Thoughts?
Fairphone proves the usual excuses for ending Android support aren’t valid.
That alone is worth a lot. Their endeavour for longevity is also great. I hope they get the attention they need.
By supporting the very manufacture to blame for short support times? Qualcomm is the root of the problem.
They don’t provide the bloody drivers for newer Android versions.
Manufacturers can only provide security updates after 2 major updates.
Are other Chipmakers better? It’s not like they could just have no chip at all…
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.
Tl;dr: phones = bad
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.
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 :)
It’s nice. For me.
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.