It's not every day that a Youtube legend like Linus Tech Tips roasts your phone. We just had to get our co-founder and product manager Miquel to watch the wh...
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. 🤭
Not even that. It’s that his review isn’t an objective assessment of the product because he stands to financially benefit from Framework doing well. He’s worse than a hypocrite, he’s a shill.
He reviewed the framework. He invests in it. That makes him bought and paid for. He doesn’t become a new person each time he reviews a product, his history exists regardless
He doesn’t become a new person each time he reviews a product, his history exists regardless
You don’t have to “become a new person” to understand that this product does not compete with the one he invested in. If there was another laptop reviewed that was the same repairable/upgradeable ethos you might have a point.
You don’t seem to understand the concept that if a source is biased, then they can be unreliable in areas outside of their known bias. It’s not hard though, really.
I know what phone I’ll be looking for when the piece of shit in my pocket finally dies. That maneuver where he popped the cover with a fingernail and hotswapped the battery sold me.
Hey, totally unrelated question: Didn’t linus recently take a lot of flak for shady/unfair reviewing practices?
Yeah. He took flack. It was more about the completeness and accuracy of the reviews rather than being unfair… at least from what I recall.
They did a whole show of the matter, suspended uploads for a week or so, did some internal restructuring, hired a new CEO. Linus is now chief vision officer or some such nonsense.
Bluntly, I liked LTT videos more when they were a scrappy bunch of nerds working out of a house, putting out a couple videos a week…
You knew the information wasn’t perfect and that was fine. It was enough to give you an impression of what to expect. They did a recent comparison that confirmed something I already knew, by taking a smattering of the “same” CPU and testing them against eachother. They found that some were quantifiably better than others. To me this was proof that all reviews are skewed. You never know which way they’ll be skewed, and it really doesn’t matter. The fact remains that all tech reviews are going to be different than personal experience. They’re also going to differ from reviewer to reviewer since, even if they’re using the “same” hardware, that hardware might be slightly faster or slower than other reviewers by a small margin. Once upon a time the hardware was so similar and the differences were so small you could effectively ignore this variance. Modern hardware is so fast that even a small variance can make a pretty significant difference to benchmark performance.
So you have to take literally everything posted as a review with a grain of salt. It’s not accurate to what you would experience buying the exact same stuff off a shelf. As lithography gets smaller and smaller the relatively minor variance will have a larger and larger impact to the final products performance.
It’s the way of things. All things. Whether it’s a car or a computer, some just roll off the line different.
when they were a scrappy bunch of nerds working out of a house
Much of the recent criticism relates specifically to toxic/bro culture and a work culture that encouraged cutting corners, mistakes, and burnout. I’m not sure what was going on in the house behind the scenes was a model of a professional workplace.
They did a whole show of the matter, suspended uploads for a week or so, did some internal restructuring, hired a new CEO. Linus is now chief vision officer or some such nonsense.
He hired the CEO a few months prior to that so that they could deal with running the company while he focused on content creation.
I seem to recall something to the effect of “theft of a prototype:” like a custom water block or something like that he was supposed to review, and then gave a rushed, improper review, and then misplaced or in some way failed to return the prototype. IIRC.
They were sent some form of prototype cooler from a startup for a specific GPU, I believe it was LTT used a different GPU that the cooler wasn’t meant for
LTT complained the cooler was shit and didn’t work up to standard, which is to be expected when using it on something it wasn’t meant for.
And then sold the cooler at some kind of expo or show when the startup specifically asked for it.
This is mostly right, I remember this part clearly:
The water block was a custom block for both a CPU and GPU combined into one mass. It was supposed to sandwich a specific CPU series chip and a specific GPU. They used the right CPU series with it, but used the next GPU up in the series… I think it was built for a 3080 or something and they put a 4000 series on it.
They realized their mistake, even during the shoot, but Linus didn’t want to spend the time, effort and money into retesting it with the proper components, and just steamrolled ahead with the video.
After all that, their team neglected to return the prototype promptly, and took months to even properly communicate with the manufacturer. During those months they held some kind of gathering, either LTX or one of their LANs, and during the event someone suggested the prototype water block for the silent auction, and Linus agreed, so they auctioned it off and gave the money to charity.
There was some drama about it, and Linus did his usual thing of speaking before thinking and digging his grave even further, then eventually made a public apology. They committed to paying the full price for the prototype, well above $20k, if I recall, so that the company could have a new one created.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
This phone sucks, the display looks moderate at 1° viewing angle, isn’t as powerful as my desktop PC, and we think all resources should be mined in the most unethical ways so we can have 20 more hours of tiktok on a single charge.
