- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
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- technews@radiation.party
With 5 years of OS support and 8 years of security update.
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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.
Mhm desktop ubuntu phone sound fun, or even desktop windows
That’s what the SoC supports. Let’s see what the phone ends up supporting. But I agree, it does sound fun.
I pre-ordered already.
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)
What OSes support the fairphone? I’d consider one if I could run something other than android on it
Nice, I still had this in my browsing-history: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/operating-systems-for-fairphones/11425
That’s quite a list. Nice.
What are you currently running? Just curious what non-android and non-ios is working well for you.
I see Google Drive, Gmail, Google Messages on screenshots so it does come with bloatware.
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.
Easily removed, though. The great thing about Fairphones is, like Pixels, they have loads of deGoogled OS support.
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?
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.
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.
The CPU choice is great, why are you disappointed with it? It’s the reason they can offer a minimum of 8 years of support on this model.
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.
The phone is still a massive brick.
substantial price hike
it’s €50 more expensive than the FP4 with the same RAM/storage configuration on its release (€650 fot 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage).
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.
I get that they wanted to increase the battery and put out a new cpu, but I’m disappointed they’re not offering any camera or screen upgrades for my Fairphone 4.
Were you actually expecting that? No manufacturer has ever created an upgradeable smartphone, let alone one as small as Fairphone. The Phonebloks concept died ages ago.
The situation with the camera on the Fairphone 3 was unique and mainly in response to problems with the original module. It shouldn’t be taken as evidence that they have the ability to do this with every edition of the Fairphone, or extend upgrades to other areas like the display.
Fair enough. Framework is definitely able to do those sorts of upgrades, but laptops are a lot more standardized than phones.
That’s the focus of Framework’s business. Fairphone is a lot more focused on improving working conditions, pay rates, reducing environmental footprint, etc. The modular design is really more of a side-effect of that last bit rather than the reason the company exists.
Just wish it had a US release…
Fairphone 4 is sold and supported in NA, hope they will carry fairphone 5 as well: https://mander.xyz/comment/2699680
Nice 👍
Wish they sold it in the U.S.
I’m pretty sure I got this link from somewhere on their website, but here is a company that ships to the US. https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairphone-5-fr/
At that link:
Are you looking for the new Fairphone 5? It is not yet available in your market.
Yeah the place i linked does a cool thing where they degoogle it. Seems interesting.
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.
Isn’t it wonderful playing a rigged game?
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.
Millions of people could afford this phone, they just don’t care about ethics.
Instead the Samsung S’s, Folds and iPhones sell by the tens of millions because they are trendy and give more “bang for the buck”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Their website doesn’t seem to specify which GSM bands it has (simply “More Bands and Band-Combinations for better reception”). I want to know how much of a given provider’s spectrum I’d be missing out on trying to sneak one of these to the states.
Fairphone 4:
4G supported bands: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B18/B19/B20/B28/B32/B38/B40/B41/B71
5G supported bands: n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n41/n71/n77/n78Fairphone 5:
4G supported bands: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B20/B28/B32/B38/B40/B41/B42/B48/B66/B71
5G supported bands: n1/n2/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n41/n48/n66/n71/n77/n78Relevant comment about Fairphone 4 in the USA
TL;DR: By adding band 66, Fairphone 5 has better compatibility with cellular network providers in the USA. Band 48 also gives better compatibility with Verizon. T-Mobile is still the best for Fairphone in the USA.
Thanks! Yeah, it looks like it covers T-mobile minus the GHZ/ mmWave bands, which is good for me. A solid consider, especially if they (eventually) drag it over to the states like the Fairphone 5.
still waiting for the next unfairphone release
September 12th for the new iPhone.
a day after the
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)
Even if it lasts let’s say 6 years, I can buy 3-4 mid range androids at this price
Something tells me you missed the point of the Fairphone…
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.
This is going to be my next phone. I cant wait to get out of the mainstream phone market. I barely use my phone for anything but browsing the web so it shouldbe fine.
Me too! I’m using my phone for more than browsing, but it will my next phone!
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5 years of OS updates is more than you get from any other Android manufacturer. For everyone else in the space, you are lucky to get 3.
Samsung offers 4 years of os updates for many phones and watches. And news reported that pixel 8 will have better.
If I recall correctly, Xiaomi recently declared the same for some of their phones.
4 years including security updates though right? If that’s the flcase then fairphone’s doing 8 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.
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.
Yes, very realistic scenario. TBF, I cannot remember if I ever upgraded a phone due to the battery issuses.
So, for me personally, replaceable battery is not a significant benefit.
Happens if you run a phone for long enough ^^
Well…aside from the fair supply chain, liveable wages, humane working conditions, environment footprint…
They are offering a minimum of 8 years of software support. 5 years is the warranty. I’m not sure why OP wrote that, it’s not what was announced.
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It’s not, according to Fairphone “We plan at least 5 Android OS version updates after Android 13”. So, 5 years of os and other 3 years of security.
With the pace of OS updates that Fairphone had so far, it will be 8 years of OS updates. But only because the OS updates will be 3 years late.
The FP4 just got Android 12 earlier this year, with no Android 13 in sight.
A good point.
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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”.
ah… I will flash it with a custom rom anyway from day 1 :D
🙂
Unfortunately it’s impossible to offer support for longer than the chipset
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).
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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
Wish it was degoogled. I’d love one, but… android 🤢 privacy hell
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.
If you were to pick the most mature one, which would you choose?
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.
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.
Is that ad and tracker blocker just browser level or are there… ads in the OS?!
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.
Oh I gotcha.
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The link complains about me not being in France haha. 404 when switching countries.
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Pixel 6a you can find for 250-300 and flash graphene.
Well yes. But I want a NEW phone
Pixel 7a is like 500
You get a slightly newer chip. G2 vs G1. New new costs
It doesn’t have a 3,5mm jack or a microsd slot
Good luck with that headphone jack on the Fairphone
oh don’t worry, i ain’t holding out hope
I wonder if IP55 is enough to mount to motorcycle handlebars in heavy rain.
Doubt it but for that use an otterbox case or similar would be your best friend, hell nowadays you can mount phones within a waterproof bag.
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.
Oh wow, that sounds like an infinitely better experience.
Does OtterBox make cases for Fairphone?
Not the literal brand, no, but there are dozens of knockoff waterproof cases for exactly fairphone 4 on amazon.
Edit: No.
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.
Fairphone Fold when?
Fairphold
Looks pretty nice tbh! Probably going to stick to my current phone a few more years until it stops being updated but if I manage to break it this might just be the replacement.
