As Fairphone owner I have become somewhat sceptical of their repairability claim.
Mine fell on its side on some pebble stones. The power-button, unprotected by the case, got scratched. The button doubles as a fingerprint reader, which ceased working due to the scratch. At first, I thought "no worries, this phone is friendly to those who want to repair it."
It turns out, this part is not available for replacement. I think this is an oversight; just like the screen, it is an outward facing part, hence, bound to be damaged for some.
Then, I brought it to my local repair shop. The owner had to tell me that they cannot repair Fairphone's, and that, for him, it is one of the worst companies to deal with. They try to centralise all repairs in their own repair center. Which means sending the phone -- which I need -- away for 2 weeks; paying a fee for diagnosis, an unknown cost for repair, and the hassle of a flashed phone. I already know what's broken, I just want the part.
I feel this is a real shame, as I am fully supportive of the stated aims of the company, and I want the product to be good.
[Aside: suggestions on how to deal with a scratched fingerprint reader are most welcome. E.g. can the scatch be re-painted? The phone thinks the reader is there, but it doesn't register any touch. ]
> Then, I brought it to my local repair shop. The owner had to tell me that they cannot repair Fairphone's
I brought mine to my local repair shop as well and they were completely unwilling to even try to repair it. Then I went home and tried myself and managed by just bending back some pins. The display cable had gotten loose. Have worked fine since then.
Not certain which type of sensor it uses, but in any case painting it wouldn't fix it. The problem with a scratch is now it will register that as a fingerprint ridge, but it is in a fixed location, so theoretically if you re-register your finger on the scanner and always position your finger in *exactly* the same space it would still work, but as soon as your finger moves slightly, the scratches position relative to your fingerprint changes, thus changing the fingerprint that is read. You would have to fill the scratch with the same material that it is coated with, provided the scratch is just in the coating, and it isn't say a capacitive type which you've scratched part of that capacitive coating. Thus for a home-repair likely out of luck I'd think.
I could be wrong, any hardware guys please feel free to chime in over me.
Note: slightly simplified explanation but mostly holds for the three common types of sensors.
You could make an attempts using a scratch remover, which are available for scratched screens. There is some chance that it gets you there, though it depends on too many unknown variables to know for sure.
This. If it has the same index of refraction as the screen, it may fill in the damage and make it invisible. It might help to know if the screen is acrylic or glass to choose the right one. The poster has nothing to lose, sounds like.
At least it was the finger print scanner and not your finger that needs replacing. Biometrics as an EXTRA layer of security, on SHARED devices, makes sense. As a convenient replacement for passwords, on a personal device, net negative.
I have a friend who bought a fair phone with a view to being able to replace its modular parts. Four years later and the model had been discontinued, so he had to buy a new Fairphone.
Would it more economical and sustainable to buy a second hand / reconditioned feature phone from Samsung?
In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015. First-party parts 10 years later, what a concept! https://shop.fairphone.com/spare-parts
I don't know your friend's scenario, but this was mine.
It's not an either-or, like "either buy first-party parts for a Fairphone OR buy a second-hand Samsung". You can buy a second-hand Fairphone too. It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.
I bought a second hand Fairphone, and I'm very happy with it, except that my wife, a colleague of mine, and some friends of ours now also gave Fairphones, so when one buzzes we all instinctively check our pockets because they all sound the same...
I also bought headphones from the same company, and while they're probably not the best for audio quality, it was great being able to repair them when the headband broke. Generally, I'm a very happy Fairphone customer.
> when one buzzes we all instinctively check our pockets because they all sound the same
Isn't that the same for every brand? I have a friend who worked in cybersecurity in a certain phone company and was getting very stressed whenever my phone, which happened to be from the same brand, was ringing :D
I guess one can change the default sound, isn't that the case with fairphones?
I have a Samsung Moto, and it has a very default ringtone, not really a tone since it says "Hello, Moto" which is embarrassing but I haven't made the effort to switch tones, at any rate while I will be confused if someone in proximity to me gets a call on their Moto, my experience they don't have to be very far from me before I realize instinctively, that sound is far enough away it can't be my phone, although it irritates me nonetheless.
And I've been seated eating with people who had the same phones and I realized no, it must be their phone (although I feel a strong urge to check), because my ears are able to determine direction of a sound.
I'm also old and keep getting told I'm going deaf, so my question is, are people really not able to tell it's not their phone or are they just not thinking it through before checking.
Samsung Moto? Two different companies with very different phones. I'm surprised that such a mutant exists. Reads to me Car (with square wheels).
Moto is the only big brand I ever consider for a phone, while Samsung has never been as much as a consideration. Moto has had, which is changing, a bit of freedom - enough to tweak it into resembling a pure android experience. Samsung is incorrigibly infested - and if they ever start giving phones to prisoners, they'll be Samsung.
It's less the sound, and more the buzz when it's on vibration. I've never found a way of changing that, unfortunately. It's probably true for other brands, but I've never really had a phone that other people have also used, whereas now I'm in a (very small) bubble that seems to be happily converging on Fairphones...
This is what makes sense. You want to be able to replace the charging port, screen, and camera. And of-course update the software, where software stability is IMHO the weakest point of Fairphone.
