. You pay what is fair. The only reason other phones cost less, that is, cheaper is, precisely, because of all the shortcuts these corporations unethically took.
For example: a burger shop can offer you a $4.99 burger, or the same burger at $0.49 with stolen meat processed by underpaid employees working 7 days a week for 12 hours. You get used to the $0.49 deal, then you start seeing the $4.99 burger as “very expensive.”
The Fairphone is faster - although perhaps not by a huge amount, has better battery life and a better camera. The official spare parts shop has parts for the Fairphone 3 onwards, earlier models’ parts are sold out. The Fairphone 2 was released in 2015 and has stopped receiving software updates this year, the 3 came out in 2019. 8 years of support and replacement parts seems to me to be much better than what Samsung or Google would offer you.
Specs differences: https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?&idPhone1=12540&idPhone2=9536#diff-*,*,*
Chipset comparison: https://versus.com/en/qualcomm-qcm6490-vs-samsung-exynos-9820
Spare parts shop: https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?ref=header
What is the reason your S10 is on it’s last legs? If you see yourself needing a lot more power, maybe the FP5 isn’t the best bet for you because you’re right, it might not be useful to you in the later years of it’s life. However, I’m not sure what people are doing with the current top-of-the-line SoCs to justify that much power (if people want it to play games or for non-practical reasons, that’s fine too). As an S10e user, I feel like we’ve come to a point where my current phone should be powerful enough for the foreseeable future. My only issues are I’m no longer getting official software updates (I’ll probably go with a Custom ROM soon), my battery life is a bit shorter than I’d like, and parts are getting hard to come by with most being “new old stock” at best.
I’d be sold if it wasn’t literally 2.5x the price of any other phone I’m looking at. Sheesh. Yeah and I’d love to change out parts and tinker with the possibilities, too. What’s that gonna cost me?
Edit - also other major brands might have removable batteries by the time I’m buying again.
My only worry is the Chip. On the verge of clicking the Buy button but concerned about day to day performance, especially after 5 years or so.
It’s a 778G, it’ll do well in 5 years, provided Fairphone don’t fuck up the updates.
Big if with a long window in the tech world.
Why won’t they sell it in South America? 😭😭😭
Despite the issues, and knowing that a different phone would get me a much better value at a lower price, I was going to buy one of these.
…but then I saw it wasn’t available in the US. So I went with a (used) Pixel 7 on ebay instead. Considering this is the 5th iteration and they still don’t have a US variant, I’m not going to get my hopes up. I know Murena sells a US variant of the Fairphone 4, but apparently it uses the same exact modem, so using it in the US will result in connectivity issues.
at least I’m recycling!
Always like the idea of the Fairphone but I always find the chip to be a bit lacking.
Like if it had (at least) last years flagship chip then I feel like it’d be less of a compromise and the switch to a more sustainable phone would be a much easier sell.
Can’t imagine using a chip that’s deemed ‘lacking’ now is going to feel any better 4 years down the line.
Lacking what? What are you running that a chipset from last year will be struggling?
I don’t get it, what’s wrong with the 778G? It was a highly competent SoC that was still relevant last year (Samsung’s A series from 2022 couldn’t come close to it with the Exynos line, save the A73 which came with the 778G), and there are gazillions of comptent phones using slower SoCs that work just fine.
Do people really use their phones or do they look at spec sheets and go, too slow in their mind, like some kind of reverse placebo?
or do they look at spec sheets and go, too slow in their mind, like some kind of reverse placebo
Yes. People hate on the Tensor chip in the Pixel 6/7 because it’s “slow”, despite day to day performance being literally no different than any other phone.
In b4 people complain about the headphone jack.
LITERALLY unsustainable 0/10
