I can’t believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he’s onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭
Whatever you wanna say about the fairphone, LTT shouldn’t have any say in the review industry after their back-to-back lying to the public AND sexual harassment debacles. They’ve been sleazy for years, taking money from companies they claim to review impartially, and twisting everything into a meme factory instead of putting the tiniest amount of effort into quality reviews and tech journalism.
Linus is absolutely the last guy you should be listening to on anything unless he’s explaining how he managed to salvage his reputation after covering up toxic and predatory workplace behaviour and still coming out the other side a multimillionaire.
… that none of which ended up in the court let alone confirmed. That’s an allegation, not something proven.
They’ve been sleazy for years, taking money from companies they claim to review impartially, and twisting everything into a meme factory instead of putting the tiniest amount of effort into quality reviews and tech journalism.
Straight up one of the points GN made. Which they really did improve upon. They don’t pump out as much content now, as well as generally higher quality content again.
salvage his reputation after covering up toxic and predatory workplace behaviour
:D
coming out the other side a multimillionaire.
Guy created and ran a YouTube channel, expanded it to be a media company. Hosts a forum, sells high quality merchandise (you can look up the coverage of their bag or screwdrivers from places like project farm). Also runs a premium video hosting and live streaming service for creators. That’s what we call “earned it.”
This comment just reeks of toxicity, rather than criticism.
I don’t know what are you doing with your phones. I have never witnessed someone wearing out a USB Type-C port.
Anyway, if you want to be upset at someone, the implementators of USB standards are: Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Renesas Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments.
Port wearout, isn’t that a good reason for a repairable phone?
I don’t know much about the fair phone I do remember a day when cellphone batteries were user replaceable and back then you could get third party larger batteries with larger cases. Is that available for the fair phone?
I’ve got a list of must haves for phones and that is on it. Obviously nothing has met my list in years.
The USB-C pulling double duty for an audio port means it wears out faster. If the port needs replacement sooner, then that goes against their e-waste reduction goals. But look, they have ear buds!
Great, more batteries, more points of failure. Simple is best. I want my wired headphones.
So I could choose, get replecement parts for my current phone (charging board + battery) for 40 eur. Or get a new fairphone for 700 eur, downgrading my battery by 40% and throwing away a functional phone.
I don’t watch LTT anymore thanks to Gamers Nexus. I was shopping for a new graphics card for my mother’s desktop and I did see the confusing inconsistencies they were talking about in at least one video.
It just seemed like an improvement to switch to AMD from Nvidia ever since she switched to Linux. I’ll watch this later!
Linus simply isn’t the target audience for this phone. He says he’s onboard with their mission and everything, but then makes points that aren’t relevant to their mission. Also, if a company as dedicated to their mission as FairPhone (or so they claim, I haven’t personally checked) can make a phone like this, then probably the reason other companies make better phones is really because they don’t care about ethics and morals but cold hard cash.
The point is; he wants a Framework-like approach to modularity and feature set. That means a phone that’s good enough to actually holds its own without retreating to being “ethical” or “modular.”
Fairphone is just the worst deal you can get even if you consider the ethical side of it. This is because rescuing an old phone gives you a much better experience for less than half the cost and keeping tech from the landfill is a lot more ecologically friendly as the work and sourcing was already done regardless of you purchasing the device.
The point is; he wants a Framework-like approach to modularity and feature set. That means a phone that’s good enough to actually holds its own without retreating to being “ethical” or “modular.”
Even Google failed at that and he’s expecting a cash-strapped startup to do so better and ethically at that too? He’s naive, ignorant, or both.
Fairphone is just the worst deal you can get even if you consider the ethical side of it.
It is not, if you buy a new phone. Then it’s ethically better to buy a FairPhone. If all companies were held to the ethical standards of FairPhone, then we could talk about performance, but if you care more about performance than ethics, that’s your deal.
I don’t think Linus Sebastian is worth watching during the NCIX days because he always seem like someone who would spend the least amount of effort and say whatever is popular to get the most amount of views. As you can see in this video, a lot of the criticism he made on the Fairphone are really nitpicking and isn’t fair (heh) at all.