If the logic board breaks, you want to upgrade to the newest chip model you can get. Because third-party software becomes slower every year. If you want a phone to last as long as possible, thus getting the latest chip. For Fairphone it is more interesting, since they use a particular Snapdragon model range with longer driver support.
The elephant in the room is of-course software getting too slow and developer not optimizing their apps.
> In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015.
You can still source an iPhone 4s screen+digitizer assembly on eBay for a reasonable price. There is, however, little practical value of it in everyday use.
My previous phone was a second-hand iPhone SE for which I had screen, power button, big button and battery replaced at various times. I think the battery was third-party & new, but the other parts were also 2nd+ hand. I don't know about newer models, and presumably there are other things that are more "fair" about the fairphone, but it doesn't have a monopoly on repairability in my experience.
You did all those repairs to your iphone yourself? I imagine that was significantly more technically difficult than repairing a Fairphone, which is made to be _user_ serviceable.
No, I went to a local electronics shop. I don't have a pile of decommissioned phones in my house, nor the eyesight or hand-steadiness for fixing things that small. User-serviceable is definitely a distinction, but I suspect family members would expect me to be their technician anyway, and I'd point them to the electronics shop due to physical issues above, and fear of bricking their devices.
If your family members ever had to mount an ikea furniture or equivalent, they'll probably have an as easy or easier time replacing a part on a fairphone. Especially for the battery. At least for version 3 and older. I don't know for later models. If you know how to swap batteries in a tv remote, you know how on this phone.
> It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.
You can? They're happy to repair even 7+ year old phones, I'm sure there's a cutoff but I haven't heard of anyone running into it. Might depend on the country though. Unless you mean buying those parts separately but they don't even let you do that for new phones, so "years after they're released" doesn't matter then.
It's nice that Samsung repair phones, I also don't know how long for, but you can't rely that they always will, and not all phone manufacturers are Samsung. You shouldn't have to rely on the whims of the manufacturer.
This is why phones should be modular so the parts that wear/break first are replaceable, and also why those parts should be available to you and third parties, not gatekept by the manufacturer. Repair companies can then stockpile parts themselves, instead of having to scavenge from dead phones, to repair your existing phone even when the manufacturer refuses.
> Four years later and the model had been discontinued
Which model? Was it the FP1? It sounds like your friend was extremely unlucky - FP2 is 11 years old & there's still (a limited subset of) parts for sale for it (display & camera). FP3 (7yo model) still has all the parts for sale.
That said - I'm critical of another aspect of device longevity: software support. I upgraded from my (still working) FP3 to the FP5 because apps I needed stopped working on the highest version of Android supported by FP3. That Android version is still officially supported by Fairphone & receiving security updates but without major version upgrades the app support can be problematic. Obviously that's ultiamtely the fault of bad app devs, but ultimately it's hard to overcome.
More like google's fault. They made a huge mess of completely different permission and behaviour changes between 11, 12, 13. At least since 14 they have stopped fucking around so much.
It is really much simpler for us to cut off all versions before 12, but it's unfeasible. So many devices still with 10/11. Now we cut off at 8.1, but will increase that every year starting next year as google mandates us an increase of minimum sdk version.
I don't like how companies behave like that and basically push users to upgrade their phones
Garmin in particular makes it mandatory to use their app for SOME connected functionalities (while others work just fine on wifi or wifi tethering).
They unsupported old version of android for the garmin connect app pretty fast (my mom's phone was incompatible within 4 years of its release) while they don't support you to connect older devices on newer phones and say they know it doesn't work.
As a user, I don't care whose fault it is.
I ditched both Google in favour of degooglized android on older Xiaomi and Pixel phones that support custom ROMs, and Garmin for any sport equipment.
My next phone will be a Fairphone if they make something with a smaller screen.
I don't know which app you're doing, but I would most likely permanently just not download it or find an open source alternative if it stopped working for me, as no app is essential.
Pay attention to the user-base, in particular is your app is supposed to work with a web of users.
I haven't done Android dev in a while, but I remember the Android SDK offered a 'backwards compatibility pack' - you selected which version you wanted to target, and how old a version you wanted to support (you could go back to like android 5) and it gave you all the polyfills necessary. The only downside was that your app size would balloon to crazy levels.
They are currently on the Fairphone 6, and at least in Germany the official online store still sells a wide selection of parts for the Fairphones 3-6, and the display and camera for the Fairphone 2.
Sure, you don't get meaningful hardware upgrades (apparently there were some small ones), and Fairphone are far from the only ones selling spare parts for their phones. But in terms of keeping old phones alive with authentic parts and easy to execute disassembly steps, they are pretty good
I guess maybe if the comparison you're looking at is the one you mentioned? Second hand normally beats everything else since it's avoiding what would other wise be waste, and there's nothing new that needs to be manufactured.
That said, I bought a fairphone about 4 years ago, in that time, I've had a bunch of issues that'd have meant replacing the phone for other non-fairphone models (this list doesn't make me look great at taking care of things):
- USB charger broke after getting mortar in it
- Screen broke after dropping the phone directly onto screen
- Battery replacement (due to age, not my fault this time!)