Tech channels go further and further from the mark of “good”. I’m not playing AAA games on my phone, I don’t watch YouTube for 20 hours straight, I prefer larger bezels (even if slightly uneven) because I tend to touch the screen accidentally if they’re too small, and I prefer more responsible resources even if it means less battery life or performance.
I don’t need a PC in my pocket and Linus is just going too far into the techbro headspace for me to trust him for anything .
This is exactly what I felt while watching this. Does anyone really care about bezel width or weight or thickness when the differences have to be measured with callipers? And that stupid yellow tint when you’re not looking directly at your phone. I’d actually like worse viewing angles for my phone because it seems better privacy wise.
Battery life is kinda nice if you’re travelling or just not sure when you’ll next be able to charge, but in those cases the solution is always to just get a battery pack for emergencies. All of these criticisms seem so out of touch with how people actually use their phones.
And when those compromises mean you have your phone longer and buy a more ethical, sustainable product that pays workers… Easy choice.
The framework laptop is not handicapped in terms of performance nearly as much and has a much more reasonable price for what you get idk what you’re talking about
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
but half the battery life in video decode means charging your phone twice as often even if you don’t watch Youtube all day
Most of the power goes into the screen. The Pixel 8 has a ridiculously power efficient screen. I have one. It also costs $300 to replace. The Fairphone’s is $100.
other phones have sliders or slots that will let you live swap either card without even taking the back off
Slots and sliders inevitably weaken the phone frame making it easier to break. They also cost more to machine.
even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone.
Replacing a battery to rescue a Pixel will run you $100-200.
Many design choices make a lot of sense when looked through the repairability, durability and cost of repairability lenses.
All Samsungs - Note 4, Note 8 (had two), S20 FE (current). Always says the media was not safely removed (SD) and requires a restart, or outright refuses to recognize there is even a SIM card until I restart.
I think Framework and Fairphone are solving similar but different problems.
Fairphone is “keep this phone as configured working.”
Framework is more “I have this laptop but it can become this other newer laptop without me needing to buy all the parts again AND I can buy replacement parts.”
It’s really not even remotely the same calculus in my book.
For a customer who wants the best phone for their money, the Fairphone is objectively worse
Objectivity worse in performance, sure. Some people consider more things than just being a fastest bang for the buck. Unethical mining, forced labour, e-waste, data mining, and lots of other things. If you care at all, that is.
If you want to compare that to a product made by a billion dollar company, no one is stopping anyone. There is cost associated with doing things ethically. Small companies aren’t financed to eat those costs to gain the market. It speaks more about principles than anything else.
I don’t disagree with Linus’ suggestion at the end: even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone
is it? The person who sold the phone is most definitely going to buy a new phone and if they sold the phone released last year they will most likely do so every year. The reason there’s a second hand market with a year old phones is because people obsessively buy new phones. How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?
Duchebag is spouting capitalists “trickle down” economics. Rather than fix the cause, find the flex tape to hide it. Rich people buy new phones, less rich buy phones from the rich, and so on. No one needs to look past the marketing into ethics in how they were made and companies keep profiting in billions by exploitation of the poor. So so environmentally friendly.
That’s the stupidest argument against 2nd hand market I’ve ever heard.
It read as you’re too proud and too much nose on your imagined status to buy “used shit”
People are going to buy new phones regardless. You not buying used phones is not going to change that.
Buying used or refurbished keeps the devices they‘d throw away (or keep in a drawer for 10 years, then throw away), if they couldn’t sell them, from landfills.
Also, I know plenty of people who are well off that buy second hand phones and even more people who couldn’t even afford a Fairphone (which starts at almost 500€ for a 4 and 650€ for a 5) that buy a brand new 200-300€ phone every two years.
And those low end phones are the least environmentally friendly because they‘re definitely unethically made they most likely break more quickly than higher end options, they usually don’t get updates for very long, if at all, and there’s no noteworthy second hand market for them because people just throw them away (or into a drawer) if the phone stops working or when they feel like getting a new one, because who buys a 2 year old low end phone second hand?
Buying used instead is a great option. You get a higher end device for cheaper without anything new having to be made for you. It‘ll still last you years and you’ll have a better experience than with a cheap new phone.
Yes, it would be better if all phones were ethically produced, easy to repair and would last a long time. Especially if there are ethically phones in the sub 300€ market.
