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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

Thanks for the nuanced response. Obviously both FP and LTT are defending their own interests and neither are inherently better.

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.

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.

also the fairphone doesnt sell replacement parts for any longer than most regular manufacturers do.

at least the framework offers pretty good modularity.

“It’s better than the Fairphone 4” doesn’t really matter when I’m comparing the Fairphone to a Pixel phone.

What, why?

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).