- Screen broken yesterday after dropping my phone onto concrete after falling over during a run.
If I'd had a Samsung, or non-repairable phone of another kind, I'd be buying my fourth phone today, instead I ordered a spare part and will repair things easily in a couple of days when it arrives.
So, hard to beat the sustainability of second hand tech, but definitely from an economical point of view, my fairphone has easily been a good call.
Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you are better at taking care of things than me.
Edit: worth saying, the fairphone 4 was discontinued a year or so ago, but that isn't the same as saying parts aren't made for it. Spare parts are still really easy to get hold of.
A friend of mine had a broken finger print reader (a few cents online), he couldn't find any repair shop who wanted to repair it (probably because the display would have to removed).
> I personally don't think it's worth it to buy a Fair phone for the extremely low chance that a component breaks and you can't get it repaired.
I might be misreading you, but this comes across a little like "that one use case doesn't prove you need a fairphone so don't buy a fairphone".
I don't think most people are evaluating tech like that. Only a zealot is going to consider a fairphone as the only option, they probably are looking at a bunch of criteria and options.
There's no correct answer to "what phone should I buy?" in a way that could be proven / argued for. I think people here are just saying fairphones have great repairability.
That's true-ish. The repairability of phones varies a lot, with some even having batteries glued into the model.
If you're just considering repairability, a fairphone is almost certainly one of your best options. But like you point out, that doesn't mean all other options can't be repaired at all.
> Second hand normally beats everything else since it's avoiding what would other wise be waste, and there's nothing new that needs to be manufactured.
That's a fallacy. By buying second hand, you enable the second hand market (people get better prices for selling their first hand phones). There are users who always buy the latest iPhones (or other flagship device) and sell their previous one. In effect you, as a second hand buyer, use the devices in the second part of their full lifetime, the first buyer uses the device in the first part. The device is used the full duration of its usability, which is good, but it's not better than if the first buyer would use it for the full duration. Nothing is saved overall.
This is not true. You're missing that, if there is no second-hand market, phones get an early, premature grave, meaning more e-waste.
Imagine there are 10 million people in the world and they all want a phone. 1 million neophiles only ever want the latest phone, released yearly. The other 9 million are luddites who are OK with a second-hand phone. All phones last exactly 10 years before failing, and never become obsolete or damaged.
No second-hand market allowed: 1.9m phones sold per year, 1.9m discarded.
Neophiles buy and discard 1m phones (into the dump with 9 years of life left). Luddites buy and discard 900,000 phones (they have no second-hand market to buy from, so they buy new phones, but they use them for full 10 years instead of just 1, so the 9 million only buy/discard 900,000 phones per year on average).
Second-hand market allowed: 1m phones sold per year, 1m discarded. 900,000 less!
Neophiles buy 1m new phones but sell their old phones to luddites, discarding none. Luddites then use them for 9 more years before discarding. There are 9 million luddites with 9 years of phone use meaning they need an average of 1m second-hand phones per year, which happens to be how many are on the market thanks to the neophiles.
This might be the most ridiculous POV of the second-hand market I’ve ever read.
There’s definitely some people who are buying new phones purely because they are ok with eating the difference between the new phone’s cost price and the old one’s sale price. I’m certain that’s a tiny niche of the entire market. And there’s the even smaller niche that actually use their phone till its very last breath. On the other hand, there’s an immeasurably larger part of the new phone market, formed of people who just buy a new phone anyways when they feel like it and leave the old one in their drawer.
Source: User surveys and research I conducted in another life
Well, also buying out-of-production new phones (i.e. 1 or 2 gen behind) it's saving phones to be e-waste without having been used even once. Although I guess that companies manage stocks also with this signal in mind, so a 2nd-hand is always better.
I bought a Fairphone 3+ years ago and, as much as I want to support this company, it was a huge disappointment. I switched to an iPhone after using it for less than three years, which is less than the life span I was hoping to use it for.
Within a year, the USB port wore out. Contacted the support as the phone was under warranty and was given two options: Order the replacement part online and get reimbursed for it. Or send the entire phone back, but it would get wiped clean.
I had some data that wasn't backed up and didn't want to loose, and because I couldn't charge it, I decided to go for the first option. It's supposed to be easily reparable, why go through the hassle of sending it back? Well the problem was that the part was unavailable on their store for months. I even looked at third party stores, that specific part couldn't be found anywhere in Europe. After three months of having a "repairable" paperweight on my desk, the part was finally available and I could change it (replacing it took seconds and I've done it while sitting at a café, gotta give credit to Fairphone for that).
Meanwhile, I see my friends with their iPhones getting them repaired within a few days or even the same day! Battery change, charging port replacement, screen change, etc. All could be easily and quickly done by a local repair shop.
In the end I realised it's not about how easy it is to repair your phone, it's about the availability of spare parts. iPhones, especially a few years ago, make it difficult to be repaired. Yet, they are the easiest to get repaired. Fairphone's spare parts are specific to their phones, and even specific to some models. Using generic parts or having some compatible across models would create more need for them = more parts available.