Won’t be easy to achieve, if at all, and wouldn’t stop blind consumerism but it would make for an even better second hand market. Because, you know what’s better than a fairphone? A second hand fairphone.
How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?
The difference is you can produce only the best phones. There aren’t throw away/cheap phones. The only difference is then how old the phone is.
It’s the difference between buying an old Lexus and a new base model Kia. They both might cost the same, and yeah the Lexus driver almost definitely got a new car, but the Lexus is probably going to outlive the Kia.
I think their point about framework laptops is actually a stupid one. The fairphone is not a modular device (although they always seem to be trying to claim that), which the framework laptops are. The fact you have to remove the battery to do anything kind of proves that it’s not modular, we’ve seen modular phones so we know what they look like and they don’t look like this.
So it just seems a weird comparison to have made. The fairphone is easier to repair than your average smartphone, but it’s still a lot less repairable than phones from the early 2000s. It’s not a simple repair unless you’re talking about a battery replacement. It doesn’t have swappable buttons, It doesn’t have swappable chassis. Basically it’s a cheap Android phone that costs more money than it is really worth with the justification of environmentalism. I would take a truly modular and easy to repair phone over this any day of the week if one existed, and since one doesn’t yeah I think i’ll go for a Pixel.
The original framework didn’t have motherboard upgrades, those came later. It was lauded for its openness and repairability
The original framework came with the claim that it WOULD have motherboard upgrades though (and then they delivered). It was only highly praised for what it was at the time because that’s what the product was (on top of being a product with pretty good specs) and you should never buy a product on the promise of something else.
Unfortunately, the modular phones died, because the few phones that did offer modules completely failed. It’s just not viable to create a fully modular device in this form factor.
I mean lots of people said that about laptops too and then Framework shook things up.
I’m not going to get into it because it’s really not relevant to the point, but it is absolutely not proven that modular phones are non-viable. The only two phones to ever tryid it basically never even were given a chance by their manufacturers before they were killed. They just realized that they would never make lots of money on it because you make more money by selling a new phone, then you ever will by just making modular components.
Yes of course. The point of this phone is to trade cost/perf/etc for improved repairability and business ethics. Long software support is a prerequisite for repairability being useful.
This phone isn’t for people looking primarily for best value.
Most common middle- and upper-tier phones, as well as any Pixel and Fairphone (thanks to being more open) will get a custom ROM with updates 8+ years after the release, and you can buy a used 5-year-old phone quite cheaply.
Typing this on my 10-year-old Sony Xperia Z with Android 13. It cost me $0 (found in e-waste) including a data plan (owner forgot SIM inside). The camera has low sensitivity and dust in it and the battery is worn, but everything else is decent. I will open it some day to fix the problems, a replacement battery cost me $10. There is even 4G and NFC, and the 1080x1920 screen is nearly “retina-density” at such small size. I decided to not use the SIM as it could be criminal, and I have my prepaid one in s dumb phone, but I use it for entertainment - the phone fits in my hand and the design is quite timeless. The CPU is a little weak, it cannot decode 1080p30 or 720p60 video in real time, and gets hot quickly on demanding websites.
Most people aren’t comfortable with flashing unofficial ROMs onto garbage bin phones. I’m unironically glad that you have rescued a perfectly good phone but that’s just not a scalable solution IMO. Buying a used phone that you know has a lineage ROM is a more viable path but you’re still back to square one if the battery or port or screen give up on you.
but other phones have sliders or slots that will let you live swap either card without even taking the back off
Modern phones on purpose dropped SD card support but yeah, slimmer phones still have those sliders. To be fair you need a tool for that, unlike their option.
especially for a company that small
We really have to keep that in mind. When they planned the FP5 they likely had no idea Google would do the same. They take what Qualcomm offers, unlike tech Giants Google and Samsung that can basically dictate update lifespans.
relatively spotty history when it comes to patching
They are the ODM unlike GrapheneOS and comparing them to Google is really unfair. Google makes Android, so they know the code best. They patch very quickly, the updates work for their phones out of the box, less work for GrapheneOS.
Fairphone on the other hand has to maintain a unique device which is way more work, they get early access because of that though.
And their noncompliance with all the GrapheneOS security demands is the reason I dont use it.
seems to take issue with seem to be the LineageOS/Android defaults
Fairphone is Google certified and thus needs to ship unmodified Android including all the Google crap. There is a company called Murena that creates some hacky LineageOS-based OS and sells Fairphones with it preinstalled.
