It will be deGoogled soon enough. The Fairphone 4 is supported across several deGoogled versions of Android including CalyxOS, iodéOS, LineageOS, DivestOS and /e/OS. The Fairphone 3 and even the 2 are also supported by some of those operating systems.
CalyxOS is the most advanced of those I mentioned. They have a monthly update schedule and a larger team. My favourite is iodéOS, though, because of the iodé ad and tracker blocker app which can be used simultaneously with a VPN.
No, I mean it runs system wide and can block ads and trackers from any application. There are definitely no ads in the OS lol
Normally these ad and tracker blocking apps are detected as a VPN by Android, which means you cannot use a real VPN at the same time. iode’s blocker is unique in this area.
Lineage is the oldest one (Divest and /e/ are forks of it). Calyx has a focus on security and privacy (comes with a free VPN with no signup requires). Currzntly Calyx is based on Android 13, even on the Fairphone 4 which doesn’t have it supportes. I son’t know enough about iodé to comment about it though.
None of my existing chargers supported the fastest protocols that my device from a few years ago supported, and it didn’t come with one. Also, what if you’re getting a device for the first time and actually don’t have any? At least it should maybe be an option when buying one so you can decide not to get one if you don’t need it, but a new device should come with everything needed to operate it.
They still come with a power cable and a controller though, which are necessary to actually turn on the machine. If you don’t already have a charger and didn’t notice that the device you’re getting doesn’t come with one, you probably can’t even turn it on to see if it works before having to buy more things.
Do they come with HDMI cables? Haven’t bought one in a while but back in the day my Nintendo consoles didn’t come with RF adapters. I remember Christmas 97 and not having one for my N64 and it drove me insane.
You can order one with the phone, I think. I don’t see it as a missing part, but rather one that is not automatically billed whether or not I need one.
We are long past the days of proprietary charging ports on phones, my guy. You can use any charger that came with any phone you’ve owned in the past like 10 years.
If you’re savvy enough to buy a Fairphone you likely have a gajillion USB-C cables and adapters laying around. I appreciate them not generating more waste.
When I got my FP3, I needed a new USBC cable as I was upgrading from a Galaxy S5. To be honest, my (now broken) Galaxy S5 still has its original charger in the box, since I reused my S4 charger for it.
Nowadays though it should be pretty common for people jumping to an FP or other USBC device to at least have an existing USBC cable kicking around I think
I was exited for this phone, but as I said in another thread: I am a bit disappoited about the CPU and the substantial price hike, but most of all aqout the size increase. Is there any market research at all indicating that customers want 6"+ displays?
I live in France, I wanted a phone with buttons that wasn’t just an ODM with a different logo on it. It is an interesting company. I’ve had some contact with them. They are legit going to pull out of China and move production back to France. They uphold their 5 year warranty promise as well.
And, they update their stuff. I’m on Android 13 and apparently older devices are still receiving updates too.
It would be pretty low-key. I wouldn’t want to pry this phone open and then glue it back together. Fairphones are supposed to be rather easy to repair.
Unfortunately I think a lot of people just have zero understanding of how the smartphone industry works. They think small manufacturers like Fairphone just have free reign to get whatever parts they want, offer updates for however long they want, etc.
The reality is that Fairphone have to find a way to work within the system that has been created by big tech. That means selecting parts based on their suitability for the long-term support goals they have. It’s one of the reasons why the specs are mid-range, because these parts stay in circulation for longer. For example, the 4 had a very generic 60 Hz IPS notch display because it was a widely used panel within the industry at the time. Now that higher refresh rate OLEDs have become more common on mid-range devices, Fairphone has been able to put one into the 5.
Is there any market research at all indicating that customers want 6"+ displays?
Unfortunately, yes. People who buy smaller phones are the people who buy a new phone less often, and small phones tend to sell worse than the big models (see S10e, iPhone 12(?) Mini) so don’t get renewed. Would be nice if they did.
It’s so frustrating that this is true. I use devices until they’re dead or at risk of serious compromise before getting another, but the only options are ones that I can’t even hold comfortably with one hand. I’m seriously considering the Jelly 2 at this point.
This is so true. I had a 12 mini and upgraded to the 13 mini in December. The battery is better, and I plan on keeping this until the next mini phone arrives. (If any)
For the FP4 they said one of the reasons they remove the aux input was that more people asked them to reduce the size of their phone than to keep the input.
With you on almost all points. Only the size didn’t actually increase. The phone’s dimensions are exactly the same. Only the weight went up a bit. The screen size was increased by using up more of the phone’s front side.
