I’ve had my hands on Fairphones and SHIFT phones. Build quality seems similar.
I’d still get a Fairphone, as they put a lot of effort into open source and being part of the community. They also seem to make slightly more robust devices.
No idea for how long Shift guarantee updates, but Fairphone guarantees updates for many years. Last I checked it was eight years.
BTW, I recently got myself a USB-C charger from Fairphone and the build quality is really good. No doubt it will still work in two years and longer. The price is also decent.
Fairphone absolutely is important and may have driven the long update span of phones. But note that because they were the first, they didnt use a secure smartphone SOC in their phone but an IOT one, lacking any secure element for example. Cracking that phone is not hard for people with the knowledge.
Also their firmware and software updates are often far behind upstream, which has obvious security implications.
I know they delayed the Android 14 upgrade and skipped directly to 15, even “bricking” some devices. Probably nothing very bad (though as they allow bootloader locking even on custom Android builds… it could really mean brick).
I’ve had my hands on Fairphones and SHIFT phones. Build quality seems similar.
I’d still get a Fairphone, as they put a lot of effort into open source and being part of the community. They also seem to make slightly more robust devices.
No idea for how long Shift guarantee updates, but Fairphone guarantees updates for many years. Last I checked it was eight years.
BTW, I recently got myself a USB-C charger from Fairphone and the build quality is really good. No doubt it will still work in two years and longer. The price is also decent.
Fairphone absolutely is important and may have driven the long update span of phones. But note that because they were the first, they didnt use a secure smartphone SOC in their phone but an IOT one, lacking any secure element for example. Cracking that phone is not hard for people with the knowledge.
Also their firmware and software updates are often far behind upstream, which has obvious security implications.
Citation needed.
Yeah haha I tried finding one but no success.
I know they delayed the Android 14 upgrade and skipped directly to 15, even “bricking” some devices. Probably nothing very bad (though as they allow bootloader locking even on custom Android builds… it could really mean brick).