This /e/OS looks nice and has very nice integrations, but is fundamentally flawed and less secure than GrapheneOS for example (microG, depending on unmaintained apps, even slower updates,…)
even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone.
Regular phones dont get 8 years of updates so they will be outdated and should not be used. This argument makes no sense.
I got a used Pixel 6a with 2 years left, so used but way less long updates, so I hope on getting a used Pixel 8 which means roughly 1,7 phones instead of one, should be equally sustainable.
You’re making a lot of good points here, but I feel like this last bit goes against how most people would evaluate purchasing such a phone after the fact.
For a customer who wants the best phone for their money, the Fairphone is objectively worse. It’s marketed at the niche segment of people who are willing to spend extra for a mid-tier phone to get more environmentally and socially conscious hardware. (…)
Most people will be incredibly unhappy with a Fairphone 5 if the alternative would’ve been a Pixel 8.
People don’t walk around comparing what they have to what they don’t have based on specifications alone (that’s just successful marketing). Their actual experiences are what matters. The FP is a good enough phone that most people will experience no issues having one. Most people simply don’t need the best of the best, and whether it’s a FP or a Pixel doing what they need their phones to do is of very little consequence to them.
Don’t get me wrong. If you’re price oriented, and you want to get the most bang for the buck, there’s better options. But I would argue that this doesn’t matter all that much for most people’s satisfaction, which is probably much more by affected long support and repairability (even if it’s just that you can swap the battery).
Most average phone users don’t give a shit about bezels, weight and stuff, they just buy whatever is put in front of them. If Apple came out with a new iPhone that was heavier, thicker bezelled, slower, people would still buy it because the truth is, they don’t compare anything or look into it besides “this is the latest”.
Speed is such a none issue, all mid-range phones are plenty fast enough for the very large majority of people. Buying flagship phones with the fastest SoCs is pointless to them, they will never get value from it - they just buy them because they are the latest “best shit you need” and they cost a lot more than a Fairphone.
Now the value of replacing a battery on the fly (whether broken or just for more juice) would actually be a lot higher, people used to do that in the past. The ability to repair the phone yourself wouldn’t really matter to most, as they usually just take their phones to a repair shop anyway, but the cost of the repair would be lower.
The Fairphone has a great mission, one that all phones should be going after. They are expensive for what you are getting in terms of specifications, yes, but the company isn’t large enough to make them any cheaper without sacrificing the point of them in the first place. It’s fine to not want one, but comparing them to flagship phones, the same way you would compare an S24 to an iPhone 15, is actually unfair. Not to say you can’t critise it, I think the software is the weak point and some issues were clearly highlighted, not unfixable though.
If price wasn’t a factor and you just handed them to average people to use, then they would most likely be satisfied and would find value in it.
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.
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ITT people mad at Linus for pointing out all the reasons the phone wouldn’t appeal to a mass market audience
Lemmy as usual disregarding pragmatism to be as dogmatic as possible
“You mean people DONT like a thick, heavy phone with a garbage camera and poor battery life? Well obviously, everyone else is wrong”
Fuck Lingus. Who cares what he thinks about anything?
removed by mod
12 yo’s, probably.
deleted by creator
he’s an investor in framework btw
And?
I think the idea is that Linus is a hypocrite.
Not even that. It’s that his review isn’t an objective assessment of the product because he stands to financially benefit from Framework doing well. He’s worse than a hypocrite, he’s a shill.
I don’t understand what one has to do with the other?
One is a laptop, one is a phone, they don’t compete with each other.
He reviewed the framework. He invests in it. That makes him bought and paid for. He doesn’t become a new person each time he reviews a product, his history exists regardless
LOL no it doesn’t?
You don’t have to “become a new person” to understand that this product does not compete with the one he invested in. If there was another laptop reviewed that was the same repairable/upgradeable ethos you might have a point.
You don’t seem to understand the concept that if a source is biased, then they can be unreliable in areas outside of their known bias. It’s not hard though, really.
I know what phone I’ll be looking for when the piece of shit in my pocket finally dies. That maneuver where he popped the cover with a fingernail and hotswapped the battery sold me.
Hey, totally unrelated question: Didn’t linus recently take a lot of flak for shady/unfair reviewing practices?
Yes. Yes, indeed.
He’s trash and the people that defend him are useful idiots.
No, he took a lot of flack for rushing through them with lots of errors.
Yeah. He took flack. It was more about the completeness and accuracy of the reviews rather than being unfair… at least from what I recall.