I am fine with having a phone with specs that are 3+ years old. I'm not, however, fine with loosing software support shortly buying it or the first repair knocking it out, because the parts are not available or the labour cost makes the repair unreasonable for its value.
Actually, taking on used phones with unknown history means that you'll likely end up 'bottom-feeding' where each unit bought is cheap, but you'll need to exchange them often. This strategy is even harder for less-interested who can't say what's the EOL for a phone model.
Maybe my argument doesn't hold in richer societies where you are effectively subsidised by people who'd still exchange phones every 2 years making them better value.
Absolutely. If you want to even pretend to care about the environment, the very first step is starting to buy almost everything over $100 second hand. The added benefit is that it has lots of other societally positive effects! It has one of the very highest "sacrifices made vs. societal benefit" ratios there is. Please stop buying "environmentally friendly" gadgets and equipment and start buying "unfriendly" ones second-hand. There are very few categories of products where the efficiency gains made over the last decade mean you should buy new. Certainly less than 1% of purchases we make.
You're providing income to someone whose almost definitely more constrained than you. Without you, no one may have bought it. And the other comment is right - it's a buyers market, we need more buyers, there's a surplus of sellers. Another thing - if sellers more quickly and more easily get to sell their stuff second hand thanks to you, they're more incentivized to sell more in the future as well instead of keeping it in a drawer or throwing it in the trash.
That's right, and buying new and taking very good care of your stuff + using to the point of being unusable probably beats serial-buying second hand devices you mistreat.
There has to be second hand users tough, otherwise the second hand devices that, for a reason or another, are not used to the end by their original buyer never get used again.
I gave my 7 year old iPhone XS (which still works perfectly and fast, and gets updates) to my mum. The battery was at 70% so I decided to get a replacement. The local malls repair shop had a spare battery in stock - they fixed it while I bought groceries.
I often wonder why there still hasn't been a YC-backed attempt to disrupt the "replace your phone every couple of years because your battery became slower" cartel in 2026. Seems like such a low-hanging fruit, especially given the very visible success of companies like Framework.
> Seems like such a low-hanging fruit, especially given the very visible success of companies like Framework.
Is there very visible success of Framework? How many people in your everyday live have you encountered with a Framework laptop?
I love there mission, but Framework from all the feedback from users online seems to still be a product that you'll only buy if you put sustainability over performance/convenience.
> a YC-backed attempt
If any successful attempt would be launched, there would be no reason for it to go through YC. In the mass consumer hardware market their little funding and the network they provide doesn't do much. I would strongly assume that a challenger would appear in a similar form as it did with framework with nrp.
At what price though? There are many people who say they would buy a phone like Fairphone, but not at that price, or not unless it had a 3.5mm headphone jack or a better camera, etc etc. Talk is cheap but sustainable phones are not.
So are you buying a Fairphone right now? Because from my rough estimation Framework and Fairphone are about the same when it comes to performance/convenience tradeoff right now.
I mostly focused on the "YC disruption" part in GPs question without considering whether there is actually an opening for a disruptor. I think Fairphone may already be filling that gap.
Am I missing something? I've kept the iPhones I bought for 6 years or so. I replaced the battery on each phone, and all it cost me was 50€ and half an hour waiting for the local non-Apple phone shop to do the work. That surely counts as batteries being replaceable in all but name?
I'm happy that worked out for you, but the whole cryptography signature of Apple batteries that throttle your phone if you get the wrong one is VERY different from "just pop out the back and get your new battery in".
I feel like the price Apple charges for batteries is very reasonable. I kept my phone going for 4.5 years thanks to a battery replacement 2 years in. They’re basically doing it at cost, considering parts and labour.
Is the average Framework truly more environmentally than an average MacBook.
MacBooks tend to last a long time. I used my 2012 Macbook Air for 7-8 years easily. It's still working today. My M1 Pro 16" has had no issues at all for nearly 4 years. They’re extremely reliable (except butterfly era).
Personally, I don’t think Framework laptops are. I think they are only more environmentally if you upgrade your MacBook every year or every other year. I think this is extremely niche. Not only are you getting a laptop with much worse battery life, noise, heat, screen, build quality, you are also getting a significantly slower CPU and GPU. AMD and Intel chips simply can't keep up with Apple Silicon.
One thing important to take into account in the life of a device is what happens when it's thrown out.
A friend of mine works at an electronics recycling facility, and with regular desktop or laptop they're able to take them apart to scavenge some rare metals, separate inert materials like cases from dangerous ones like the battery.
That's much more costly for Apple products because of how they're integrated, so they end up not recycling much.
Can't say about Framework, but between a Macbook and a Dell, that both got a glass of water on them, the Macbook was completely unusable, while the Dell still works (except issues with GPU) 5 years after the incident, after only one day in service for cleaning.
I don't know I had contemplated buying a second hand macbook for a family member and...most macbook available in the second hand market have hardware issues. Every time I checked laptops in the 300-500euros price range it was easier to find a lenovo thinkpad, dell latitude, or fujitsu in good conditions with a fresh new battery and ssd installed than it was finding a macbook.
They are reliable but, are they marketed as such? How many HNers are routinely upgrading their 3 years old MBP just because they can and they want a new one? I bet many
Because phones are incredibly cheap and its hard to compete with that.