Also it’s 3x cheaper than my pentium that i bought in 1997 and it has 3000x less ram than this. I know that we don’t have that kind of exponential growth of hardware like we had 10 years ago, but still there is progress and it’s expected to have a better product for the same price each generation.
And not including charger which you of course can buy for extra €25. It would be fair if the charger was free with every phone. Make it optional if you want to claim it’s because of environment, but make it free if someone wants it with your phone.
In Europe, next year, every phone will need to use usb-c. Since you’re probably not using multiple phones at once, having more than one charger is a waste of BOTH ressources and money. Having the charger separate BUT with the price included in the phone’s (because let’s be realistic, there is no such thing as ‘free’ in the mobile market, just fees you don’t see) would just raise the phone’s price for everyone (including myself).
So I’ll have to disagree. Having the phone NOT bundled with a charger is fighting both an economical and environemental waste.
Yes, and I’m still a little surprised, even after the 4.
Are they really aiming for mainstream consumers? Because, I don’t know, but I don’t think they reach mainstream people at all.
Who they reach is those who are explicitly searching for this kind, techies, and they also have pretty different needs than the mainstream.
I mean, I think it’s ok that they are making phones like these.
But what’s weird is that they are not making phones for techies, who are their current audience, as I see.
I understand that it’s costly to have different variants, but at least there would be 2 or 3, which are actually distinct in their features, for the different audiences. No need for different SoC, but like there’s this one for the mainstream when that catches on. But then another for techies with jack, a smaller and normal screen (which means square, without camera hole, front camera is distinct if there at all) and less cameras on the back, maybe other diffs too like IR blaster or double sim and microSD. It could also have a different look, like shiny instead of glossy. I mean, it’s a different audienve, the preferred looks will be most probably be different too… and while I don’t dislike how the non-screen parts of the 5 look like, it’s not my cup of tea.
Bigger battery, better for content consumption and overall usage if you use it frequently. It’s not that weird, yet you treat it as if we were talking about aliens.
What’s weird is that it’s the only option. They discontinued the iPod since the phone did it all, but then also stopped making phones that are convenient sizes and any analog sound option.
I mean, almost complete disappearance of smaller phones is kinda puzzling? The difference in screen/battery size between a 6" and a 6.8" phone isn’t that big, yet one will fit pretty much any pocket, while the other one won’t. I still find it counterintuitive that most people would put that much priority on gaining screen real estate over mobility. Another interesting thing is that these smaller sized phones are still present in flagship releases, so they’re kind of a premium feature now.
I mean, almost complete disappearance of smaller phones is kinda puzzling?
Yeah, my bad there, I understood the previous comment as somewhat of a “Well I don’t understand how people can like big phones”.
My guess is, as with many other things, corporations pushed towards a certain thing (big phones in this case) enough to make it the default and then the bigger audience just stopped caring as a result.
It is interesting indeed, but I guess that’s just it, aside from the obvious fact that the bigger the space, the easier is to design stuff (my previous comment + better heat dissipation + more space for cameras), so probably a mixture of all of these things together and a couple more.
I don’t think that we are very few, I mean look at the upvotes…
It’s just the market that is going the other direction and we just take it instead of spending a little bit of time looking for other solutions.
Ok, so honesty time: The fact that this company is good for the environment, pays people well, etc… is NOT my main “thing” for wanting to own this phone.
It’s the fact that it is open. I can unlock and flash whatever I want, I can fix things by ordering replacement parts, a new screen is TOTALLY do-able both price wise and doing it myself.
Also it does not come with bloat, or vendor-lock in software like on ALL samsung shitty phones.
Out of all the phones, this one makes the most sense.
(And my current FP4 goes to my mother, perfect for her and many more years of support)
While unfortunate, not shipping these standard Google apps is not really an option for any Android manufacturer due to Google requirements. Including them is required if you want to use anything from the GSM, which includes things like the Play Store and everything it touches. You can technically ship a different Android distribution like Lineage or /e/, but that’s not really what most people will be expecting of an “Android” phone and will narrow the viable target demographic even more than the value proposition already does.
That’s correct, and people who want a fully degoogled OS usually know how to install it, people who expect to see the Play Store and other Google apps are less likely to know how to install that.
I understand why is the device so expensive (they wanted to make sure that everyone in the manufacture pipeline is properly paid, and that the materials are ethically sourced as much as humanly possible) but yeah, unless I can be absolutely sure that I won’t be changing devices in the next five years, I don’t think I’ll be able to afford this one.