They did a whole show of the matter, suspended uploads for a week or so, did some internal restructuring, hired a new CEO. Linus is now chief vision officer or some such nonsense.
Bluntly, I liked LTT videos more when they were a scrappy bunch of nerds working out of a house, putting out a couple videos a week…
You knew the information wasn’t perfect and that was fine. It was enough to give you an impression of what to expect. They did a recent comparison that confirmed something I already knew, by taking a smattering of the “same” CPU and testing them against eachother. They found that some were quantifiably better than others. To me this was proof that all reviews are skewed. You never know which way they’ll be skewed, and it really doesn’t matter. The fact remains that all tech reviews are going to be different than personal experience. They’re also going to differ from reviewer to reviewer since, even if they’re using the “same” hardware, that hardware might be slightly faster or slower than other reviewers by a small margin. Once upon a time the hardware was so similar and the differences were so small you could effectively ignore this variance. Modern hardware is so fast that even a small variance can make a pretty significant difference to benchmark performance.
So you have to take literally everything posted as a review with a grain of salt. It’s not accurate to what you would experience buying the exact same stuff off a shelf. As lithography gets smaller and smaller the relatively minor variance will have a larger and larger impact to the final products performance.
It’s the way of things. All things. Whether it’s a car or a computer, some just roll off the line different.
Much of the recent criticism relates specifically to toxic/bro culture and a work culture that encouraged cutting corners, mistakes, and burnout. I’m not sure what was going on in the house behind the scenes was a model of a professional workplace.
He hired the CEO a few months prior to that so that they could deal with running the company while he focused on content creation.
I seem to recall something to the effect of “theft of a prototype:” like a custom water block or something like that he was supposed to review, and then gave a rushed, improper review, and then misplaced or in some way failed to return the prototype. IIRC.
They were sent some form of prototype cooler from a startup for a specific GPU, I believe it was LTT used a different GPU that the cooler wasn’t meant for
LTT complained the cooler was shit and didn’t work up to standard, which is to be expected when using it on something it wasn’t meant for.
And then sold the cooler at some kind of expo or show when the startup specifically asked for it.
This is mostly right, I remember this part clearly:
The water block was a custom block for both a CPU and GPU combined into one mass. It was supposed to sandwich a specific CPU series chip and a specific GPU. They used the right CPU series with it, but used the next GPU up in the series… I think it was built for a 3080 or something and they put a 4000 series on it.
They realized their mistake, even during the shoot, but Linus didn’t want to spend the time, effort and money into retesting it with the proper components, and just steamrolled ahead with the video.
After all that, their team neglected to return the prototype promptly, and took months to even properly communicate with the manufacturer. During those months they held some kind of gathering, either LTX or one of their LANs, and during the event someone suggested the prototype water block for the silent auction, and Linus agreed, so they auctioned it off and gave the money to charity.
There was some drama about it, and Linus did his usual thing of speaking before thinking and digging his grave even further, then eventually made a public apology. They committed to paying the full price for the prototype, well above $20k, if I recall, so that the company could have a new one created.
Phones don’t use much energy. I’m not getting the “efficiency” thing for wireless charging. Even new standards are basically the same.
This CEO sounds like he has no idea what he’s talking about
The long and short of the lower efficiency of wireless charging is a concept called Free Space Loss
In order for energy to pass through an open space it has to use some energy. Unlike a cable where the pins are contacting and the loss is far lower.
Yes but it’s not massive amounts.
Phones use practically no energy compared to PC’s laptops, washing machines etc.
And if people want that level of charging efficiency… The USB C port still exists…
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.
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.
Pogo pins on the back of the phone, pads on the cover with the coil, and bam, you have a removable wireless charger and a replaceable battery.
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.
Oh lol, I’m dumb. Thanks for explaining.
No worries!
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)
I guess airflow especially between the phone and the pad could mitigate the heat. I see some charging pads integrate this now.
Maybe so, but you’ve lost energy to making that heat, now you’re spending more energy to remove it. Ergo, efficiency.
Something can be technically correct. Efficiency.
And not matter at all because phones don’t need any real amount of power.
Not when it’s explicitly defined.
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.
But continue to cry from your basement.
No hate. Just annoyed. But you’d probably be annoyed too if I insisted on my uninformed opinions about selling herbalife.
ah, so thats why my solar panels are crying
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.
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
That’s not efficiency, that’s speed. I charging efficiency is your charger drawing 35W and your phone only getting charged with 30W.