You can get something like a "Motorola Moto G86 5G" for less than 200$ and that comes with a 120 hz full hd screen, 8 gigs of ram, 5200 mAh battery and so on. Basically everything you could ever need unless you're deep into photography or gaming.
Instead of ordering a battery at 40$ and replacing it, I might as well buy an entire new phone and get a minor upgrade on everything every few years.
My wife has a Fairphone 4, released 2021. The earpiece broke. I ordered a replacement; it arrived within 3 days and was very easy to replace. So a good experience with that.
The easily replacable parts feature sounds like it'd work great in a university context. The uni's service desk could stock up on replacement parts and fix the phones right there instead of having to send it in for repairs.
If e.g. someone's mainboard breaks, they can just give them a new phone and take in the old one, and then use the remaining parts to repair other employees' phones with working mainboards.
Universities in the Netherlands usually do not have the free cash for stocking up on parts, in general they take them in your get a loaner and they repair it afterwards or send it back to the manufacturer. But i guess it is a plus the design team is in the same country.
Seeing news like this, I wonder whether there is a market for an OSS Android and/or Linux distribution that provides the management comfort of Chromebooks without being tied to Google, Apple or Microsoft. A little like Keycloak but one layer higher.
With all the US/EU issues currently, you might even be able to spin up a company to support European services that need management based on OSS management software.
Ubuntu is pretty strong already in that niche - either using Landscape as a first party management solution, but it also tends to be the distro most-commonly recommended by the big third-party MDM vendors like Scalefusion and Jumpcloud. Not sure what their mobile story is like, but they certainly cover laptop / desktops.
If Android is not a blocker, maybe even then, Jolla, a Finnish company, has been offering a Linux based mobile OS for quite some time. I frankly don't get why other EU companies building the hardware, like Fairphone and Volta, don't partner up with them.
Can try to fork?, china , russia, and lots of smaller countrys are steadily moving away
and as basic introperability standards for phone and internet will remain, they can do this, and pressure is also mounting to get a linux phone fully functional, that will alao happen.
And in a world where Guggappl is providing genocide and abduction services, Billions would happily choose other alternatives.
China and Russia are likewise involved in their own genocides (Uyghurs and Ukraine respectively), and they are just as interested in developing centralised systems of control. They will not give the world truly free and open platform.
I thought one of the issues for Fairphone is that their security update schedule / security practices are a bit lax? Their phones are regularly requested by users to be targeted by GrapheneOS, but GOS developers contend that the security practices for the Fairphone are problematic. They apparently get security updates late and don't properly implement verified boot and attestation.
I like the devices, but I've stuck with Pixel devices for the better security practices. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that a university wouldn't be concerned about late security updates and the like.
These risks don't seem to materialize if you're not targeted by something like an intelligence agency. Not sure publicly funded research has such security requirements, at least by default (they can always buy custom equipment for a project, or just not put such data on devices you take home / out and about). Might be worth it compared to the very real benefits it has around the world by paying good salaries and fairer material sourcing
That's probably true, but some of the mistakes FP has made in the past could probably be widely exploited, so it doesn't instill a lot of confidence IMO. E.g., they were signing their OS images with the AOSP test keys.
It's not a particularly old company (a little over ten years I think?), so presumably they've had to learn a lot of those kinds of lessons at the start of their lifetime. But at this stage, I'd assume they've learned the lowest-hanging lessons, at least.
That's not entirely correct. There are also updates to the baseband, bootloader, binary driver blobs, etc. E.g., the bootloader for the FP3 was set to trust roms signed with the AOSP test keys (https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro...). That's not something fixable by the OS / rom maker.
The security issues stemming from such things are likely real, as well. There was a paper released some time back, about binary blobs, that found:
> Our results reveal that device manufacturers often neglect vendor blob updates. About 82% of firmware releases contain outdated GPU blobs (up to 1,281 days). A significant number of blobs also rely on obsolete LLVM core libraries released more than 15 years ago. To analyze their security implications, we develop a performant fuzzer that requires no physical access to mobile devices. We discover 289 security and behavioral bugs within the blobs. We also present a case study demonstrating how these vulnerabilities can be exploited via WebGL.
The default OS is not de-googled Android though, but regular Android. You have to buy the /e/OS variant, which is slightly more expensive (or flash it yourself).
But with the long-term support and access to spare parts (the university can stock them), this seems like a good move. Also happy for FairPhone that they are getting more traction.
As far as I know only Gigaset and HMD manufacture in Europe. And even those two only do final assembly in Europe, the components are still made in China.
Technically Fairphone could ship you a box of parts and have you assemble the phone yourself. Then it would be "Made in Europe" (or where-ever you live).
I'm fairly sure they don't; at least historically, the goal has been to improve the situation on the ground, not to move production elsewhere. (I think this was the post in which they explained that thinking, but I didn't reread it just now: https://www.fairphone.com/en/2025/10/15/lets-talk-about-fair...)
Technically correct but Holland has long been used as a strong branding name for the entire country. It wasn't until recent that they started to make a better distinction between the two.