I can understand that. The next best option is a second-hand phone, which will also help with your financial problem. However keep in mind that Fairphone are offering a minimum of support for 8 years (and aiming for 10) so it may work out as less overall depending on what you normally spend on a phone.
If I ever will be able to use Android phone for more then 2 years without the system getting all wonky I will consider spending more than $300 on a phone.
The big draw for me is that it’s modular and easily repairable. If you crack the screen, the battery life gets worse, or whatever else, you can replace it without too much issue. With the relative stop of phones getting better over the years (not saying they need to either, because they do everything that I want and way more, which is mostly just browsing the internet/Lemmy) I’m much more looking for something I can just use for many years instead of replacing every year or two.
That was my thought as well. I am unfortunately not able to afford an expensive phone if it won’t last significantly longer than a regular. But then again, my Xiaomi phone became unusable after about 2, maybe 3 years I think. It was just to unbearably slow. So ok, it’s about 150-200€ every 2 years - maybe 700€ for 5 wouldn’t be that bad then. I also saw there is something like a subscription thing where you pay per month?
There is an official subscription called Fairphone Easy being offered in the Netherlands exclusively. For other European counties there’s Commown, but it’s pretty expensive.
Here is a phone that ticks many, many boxes for sustainable and ethical production. It’s the phone that “free market will fix it” neoliberals insist should bring the downfall of companies that just release e-waste.
But of course the free market won’t fix anything.
Neoliberals built a managed democracy and giant corporations were allowed to use outsourcing, slaves and environment-unfriendly manufacturing.
The influx of cheap goods subsidised by the misery of foreign workers and future generations made it harder to notice our shrinking wages. We could still afford to fill our homes with tat, just like our parents did.
But your grandfathers tools lasted 30 years and yours will last 3 (and be worse for the duration). Very few companies even bother offering good products, let alone ethical ones.
Because nobody can actually afford “good” any more. Not the consumers who want to buy it, nor the handful of companies trying to sell it. You have to buy crap. Companies have to be unethical.
It’s dug us a very very deep hole that’s going to be a lot of hard work to climb out of and it’s looking like politicians and billionaires are only interested in selling us new shovels.
And millionaires could afford to pay their workers fair wages, but apparently you’d rather blame the general public instead.
It’s not at all unreasonable for people to assume the goods they buy are ethically produced.
If someone gets food poisoning from a restaurant, do you blame them for eating there? Do you try and shame them for not reading through 800 reviews to check it was safe to eat there? Do you insist they should have gone somewhere that was twice the price for half the portion?
Of course you don’t. But apparently this deeply flawed logic is only used when it comes to corporate greed and only because rich people don’t run restaurants.
All those are fair points. There’s not much freedom of choice because common people are struggling to live as it is, to splurge on something with a bad camera and battery life makes no sense (I believe those are some main points people upgrade their phones).
I’m running a 4 year old phone and probably will be going on 5th year because of economical strain.
In your analogy, it also doesn’t help that there’s only one ethical restaurant among hundreds of unethical ones. It’s expensive because nobody goes there and nobody goes there because it’s expensive.
I understand why people would hesitate to pay the price. Realistically, the Fairphone could have put in higher quality parts but that would have just blown their costs out further.
But exploitative wages – for both foreign and domestic workers – are at the core of many problems and I hate to see customers blamed.
The one in a hundred restaurant might be full of empty tables, but where would people eat if you doubled their wages? If there were two chocolate bars with identical taste, being offered at an identical price, except one of them used child slaves (and said so on the packaging), how many people “wouldn’t care” then?
Ethical choices shouldn’t be a luxury, unethical choices just shouldn’t be an option. If that means people can’t afford chocolate, they can take it up with the executives who have been pocketing their payrises.
Actually in the past they updated their software even past the support from qualcomm, rewriting by themselves what was needed to allow and old chipset to run newer android version
Yeah, well, they are just doing what custom ROM makers have been doing for a decade and a half.
My old Droid 4 was also EOL after Android 4.1. Custom ROM makers pushed this up to Android 7.1 by ignoring the parts (e.g. the Kernel) that they couldn’t update.
Sure, but the good is that this is the only company doing it. Also my Galaxy Nexus received a big kernel update from people at xda developers, but was by chance and good will of the people involved. Here they did it because they kept up the commercial promise behind the product they sell, something that basically no other company in this sector does (or they do, but with very short term promises).
