this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Looks like a new model for the Fairphone has been announced! What do you think about it?

Personally I love the fairphone project but after having tried GrapheneOS on my Pixel 6a it would be hard to move to a different OS

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[–] Guildo@feddit.de 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

JerryRigEverything already tested it and I'm impressed.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

Just saw it. Wow. This device reminds me of my Framework.

[–] drbi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the heads up. I too am impressed.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As the owner of an FP4, I will not get any further FP products.

The hardware is mostly fine, but it's also meh. The speaker sucks, the microphone sucks, the camera sucks. Just talking to people on the phone is a pain, since people just can't understand me.

But worse is the software. Updates are slow (still no Android 13 on the FP4) and terribly buggy. Each update brings new bugs with it, old bugs are resolved only very slowly. One example of this is that some devices experience ghost touches. So in the newest update, they just lowered the sensitivity, so that the devices that didn't have ghost touches before now often don't register touch at all. On the forums there is a long list of known bugs. The weird thing here is that every user seems to get a random grab bag of bugs.

And lastly: There is the price. It's so incredibly expensive, that it basically invalidates any benefit you get from the repairability. If I buy a comparable phone for ~€400 less, I can use that money to get the battery and screen professionally replaced a few times.

So all in all, I am really not happy with the FP4, and this will most likely be my last Fairphone, unless Fairphone will finally migrate their software development to an in-house team where the devs actually use the phone themselves. Software QA is so terrible, that I can't imagine anyone at Fairphone actually using the phone themselves.

[–] uzay@infosec.pub 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You could look into CalyxOS. I don't know if you'd consider installing an alternative System on your phone, but the FP4 is one of the few ones that let you unlock and relock the bootloader. Mine has been on Android 13 for a while now with very few software issues.

[–] TropicalMustafa@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Newbiwe here, do you need to flash rom every time CalyxOS receives an update?

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[–] fubbernuckin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

In terms of the price, to be fair, it's supposed to last like 8 years. You're basically buying your next phone too when you buy one of these. It's also more expensive to do what they're doing.

[–] SandboxScience@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

There definitely are bugs. But to be fair, for every phone I ever owned the forum looked the same: so many people complaining about so many different problems/bugs/hardware issues that you question why you even bought the phone in the first place. Most often the average user is perfectly fine but would never open up a forum post to announce this.

[–] notepass@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The Fairphone is always just such an odd decision for me. On one hand, I would love to have a phone with long support and swappable parts. On the other hand, I hear so many complaints about the software and wait for major version updates that I am not enterily sure if it really is a good buy.

The price is pretty okay, a bit less than 100€ per expected usable year. This is in line with other manufacturers. Also, the biggest bull of the expenses probably comes from the way the manufacturing and materials are checked.

Is there any sense in installing a custom ROM on the phone to get rid of the software issues?

Or maybe there will be less issues this time? From what I heard some of the problems where caused by Qualcomms support windows being closed and the company actually updating everything themself. Which might be solved by using a SoC with somewhat decent support now.

[–] menturi@lemdro.id 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the biggest bull of the expenses probably comes from the way the manufacturing and materials are checked.

Could you expand on this? I am unfamiliar with Fairphone's methods for determining and checking sources for materials and manufacturing. Is it flawed?

[–] notepass@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

As far as I know, Fairphone uses "conflict free" materials. This is more expensive and harder to get than just searching for the cheapest seller of any material (e.g. lithium) and just going with them. In theory this should help against child or prison labor.

Additionally, they aim to pay everyone in the chain a living wage. Which is also more expensive than just using foxxcon to produce as cheap as possible and telling them to "just add more suicide prevention nets".

This is a good thing, but makes cost go up quite a bit I would assume. Additionally, the SoC is probably more expensive than the Snapdragon equivalent, as it is build "for industrial uses", which normally commands a premium.

[–] rroa@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

Is there any sense in installing a custom ROM on the phone to get rid of the software issues?

Custom ROM will help with some issues, but not all. If the issue is in a proprietary blob, like the random screen dimming issue that's plagued FP4 for months now, you'd still be stuck with the issue.

[–] SatyrSack@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the deal with phones never having a 16:9 aspect ratio anymore?

[–] Starfighter@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I suspect that if you were to cut the screen at the rounded edges, the sensor island and the onscreen nav buttons you'll be left with a 16:9 screen.

In other words its a 16:9 screen with some margin for curves and controls.

Looks preety good, i think i'll have to swim to Europe to get one...

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

8 years support

Wow. I wonder if they have a contract with Qualcomm for that.

[–] IdleSheep@lemdro.id 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No, what they did was pick an SoC called QCM6490 which is used for embedded and industrial applications, and Qualcomm officially supports those for 8 years. According to gsmarena it should have performance similar to a snapdragon 778G.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, just read about it. That said Qualcomm's part of the support is said to be 5 years by Ron at Ars:

Let's talk about that industry-leading 8–10 years of Android support, which doesn't necessarily mean 8–10 major OS updates. For now, Fairphone is promising "at least five operating system upgrades" because that is how long its weird Qualcomm chipset will officially be supported. Fairphone says Qualcomm will support that chip "until 2028" and after that, "Fairphone commits to extend support until 2031 and is aiming for 2033, giving users a total of eight to ten years of software support."