Philips, ASML, Inventum and many other companies used "Made in Holland" on their products despite not being in the provinces of North and South Holland.
Good move from a service perspective, repairs while you wait instead of backing up, transfer to new phone, sending the old one in for service, yada yada yada. Also great for Fairphone's growth to have a stable business partner.
I like how they’re re-using old Samsung stock where possible and only switching people over as needed. It avoids unnecessary waste while still shifting to a more sustainable standard.
They’re hardly pioneers; my wife’s employer switched from Apple to Fairphone as the pre-selected option a few years ago. They have about 10k employees.
Interesting that they settled on a standard model at all. The announcement implies that the university is responsible for phone maintenance and repair, which makes sense as a motivation, but is not something I would expect in itself from a cost/expertise standpoint. I would be curious to know if a Fairphone makes servicing cheap enough to warrant doing it in-house for an IT department.
It’s also tacit, but I assume it helps them to interface with a Dutch company. Did they get any financial incentive for it?
The university should push the maintainance to the holder of the phone? That seems unreasonable.
As mentioned in another comment. Universities already have in house it services. Being able to fix the phone right there with spare parts is likely very cost efficient.
If they already have an IT department, they already have the staff to take care of this additional workload (after a bit of training). How much difference is there really in repairing a "repairable" phone and a computer? Not much really as "repairing" a computer is often just fiddling with the software and / or just about changing an easily available and "standardised" parts. (When was the last time any of us saw any IT department doing actual board level servicing to repair a computer?) It will be the same with the Fairphone too (Fairphone makes it easy to change the battery, the board and the display screen).
If the university didn't make phone repairs themselves they would have to send the phones off for repair, or contract with a local phone repair shop. Or the secret third option: telling your employees to get it fixed and send you the invoice. None of them are cheap, and some of them will make you very annoyed with your billing/procurement/finance people. After a certain scale doing it inhouse makes sense, and with the right phone it's not much more difficult than fixing a business laptop, which is also commonly done inhouse with available spare parts
If it is like my usual experience with European academia, it may be intended to more heavily push use of Microsoft 365 services, which tend to somewhat assume phone availability. I think that usually universities cannot force the use of personal devices for work, so providing mobile phones on request is one way of moving to a more purely Microsoft service infrastructure. It looks like Radboud is a Microsoft shop, so I would not be surprised.
My university, for example, is gradually removing all office phones (already voip) and replacing them with Teams voip as the only phone system for the university, encouraging personal phone use of Teams, but having computer-based use as the option for people who refuse. As they don't provide mobile phones, however, they can't require Microsoft Authenticator, and so at least officially will still give hardware keys on request (and fortunately still allow TOTP, even if they don't advertise it).
There is a movement in Dutch academia to move away from Microsoft/Google services. E.g. SURF (the IT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions) are extending their NextCloud pilot to all Dutch edu/research instututions:
If they want to use an MDM solution like Microsoft Intune to enforce some security compliance they are kind of forced to provide the device. People typically don't accept their private phone to be managed by their company IT.
Providing a device doesn't require picking a standard issue model of phone. IT departments often support an employee's choice of phone (or at least, choice of manufacturer) provided it's compatible with management software.
> The announcement implies that the university is responsible for phone maintenance and repair
It says "Do you require a (replacement) smartphone for your work at Radboud University?", so it's probably for a handful of board members and the like, not the actual faculty staff.
Tangential to the article but I’m on year 6 of waiting for the alternative smartphone market to offer what I’m actually looking for and here seems as good a place as any to complain about it:
I just want a screen with a headphone jack and a web browser on a device that isn’t serviced by Apple or Google.
I don’t even care about having the battery being removable. It doesn’t even have to be able to make phone calls.
I’m getting ready to go back to a dumbphone and digital camera because no one is making what I’m looking for, and it sort of seems like they never will.
it has OIS at the very least, which is something. But you'll always would better be served by a dedicated camera if you really care about pushing photos.
For me another feature is what disqualifies it. Fairphone 6 would have been otherwise acceptable for myself, as it has quite decent specifications, but it only has USB 2.0.
Other smartphones at around the same price not only have USB 3, but also DisplayPort 1.4 (e.g. from Motorola).
I hate when I see even on many smartphones over $1000, that they save a few cents by implementing USB 2 instead of USB 3, and a few dollars at most by not implementing DisplayPort.
The SoC used in Fairphone 6 supports both USB 3 and DisplayPort, but its designers have saved a few external components by not offering these features.
Pixel is also disqualified for me by the same reason. Unfortunately only some smartphones made in China offer complete features and without excessive locking of the phone.
> Pixel is also disqualified for me by the same reason.
How so?
I think all pixels starting from 6 or 7 have DisplayPort output through USB C.
I watched a movie the other day with my projector connected to my pixel 10 running grapheneOS. Other than getting a phone call halfway through the movie and a few hiccups selecting the audio Jack output, everything ran smoothly.
This is good to know, but they certainly do not advertise this feature as existing.
On Google Store there is no information about this and other sites, like Gsmarena, also do not have any information on it, unlike for the smartphones from other vendors that have DisplayPort.