For example, the phone thickness, which he measured with a caliper as a point, is not a metric most people outside of reviewers would care about, especially since most people puts a beefy case on their phone immediately anyways, and size is usually the main tradeoff with modularity.
Or their point about using a Qualcomm industrial chip instead of a Snapdragon chip as a point against Fairphone, when they have previously stated that it is to get a longer time of support.
That being said, having a long, uncut and unfiltered reaction video towards criticism by having the co-founder improv on the spot was not the smartest thing to do on Fairphone’s part. He came off as defensive and completely unprepared in the video and failed to address the criticism effectively (with some easy rebuttals if he was given even a little time to prepare) effectively, which is not great for PR.
The video could be much more effective if they cut it down to half the length with an actual script. It’s a YouTube video, there’s no reason to do it completely live and unscripted.
Or their point about using a Qualcomm industrial chip instead of a Snapdragon chip as a point against Fairphone, when they have previously stated that it is to get a longer time of support.
Of course the support is great, but some other phones also achieve that without a slow and old SoC.
The Fairphone seems pretty nice in theory but the performance is pretty poor and the price is high.
The Fairphone seems pretty nice in theory but the performance is pretty poor and the price is high.
Peak performance was not a priority. I would argue most modern phones are far more powerful than is necessary for daily tasks, often at the cost of battery life.
Also their test of using nothing but a constant YouTube video playback is not reflective of real-world use. Mrwhosetheboss (terrible name BTW) does much more realistic tests.
The cost will necessarily be higher because they are not utilizing the absolute cheapest way of doing things. As stated in the video they specifically source providers who provide their workers a fair wage and sustainably-sourced materials. Hence the name.
Poor in comparison to what though? I know what the benchmarks say but I don’t really notice any differences between the Fairphone 5 (what I’m currently typing on) or my previous phones (Huawei Mate 10, Zenfone 6, Zenfone 8 Flip) in terms of daily driving (aside from battery maybe). I’m sure there is for gaming, but that’s the one thing I don’t use my phone for.
What are people using their phones for that require such beefy processing power? I have a Fairphone 4, which presumably is slower than the Fairphone 5, and it is perfectly snappy for all my needs. Actually curious. Is it gaming?
Its gaming. I asked this in an old thread before and the response was gaming and emulation. Which is fair if you want the latest and greatest, but general usage on my fairphone 4 is snappy and fine so idk. I dont do gaming on my phone though :)
I dunno I just heard it was slow for general usage.
But I also wonder why there exists so many phones that target mobile gaming with external fans and all that.
What games are people playing that require a special gaming phone? Switch emulation or something is the only thing I can think of.
Last I checked all mobile games ran perfectly fine on everything. I don’t really understand non-casual mobile gaming. If I want to play good games I play on a switch, steam deck, or I just wait until I get home and I play in the way I find most comfortable, i.e. using a mouse and keyboard.
Hehe yeah, mobile gaming seems awful to me as well. Never heard about external fans. Seems like going out of your way to have a sub-par gaming experience.
Asus called their fan (and sometimes water cooled I think) contraption" AeroActive Cooler [rev number here]" I think the phone opens up in some way so the fan (or water) works better. It’s pretty cool technology but seems entirely useless to me at least but I have no idea.
Fairphone 4 is not slow for general usage, but for gaming it can be slow depending on the load, ye.
Gamecube emulation would be slower than latest and greatest, but those soc’s only have 4 years of support, and thats not up to fairphone’s standards
Just like any hardware, it all depends what you use it for and what your requirements are.
For the last part: I’m pretty sure it’s just his thing to do “real” things, instead of scripting, cutting it down, watching it before or anything.
I also very much got the feeling that he acted in a defensive and hurt way, but it’s his real emotion and I can understand it since Linus is bashing the phone much more than “necessary”.