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
Otherwise known as, “efficiency”
Ah, yes, “alternative facts.”
Maybe say convenient instead.
I think they meant to say it’s time efficient for them, not that the phone is energy efficient.
Honestly, in the best of circumstances, it would be closer to only 20 W getting to the phone by today’s standards.
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.
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.
What?
… that none of which ended up in the court let alone confirmed. That’s an allegation, not something proven.
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.
:D
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.
Linus is full of shit in a lot of videos
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The only LTT review I’m interested in is a review of the culture in the workplace.
I hope Madison is doing OK today.
Hurts so bad to get your 1 in 1000000 dream job to get sexually harassed out of it.
5 years later
This phone sucks, the display looks moderate at 1° viewing angle, isn’t as powerful as my desktop PC, and we think all resources should be mined in the most unethical ways so we can have 20 more hours of tiktok on a single charge.
Tech channels go further and further from the mark of “good”. I’m not playing AAA games on my phone, I don’t watch YouTube for 20 hours straight, I prefer larger bezels (even if slightly uneven) because I tend to touch the screen accidentally if they’re too small, and I prefer more responsible resources even if it means less battery life or performance.
I don’t need a PC in my pocket and Linus is just going too far into the techbro headspace for me to trust him for anything .
This video is how so many tech reviewers are now, credit to MeatCanyon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GsoZOpw8aE
This is exactly what I felt while watching this. Does anyone really care about bezel width or weight or thickness when the differences have to be measured with callipers? And that stupid yellow tint when you’re not looking directly at your phone. I’d actually like worse viewing angles for my phone because it seems better privacy wise.
Battery life is kinda nice if you’re travelling or just not sure when you’ll next be able to charge, but in those cases the solution is always to just get a battery pack for emergencies. All of these criticisms seem so out of touch with how people actually use their phones.
And when those compromises mean you have your phone longer and buy a more ethical, sustainable product that pays workers… Easy choice.
The framework laptop is not handicapped in terms of performance nearly as much and has a much more reasonable price for what you get idk what you’re talking about
…who?
Just shows the lack of knowledge LTT have really. They just dont understand Fairphone at all, or even how people use phones apparently…
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I haven’t used it personally but apparently it’s general usage is pretty slow.
All I can say is that has not been my experience and I am curious what exactly people think is slow about it.
I could be entirely wrong, but it seems like some people are conflating benchmarks against current flagships as the day to day experience.
To me, the profile thickness is a benefit. Tiny thin phones scream “compressed electronics, overheats fast, difficult repairs”
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.
I generally wear loose fitting pants and belt, but I can definitely see how it would conflict with tightpants fashions.
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Most of the power goes into the screen. The Pixel 8 has a ridiculously power efficient screen. I have one. It also costs $300 to replace. The Fairphone’s is $100.
Slots and sliders inevitably weaken the phone frame making it easier to break. They also cost more to machine.
Replacing a battery to rescue a Pixel will run you $100-200.
Many design choices make a lot of sense when looked through the repairability, durability and cost of repairability lenses.
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Chiming in on the SIM/SD: as far as I can remember, my phone didn’t let me hotswap neither SIM or SD, always required a restart to handle it properly.
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All Samsungs - Note 4, Note 8 (had two), S20 FE (current). Always says the media was not safely removed (SD) and requires a restart, or outright refuses to recognize there is even a SIM card until I restart.
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I think Framework and Fairphone are solving similar but different problems.
Fairphone is “keep this phone as configured working.”
Framework is more “I have this laptop but it can become this other newer laptop without me needing to buy all the parts again AND I can buy replacement parts.”
It’s really not even remotely the same calculus in my book.
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Yes, but replacing the track pad is ALSO in the context of “you can have the latest and greatest laptop CPU.”
You just can’t do that with the Fairphone.
A Framework could hypothetically last forever. A Fairphone still has an 8 year lifespan.
It isn’t just the promise of the ability to replace these components, but the ability to upgrade them.
Objectivity worse in performance, sure. Some people consider more things than just being a fastest bang for the buck. Unethical mining, forced labour, e-waste, data mining, and lots of other things. If you care at all, that is.
If you want to compare that to a product made by a billion dollar company, no one is stopping anyone. There is cost associated with doing things ethically. Small companies aren’t financed to eat those costs to gain the market. It speaks more about principles than anything else.
is it? The person who sold the phone is most definitely going to buy a new phone and if they sold the phone released last year they will most likely do so every year. The reason there’s a second hand market with a year old phones is because people obsessively buy new phones. How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?