On some older Pixel models, it has been discovered that DisplayPort existed in hardware, but it was disabled in software by the Google operating system. It could be enabled only by replacing the OS. I see that you also do not use its native OS, so this condition may have remained true.
About newer models, it was supposed that the hardware support might have been removed.
How did you discover that DisplayPort exists on your Pixel 10?
Was this mentioned in its user manual?
Do you have the plain Pixel 10 or some Pro version?
Do you happen to know whether you have DisplayPort 1.2 or 1.4? I.e. which is the maximum resolution at which you have used it, can it do 4k @ 60 Hz on a monitor or projector?
Did you have to use the audio jack because the smartphone does not know to send the audio through DisplayPort, or was that a limitation of your projector (or perhaps of some DisplayPort/HDMI converter that you may have used)?
Having this feature and not documenting it for the potential buyers is even more stupid than not implementing it, as this can lead to lost sales. Like with Fairphone 6, I have considered buying Pixel 10, which at least has USB 3, but I have eliminated it from the possible choices for the lack of DisplayPort.
EDIT:
Googling now, I have found an article at Google's "Pixel Phone Help":
which says "Connect your phone to a display device (Pixel 8 and later)",
So indeed, DisplayPort is supported officially starting with Pixel 8.
Nevertheless, it says nothing about what kind of DisplayPort is supported, i.e. which is the maximum resolution that is achievable on a monitor/projector, and this help answer is well hidden, you have to search specifically for it, instead of having clear technical specification of the Pixel phones, easy to discover by potential buyers.
Moreover, it can do only screen or window mirroring, instead of having a desktop mode like other vendors, so I think that it probably is limited to 1080 lines, which is the resolution of Pixel's screen (non-Pro models, but Pro are only slightly better). In that case, it still does not do what I want, which is a 4k resolution on a monitor/projector (it can record 4k movies after all, so I would have expected to be able to play them).
"Employees who have an iPhone from Radboud University can continue to use it as long as the device is still functioning. However, returned iPhones will no longer be reissued."
I wonder what the take rate will be from people rejecting the Fairphone and requesting their own SIM instead. The inner IT purchasing cynic in me says this is just a simple way to cull out your purchasing costs by only issuing one quasi-unpopular* device.
* I used to issue out phones at a large hospital and we allowed device choice. We saw ~90% iPhones, 10% Android in our fleet.
If Holland is anything like Denmark the cost of employee phones can be budgeted as an operational cost, which means it's basically free. I doubt that is their reasoning. It's far more likely this is a part of the massive anti-US tech dependency wave which is rolling over Europe. Digital sovereignty is a hot topic these days.
As far as what people want... it depends... A lot of people have two phones anyway, since they don't want to pay the additional taxation for using a company phone privately. Also because it's easier to turn it off when you're not working. In education I would imagine a lot of teachers/professors would prefer to not give their private numbers to students.
That sounds unreal to me. Typically rich countries, like the nordics, are majority iPhone. But then again, Dutch people are know across Europe to be cheapskates so maybe that explains it ;)
The reason is how messaging works. In the US (and Canada?), SMS was affordable since before smartphones, and people kept using SMS once smartphones became common. Apple automatically integrated iMessage into that. Americans are used to texting using the default messaging app, and using an iPhone to text another iPhone provided a better experience than plain old SMS/MMS.
In Europe, SMS was extremely expensive in the late 2000s/early 2010s, so people never really used it, and instead started using cross-platform internet messengers. MSN, Skype, then WhatsApp. Android was/is seen as the same or better quality for a lower price, so why buy an iPhone?
The thing I would like to see is a second purpose for smart phones, an afterlife, calculator heaven?
It doesn't have to be cheap. It might for example resign into a security camera or a doorbell. A metal bracket with a connector, a button or a connection for one, a seperate psu with a bell or a relay for one, screws to attach the wires, perhaps a stripped down end of life OS (altho it could just be a mode) and it becomes a very good doorbell with motion detection, a good amount of storage, two way video if you want it. Share with someone [temporarly]. Backup footage on laptops, pc's, phones, storage devices etc etc
For $100 in parts it would be highly competitive in the space but it could be more expensive as it can basically do everything a $1000 security camera offers and more. Battery backup, sim card, etc. A big phone brand might even be able to get a contract with local law enforcement so that they can have/request [emergency] access.
It's just one example, a small/portable computer could resign into many things. The device only needs to know it is now a TV remote control.
I know several family members who have bought Fairphone's and been disappointed by them. It's really impressive how repairable they've managed to make such integrated devices, but it seems like they didn't do such a good job on making a reliable phone in the first place.
I think what we really need is legislation to force all phone manufacturers to at least make the batteries and screens relatively easily replaceable. Maybe a cap on the replacement costs and a minimum support time would be a reasonable way to do that.
> I think what we really need is legislation to force all phone manufacturers to at least make the batteries and screens relatively easily replaceable.
We are slowly getting there, user removable/replaceable batteries are part of the following regulation (first link I've got)
The big caveat will be that some leeway is going to be given to "waterproof" devices. Remains to be seen how many producers jump on that angle to avoid serviceability.