I think the main reason for a thin phone nowadays is to have it fit in your trouser pocket. (or lack thereof). Having a flip style folding phone (as opposed to a book style) really helps.
Though I actually did finally listen to Linus’s review. Minus a few stupid things like “it’s too thick” or “I don’t like where the SIM slot is”, I think I mostly agree with him. It seem like the software at least has some major issues if he is to be believed.
I actually agree with him on the thickness, especially since I’d put the phone in a case which would add even more girth. It makes it less pocketable, and more importantly less easy to handle. My thumb can’t easily reach all the way across the screen on my current, similarly sized and thinner phone already and the added few millimetres from the case do make it noticeably worse.
It’s not the major thing that’s keeping me away from the Fairphone (I’m just not the target demographic), but certainly isn’t a point in it’s favour.
It’s quite annoying for me, (when i had an sd card slot) i pulled my card and moved files back and forth a lot because androids “file server” is ass at transferring more than a couple things. WiFi transferring is okay but i don’t like having to constantly map files to an ftp or smb so i can access them quickly, i know I’m in the minority on this but really accessible hot swap storage is super important to me. Most of my drives are removable in my main computer so i can toss them in my bag with my laptop and take what i need with me. My v20 had 2 sd cards tucked into it’s case so i could swap between a (retro)rom library, music library, or run system backups to the 3rd.
My latest phone is a xiaomi note 12. It has 120 watt charging and I never knew I’d love this so much! 0 to 100% in 30 min. No need to plan charging any more. Just give it 10 min and you’re good to go. Charging efficiency is maybe the greatest feature I look for now, besides connectivity
You are probably right. It’s efficient for me though. I get a lot more charge per minute wasted waiting for it to charge. But it may not be the scientific term of efficiency
Yes and no, 120W charging wouldn’t be possible if the electronics in the phone weren’t quite efficient, because there would be too much heat generated.
Energy lost as heat during the power transmission. It’s what makes the phones warm during wireless charging. That heat decreases the lifespan of the battery and makes the phone uncomfortable to use, which is why wireless charging speed is limited once the phone reaches a certain temperature. I specifically avoid using wireless charging on my Pixel to extend its battery lifespan since it will live for 7 years and battery replacement is expensive. New wireless charging standards could probably play with frequency and other parameters in order to reduce energy lost as heat, similar to how increasing the voltage in a circuit decreases loss to heat for the same cables.
I specifically avoid using wireless charging on my Pixel to extend its battery lifespan
You shouldn’t bother. I exclusively charge my Pixels wirelessly and keep them around forever as development devices and the batteries on all of them are fine.
Yes but that’s mostly relevant when using fast wireless charging. Slow wireless charging doesn’t get that hot. And it reduces friction on the USB port.
Furthermore this phone has a swappable battery so it would be fixable if the battery degraded
I can think of reasons to not to include wireless charging such as repairability. The efficiency is bs as people can still charge wired if they want to.
I haven’t seen a single device (other than a two way handset) that uses that sort of function. You would have to slot your phone into a giant plastic base and I just don’t know why anyone would want that. Anything but that and the charge pins would be exposed and thusly a fire hazard. Spring loaded pins are a dinosaur in today’s tech market and no one, let alone a company that is trying to reduce waste, would use such an outdated and niche system.
I don’t think you fully understood (my fault for a shitty explanation)
So you have the pogo pins on the back of the body of the phone, they connect to the back cover of the phone, the cover that covers the removable battery. The back cover has the coil integrated into it.
You can make the coil be removable from the back cover to reduce waste if you decide to replace the back because it’s scratched or broken.
The pogo pins are literally just to connect the wireless charging coil to the back of the phones cover when you close the phone up.
i’ve got a samsung chargepad thing, it has a builtin little cute fan (internal, not blowing on the phone) - the phone is elevated, laying on a lip so it does not have direct contact. it’s always cool to the touch even tho it charges relatively quick (80% charge limit tho)
And did you just call a 70% efficient device (staggeringly low by engineering practices in even the 60s) a negligible amount of power? Do you have even the remotest inkling of just how many billions of these chips are produced annually? Assuming only 0.1% will go in phones with wireless charging and that they will only be used for that year, we are talking about an enormous quantity of energy that is wasted. It would be enough energy to push the earth into the sun.