Duchebag is spouting capitalists “trickle down” economics. Rather than fix the cause, find the flex tape to hide it. Rich people buy new phones, less rich buy phones from the rich, and so on. No one needs to look past the marketing into ethics in how they were made and companies keep profiting in billions by exploitation of the poor. So so environmentally friendly.
That’s the stupidest argument against 2nd hand market I’ve ever heard. It read as you’re too proud and too much nose on your imagined status to buy “used shit”
People are going to buy new phones regardless. You not buying used phones is not going to change that.
Buying used or refurbished keeps the devices they‘d throw away (or keep in a drawer for 10 years, then throw away), if they couldn’t sell them, from landfills.
Also, I know plenty of people who are well off that buy second hand phones and even more people who couldn’t even afford a Fairphone (which starts at almost 500€ for a 4 and 650€ for a 5) that buy a brand new 200-300€ phone every two years.
And those low end phones are the least environmentally friendly because they‘re definitely unethically made they most likely break more quickly than higher end options, they usually don’t get updates for very long, if at all, and there’s no noteworthy second hand market for them because people just throw them away (or into a drawer) if the phone stops working or when they feel like getting a new one, because who buys a 2 year old low end phone second hand?
Buying used instead is a great option. You get a higher end device for cheaper without anything new having to be made for you. It‘ll still last you years and you’ll have a better experience than with a cheap new phone.
Yes, it would be better if all phones were ethically produced, easy to repair and would last a long time. Especially if there are ethically phones in the sub 300€ market. Won’t be easy to achieve, if at all, and wouldn’t stop blind consumerism but it would make for an even better second hand market. Because, you know what’s better than a fairphone? A second hand fairphone.
The difference is you can produce only the best phones. There aren’t throw away/cheap phones. The only difference is then how old the phone is.
It’s the difference between buying an old Lexus and a new base model Kia. They both might cost the same, and yeah the Lexus driver almost definitely got a new car, but the Lexus is probably going to outlive the Kia.
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also the fairphone doesnt sell replacement parts for any longer than most regular manufacturers do.
at least the framework offers pretty good modularity.
I think their point about framework laptops is actually a stupid one. The fairphone is not a modular device (although they always seem to be trying to claim that), which the framework laptops are. The fact you have to remove the battery to do anything kind of proves that it’s not modular, we’ve seen modular phones so we know what they look like and they don’t look like this.
So it just seems a weird comparison to have made. The fairphone is easier to repair than your average smartphone, but it’s still a lot less repairable than phones from the early 2000s. It’s not a simple repair unless you’re talking about a battery replacement. It doesn’t have swappable buttons, It doesn’t have swappable chassis. Basically it’s a cheap Android phone that costs more money than it is really worth with the justification of environmentalism. I would take a truly modular and easy to repair phone over this any day of the week if one existed, and since one doesn’t yeah I think i’ll go for a Pixel.
Why?
Especially when you seem to suggest that it’s an easy thing to remove…
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The original framework came with the claim that it WOULD have motherboard upgrades though (and then they delivered). It was only highly praised for what it was at the time because that’s what the product was (on top of being a product with pretty good specs) and you should never buy a product on the promise of something else.
I mean lots of people said that about laptops too and then Framework shook things up.
I’m not going to get into it because it’s really not relevant to the point, but it is absolutely not proven that modular phones are non-viable. The only two phones to ever tryid it basically never even were given a chance by their manufacturers before they were killed. They just realized that they would never make lots of money on it because you make more money by selling a new phone, then you ever will by just making modular components.
What, why?
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7 years is only for Pixel and S24 phones. The vast majority of existing Samsung phones will only get 5 years of security updates.
https://www.howtogeek.com/797200/how-long-will-my-android-phone-be-supported-with-updates/
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Yes of course. The point of this phone is to trade cost/perf/etc for improved repairability and business ethics. Long software support is a prerequisite for repairability being useful.
This phone isn’t for people looking primarily for best value.
Most common middle- and upper-tier phones, as well as any Pixel and Fairphone (thanks to being more open) will get a custom ROM with updates 8+ years after the release, and you can buy a used 5-year-old phone quite cheaply.