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/fairphone-5-sets-a-new-standard-with-8-10-years-of-android-support/

[–] gelberhut@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago

According to Fairphone "We plan at least 5 Android OS version updates after Android 13".

5 years is good, but not exceptional. And security fixes is way more fuzzy topic.

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

GSMarena reports displayport support in the USB.

Can anyone confirm this? The site doesn't mention it and it's a game changing feature imo.

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@shaked_coffee I wanted to buy the Fairphone in December, when I had to (somewhat) urgently change my phone. The fact that it's priced really high for just being repairable makes little sense. In the end, even though I did not want to stay on Nokia, I purchased a Nokia G22 and I couldn't be happier.

[–] WagesOf@artemis.camp 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's better to buy three used phones that are more powerful and cheaper and keep those out of the landfill than a fairphone.

I know this philosophy has to start somewhere but it's just bad from a value, performance and supported accessories view.

[–] Anamana@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just buy a used Fairphone 5 then in a few years? That's what I'm gonna do I think. This one is powerful enough for me

[–] MrPear@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

One of the reasons why I would buy a repairable phone is it's reliability in the long run. For instance, my previous phone, a Nokia, had a broken USB-C port. Replacing it would be pretty hard to do myself, or expensive to let somebody else do it. And that is if you can find replacement parts at all. One of the main benefits of a phone like the Fairphone, is that I can just order a new port from the manufacturer for a low price, without any unexpected costs, and replace it in 15 minutes. I still have some photo's on that phone because they were not automatically backed up. The Nokia also was pretty unusable even when it worked, because the software was borderline criminally bad. However, the bootloader was locked so I couldn't change it.

buying a second ahnd flagship is also a great way to save a bit on the environment, but it's won't be as reliable, the condition of the battery will probably be worse and you'll have to watch out that you don't buy a phone that doesn't get any updates anymore (or at least has a unlocked bootloader if you're willing to flash a custom ROM)

[–] gowan@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

Bingo, we should try to buy used rather than new to impact ewaste rates.

[–] foggenbooty@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

No headphone jack. I really wish they'd bring that back.

[–] gelberhut@lemdro.id 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Smartphones technology progress is slowed down recently, but still, do you think that this phone will be usable in 8 years?

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It won't be top of the line, but I don't really see why it wouldn't still be usable at least.
And even if the person buying the phone today won't consider it usable for their needs in eight years time, they can still sell it to someone who doesn't have a need for a high spec'ed phone.

I think you can look at it similarly to how one would look at an 8 year old laptop today.
A decently spec'ed laptop from 2015 is still very usable today, as long as you keep your expectations reasonable.

[–] gelberhut@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For example, because most of the apps (including browsers) could have much higher hardware requirements in 10 years.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's a valid concern, but it also assumes that the requirements for apps will go up in a similar trend as they did in the previous 8-10 years.
I'm not entirely convinced that they will. Smartphones 10 years ago were still very much a developing product category, whereas I think today they are generally matured.

Just look at laptops as a comparison. When they were still rapidly developing, an eight year old laptop would have pretty much been obsolete. But today an eight year old laptop will still serve most people perfectly fine.

[–] gelberhut@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not that sure, to be honest. I remember how a few (5 I think) years old midrange laptop became hardly usable for internet browsing.

It will be very interesting to get data about real life usage of fair phones (and other phones as well) - like what % of sold phones are still used in 1, 2, 5, 8.

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's rubbish, 2018 most laptops were using 8th gen Intel CPUs, and they still work fine today for web-browsing and doing word processing and not too heavy spreadsheet work. An i5 from that era is still perfectly usable.

[–] Alonely0@mastodon.social 1 points 1 year ago

@HidingCat @shaked_coffee @gelberhut @Humanius an 8th gen i7 is still a beast, even if most laptop ones only have 4 cores.

[–] gamey@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have a Galaxy s5 and it would still be usable with a custom ROM if parts of the hardware didn't die and so are ages old Laptops...

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[–] notepass@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you are used to it, probably. I know that my pixel 4a is slowing down after 3 years. But I am just used to the speed, so it is okay for me.

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[–] rroa@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

Kudos on Fairphone for offering 8 years of software updates.

As an owner of FP4, my biggest gripes with the FP4 are the software updates. Bugs keep languishing for months before they are acknowledged and then months pass before the bugs are fixed. Three annoying issues with my FP4 that I deal with on a daily basis:

  • Screen dimming bug. First reported in Feb and the earliest possible fix is in October. My phone is useless when I'm out and about and the level of urgency implied by FP4 for this issue baffles me.
  • NFC stops working randomly
  • 5 GHz hotspot was broken for months and only fixed recently

I don't care much about Android 13 as long as I get timely security patches. What I want is a bug free experience and that's something FP4 fails to deliver.

An annoying hardware decision is the SIM card can't be hot swapped. Not sure why this wasn't addressed with FP5.

[–] kresten@feddit.dk 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Isn't GrapheneOS supported on Fairphone as well?

No, only pixel.

[–] lemann@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

No graphene OS support, they rely on some secure isolation hardware feature only found on Google Tensor chips, unique to Pixel phones

Fairphone officially has e/OS (Murena??) , but there are a few unofficial alternatives too

[–] Carter@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I just read the specs and there is an SD slot.

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