The price is also higher because they use fair trade gold and whatnot. Given the mission to clean up the electronics industry it's plesently suprising it doesn't cost more
Sorry, I misunderstood what OP was trying to say. I didn’t realise they were talking about feature updates when they mentioned the 5 years. A security patch is still an update to the operating system and evidence of support, so my initial reaction was that they were wrong when they said “5 years of OS support”.
There’s a clear trajectory where this is heading. From 2027 the EU will enforce replaceable batteries and it looks like some other markets might follow. Software support duration is increasing a lot as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d get most of the Fairphone’s benefits on a regular Samsung in a few years.
No really. Samsung offers 4 years of os updates and 5 years of security updates. Samsung releases os updates really fast, so 5 years basically means 5 os versions.
Fairhone declares 5 os versions and 8 years of software support. Fairphone users here mentioned that fairphone is very slow with updates, so it could happen that 5 os versions really will take 8 years. If Fairphone will keep same cadence as Samsung, its 5 os versions can be coverted into 5 years.
But we have a bit of apples vs oranges here.
I personally find samsung’s policy good enough for majority of users. I expect that I will upgrade my phone every 3 - 5 years for different unpredictable today reasons anyway.
How fast do you need your phone to be for sending messages, streaming video, or browsing the web? Every phone made in the last decade can do these things.
The high price actually cancels the point of the repairability. I can get a similar phone for easily €400-500 less. If I budget that extra price for repairs, I can get the battery and screen replaced quite a few times.
I say that as an FP4 owner, who did the same calculation mistake there.
That may be true but how are they guaranteeing this on a component level? As far as I know, they use off the shelf stuff so they only have assembly wages. And that doesn’t justify the price imo.
They keep close track of materials used and wage paid for all their suppliers. They also pay wage bonuses to the workers at some of their suppliers (page 41).
This is a pretty great phone, I just wouldn’t spend this much on a phone. Even if it lasts let’s say 6 years, I can buy 3-4 mid range androids at this price & as the years go by they could be far better than this one near the end.
Also while Iphones are really hard to repair, they do last very long & there are people out there who can replace my iphone battery for like $40 and it too would last 5-6 years. (a recent enough refurbished SE for example)
I think a very small percentage of users would justify a purchase on repair-ability & sustainability alone (privacy is not it!), if it does not save them at least a little money in the long run and as things are it does not. If it was just a bit cheaper they could sell 10x as many units & normal people like me would be happy. I think this is reasonable to ask for, yes the phone is more expensive to make, but software support is not nearly as expensive as you think. Android is very easy to update and port these days, sure it’s like 4 engineer salaries to keep some degree of testing running alongside development, but if they sold more devices, then the relative cost would go way down.
Then again, if they can maintain profitability by targeting that niche market it’s good for them, I just wish someone took ‘right to repair’ & ‘right to own’ to the masses.
The problem is, paying fair wages, sourcing fair materials und make sure the phone ist repairable and lasts longer will always be more expensive than let’s say Xiaomi. If the phone lasts for example six years instead of the usual two they will only sell a third of the phones other manufactures will sell, even if they reach the same customer base.
Well, IPx5 is technically water resistant for water jets and up to 12.5 liters per minute. I think that sounds enough to be used it rain. I also saw some reviews of other devices that even IPx4 is fine in rain.
Doesn’t seem like there are any waterproof cases for the 4, so I doubt we will see any for the 5. Maybe more likely now that the phone is available in the US at least. Not a fan of the waterproof bag idea myself.
At least my tank bag has the option for a waterproof cell phone pocket though, I doubt the touch screen would work through the thick plastic. Never tried it because I don’t have the pouch required to keep the phone in place on the bag.
That’s not what I mean when I talk about a case, I mean something I can keep on all of the time. Something like an otterbox fre would be more appropriate. Or the old lifeproof cases like I had for my iPhone 4S. I live in a climate where it is pretty much always raining. My Pixel 3 can get drenched to the point you cant even use the touch screen anymore with no issues. Plus it can mount straight to my handlebars with a quadlock case instead of having to put on my tank bag and strap it to that.
Interesting how they went for an IoT SoC (Qualcomm QCM 6490), instead for an SoC that’s actually meant for usage in phones.
They probably did this to be able to get longer Android updates. As a side effect, that means it natively supports desktop Ubuntu and Windows 11 IoT Enterprise.
On the other hand, this is pretty much the only phone using this SoC. (There are three models by a totally unknown brand from India that use the same SoC.)
It’s going to be interesting to see whether that’s an advantage or a disadvantage.
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