Typing this on my 10-year-old Sony Xperia Z with Android 13. It cost me $0 (found in e-waste) including a data plan (owner forgot SIM inside). The camera has low sensitivity and dust in it and the battery is worn, but everything else is decent. I will open it some day to fix the problems, a replacement battery cost me $10. There is even 4G and NFC, and the 1080x1920 screen is nearly “retina-density” at such small size. I decided to not use the SIM as it could be criminal, and I have my prepaid one in s dumb phone, but I use it for entertainment - the phone fits in my hand and the design is quite timeless. The CPU is a little weak, it cannot decode 1080p30 or 720p60 video in real time, and gets hot quickly on demanding websites.
Most people aren’t comfortable with flashing unofficial ROMs onto garbage bin phones. I’m unironically glad that you have rescued a perfectly good phone but that’s just not a scalable solution IMO. Buying a used phone that you know has a lineage ROM is a more viable path but you’re still back to square one if the battery or port or screen give up on you.
Thanks for the nuanced response. Obviously both FP and LTT are defending their own interests and neither are inherently better.
Modern phones on purpose dropped SD card support but yeah, slimmer phones still have those sliders. To be fair you need a tool for that, unlike their option.
We really have to keep that in mind. When they planned the FP5 they likely had no idea Google would do the same. They take what Qualcomm offers, unlike tech Giants Google and Samsung that can basically dictate update lifespans.
They are the ODM unlike GrapheneOS and comparing them to Google is really unfair. Google makes Android, so they know the code best. They patch very quickly, the updates work for their phones out of the box, less work for GrapheneOS.
Fairphone on the other hand has to maintain a unique device which is way more work, they get early access because of that though.
And their noncompliance with all the GrapheneOS security demands is the reason I dont use it.
Fairphone is Google certified and thus needs to ship unmodified Android including all the Google crap. There is a company called Murena that creates some hacky LineageOS-based OS and sells Fairphones with it preinstalled.
This /e/OS looks nice and has very nice integrations, but is fundamentally flawed and less secure than GrapheneOS for example (microG, depending on unmaintained apps, even slower updates,…)
Regular phones dont get 8 years of updates so they will be outdated and should not be used. This argument makes no sense.
I got a used Pixel 6a with 2 years left, so used but way less long updates, so I hope on getting a used Pixel 8 which means roughly 1,7 phones instead of one, should be equally sustainable.
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You’re making a lot of good points here, but I feel like this last bit goes against how most people would evaluate purchasing such a phone after the fact.
People don’t walk around comparing what they have to what they don’t have based on specifications alone (that’s just successful marketing). Their actual experiences are what matters. The FP is a good enough phone that most people will experience no issues having one. Most people simply don’t need the best of the best, and whether it’s a FP or a Pixel doing what they need their phones to do is of very little consequence to them.
Don’t get me wrong. If you’re price oriented, and you want to get the most bang for the buck, there’s better options. But I would argue that this doesn’t matter all that much for most people’s satisfaction, which is probably much more by affected long support and repairability (even if it’s just that you can swap the battery).
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Most average phone users don’t give a shit about bezels, weight and stuff, they just buy whatever is put in front of them. If Apple came out with a new iPhone that was heavier, thicker bezelled, slower, people would still buy it because the truth is, they don’t compare anything or look into it besides “this is the latest”.
Speed is such a none issue, all mid-range phones are plenty fast enough for the very large majority of people. Buying flagship phones with the fastest SoCs is pointless to them, they will never get value from it - they just buy them because they are the latest “best shit you need” and they cost a lot more than a Fairphone.
Now the value of replacing a battery on the fly (whether broken or just for more juice) would actually be a lot higher, people used to do that in the past. The ability to repair the phone yourself wouldn’t really matter to most, as they usually just take their phones to a repair shop anyway, but the cost of the repair would be lower.
The Fairphone has a great mission, one that all phones should be going after. They are expensive for what you are getting in terms of specifications, yes, but the company isn’t large enough to make them any cheaper without sacrificing the point of them in the first place. It’s fine to not want one, but comparing them to flagship phones, the same way you would compare an S24 to an iPhone 15, is actually unfair. Not to say you can’t critise it, I think the software is the weak point and some issues were clearly highlighted, not unfixable though.
If price wasn’t a factor and you just handed them to average people to use, then they would most likely be satisfied and would find value in it.
I don’t care what fairphone or Linus says. They got rid of the headphone jack. A “modular” phone my ass.
The second biggest dealbreaker for me after the small battery.
Ok, they have a USB-C to jack dongle, but guess what USB-C port’s wearout is the reason I was looking for a new phone in the first place.
Really wish c wasn’t the standard. Breaks so easily
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.
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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.