You’re being very dismissive about something you obviously have no real experience in, and there would be nothing wrong with not knowing something if you weren’t making claims simultaneously. Efficiency is a well known, inarguably defined, rigorously studied, timelessly practiced, design concept that the CEO has an obvious working knowledge of. There is no “alternative truth” that is being ignored here, only ones that should be.
Oof, so much hate when confronted with the simple fact that over the course of a phone’s life, wireless charging doesn’t have more than a slight negative impact. And one that isn’t going to be noticed by 99% of users. They will notice the convenience wireless brings though.
I was batch 2, it looks like the first few batches are going out at the same time, also I was lucky as I didn’t order any of the parts that were delayed
His primary skill and draw is entertainment. Tech is just what fills the gaps between shenanigans, “isn’t this cool?” and the next self-deprecating remark.
Bullshit. Linus was one of the first reviewers that didn’t say dumb stuff like “buy a really expensive motherboard and a mid range CPU” or “spend 200 dollars on a 1000Watt PSU for your 300Watt system”.
I watched his stuff before the GN kerfuffle . I’m not unfamiliar with the self-promotion, compound-building as content, antics or free-wheeling vids (or vids made to look that way).
Yes, even the side channel stuff.
The tech signal to total signal is… Low-ish. It’s entertaining, it’s broad in its scope, but I can find denser, deeper stuff if I care about a topic.
The tech signal to total signal is… Low-ish. It’s entertaining, it’s broad in its scope, but I can find denser, deeper stuff if I care about a topic.
I agree, but it is important to point out that this is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that the videos are aimed at a more mainstream audience. His videos are definitely part of what got me (and many other people) interested in tech.
They disclose their advertisements through audio and video, altough I dislike them not declaring in title whether it’s a sponsored video or review. Linus said publicly that he wonders why people don’t understand which of their videos is sponsored or not, but going by their titles it’s to be expected.
Watching their video it’s imo pretty obvious what is a review and what is sponsored advertisement.
ACG on YouTube I feel does a great job at this if he’s following his publicized guidelines. He doesn’t do any sponsored content nor accept paid for trips from the gaming industry and when he receives a free copy of the game for review purposes he purchases a copy to give away to the audience. Accepting the free early copies and paying to give one away on release seems like a good compromise to ensure he can get the review out near the embargo date.
I’m stating my point because you contradict the video not because you don’t agree with it.
If the lack of jack stock is a deal breaker for you, then it’s a deal breaker for you. From what I see, they still make phones that are great if not among the best performing phones out there, then they are great in other ways, as explained in the video.
The lack of ethics and increase in waste is a deal breaker for me.
They’re not the best performing. They’re generally slow. Other phones objectively perform better.
Not only did the fairphone 4 ditch a feature I needed and would prevent waste in general for many.
It also caused my housemate who owned one no end of issues with every update. Bluetooth dropouts, touchscreen glitches.
Issues with the camera.
Issues with the microphone
Slow charging.
He’s a beta tester and he’s paid a premium for it.
Support from fairphone has basically been pathetic.
It’s hilarious how many supporters of this company are. It must be like the phenomenon of car drivers supporting public transport. They’re hoping everyone else buys a fairphone.
As they’re not even the most environmentally friendly phone it’s all a bit silly.
I’m refering to the part about a phone being great on other parameters than just stuff that few users find valuable. They talked bout it when it comes to gaming.
It’s still a modular, repairable phone. That’s objectively different to a regular phone. Not to mention the broad support for ROMs.
I still wouldn’t buy one because of the cost, reduced performance, reduced battery life, and worse screen than other phones. It’s not worth it even if it’s upgradable as it can’t be upgraded enough to stay relevant forever anyway unlike a framework where you can plop in a new motherboard.
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