I've read that the Fairphone 6 is more like a "regular" phone than the previous one, because it has a standard phone chip (Snapdragon) instead of an IoT one.
They did that to get longer software support from Qualcomm, but now they can get long support for Snapdragon chips.
Mine fell on its side on some pebble stones. The power-button, unprotected by the case, got scratched. The button doubles as a fingerprint reader, which ceased working due to the scratch. At first, I thought "no worries, this phone is friendly to those who want to repair it."
It turns out, this part is not available for replacement. I think this is an oversight; just like the screen, it is an outward facing part, hence, bound to be damaged for some.
Then, I brought it to my local repair shop. The owner had to tell me that they cannot repair Fairphone's, and that, for him, it is one of the worst companies to deal with. They try to centralise all repairs in their own repair center. Which means sending the phone -- which I need -- away for 2 weeks; paying a fee for diagnosis, an unknown cost for repair, and the hassle of a flashed phone. I already know what's broken, I just want the part.
I feel this is a real shame, as I am fully supportive of the stated aims of the company, and I want the product to be good.
[Aside: suggestions on how to deal with a scratched fingerprint reader are most welcome. E.g. can the scatch be re-painted? The phone thinks the reader is there, but it doesn't register any touch. ]
I brought mine to my local repair shop as well and they were completely unwilling to even try to repair it. Then I went home and tried myself and managed by just bending back some pins. The display cable had gotten loose. Have worked fine since then.
I could be wrong, any hardware guys please feel free to chime in over me.
Note: slightly simplified explanation but mostly holds for the three common types of sensors.
Would it more economical and sustainable to buy a second hand / reconditioned feature phone from Samsung?
The charging port wore out. I bought another one in 2023. They still sell that part today. https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/fairphone-3-bottom-module-37
In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015. First-party parts 10 years later, what a concept! https://shop.fairphone.com/spare-parts
I don't know your friend's scenario, but this was mine.
It's not an either-or, like "either buy first-party parts for a Fairphone OR buy a second-hand Samsung". You can buy a second-hand Fairphone too. It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.
I also bought headphones from the same company, and while they're probably not the best for audio quality, it was great being able to repair them when the headband broke. Generally, I'm a very happy Fairphone customer.
Isn't that the same for every brand? I have a friend who worked in cybersecurity in a certain phone company and was getting very stressed whenever my phone, which happened to be from the same brand, was ringing :D
I guess one can change the default sound, isn't that the case with fairphones?
And I've been seated eating with people who had the same phones and I realized no, it must be their phone (although I feel a strong urge to check), because my ears are able to determine direction of a sound.
I'm also old and keep getting told I'm going deaf, so my question is, are people really not able to tell it's not their phone or are they just not thinking it through before checking.
Moto is the only big brand I ever consider for a phone, while Samsung has never been as much as a consideration. Moto has had, which is changing, a bit of freedom - enough to tweak it into resembling a pure android experience. Samsung is incorrigibly infested - and if they ever start giving phones to prisoners, they'll be Samsung.
My experience with the latest Moto I have is the AI assistant is an anti-pattern but the phone is nearly unusable for a lot of things without it.
If the logic board breaks, you want to upgrade to the newest chip model you can get. Because third-party software becomes slower every year. If you want a phone to last as long as possible, thus getting the latest chip. For Fairphone it is more interesting, since they use a particular Snapdragon model range with longer driver support.
The elephant in the room is of-course software getting too slow and developer not optimizing their apps.
You can still source an iPhone 4s screen+digitizer assembly on eBay for a reasonable price. There is, however, little practical value of it in everyday use.
You can? They're happy to repair even 7+ year old phones, I'm sure there's a cutoff but I haven't heard of anyone running into it. Might depend on the country though. Unless you mean buying those parts separately but they don't even let you do that for new phones, so "years after they're released" doesn't matter then.
This is why phones should be modular so the parts that wear/break first are replaceable, and also why those parts should be available to you and third parties, not gatekept by the manufacturer. Repair companies can then stockpile parts themselves, instead of having to scavenge from dead phones, to repair your existing phone even when the manufacturer refuses.
I managed to have the curved screen in my 2017 Galaxy S8 replaced in 2023 or so. I don't recall there being an alternative manufacturer of those.
For flagships at least there seems to be a pool of new-old-stock parts.
Which model? Was it the FP1? It sounds like your friend was extremely unlucky - FP2 is 11 years old & there's still (a limited subset of) parts for sale for it (display & camera). FP3 (7yo model) still has all the parts for sale.
That said - I'm critical of another aspect of device longevity: software support. I upgraded from my (still working) FP3 to the FP5 because apps I needed stopped working on the highest version of Android supported by FP3. That Android version is still officially supported by Fairphone & receiving security updates but without major version upgrades the app support can be problematic. Obviously that's ultiamtely the fault of bad app devs, but ultimately it's hard to overcome.
More like google's fault. They made a huge mess of completely different permission and behaviour changes between 11, 12, 13. At least since 14 they have stopped fucking around so much.
It is really much simpler for us to cut off all versions before 12, but it's unfeasible. So many devices still with 10/11. Now we cut off at 8.1, but will increase that every year starting next year as google mandates us an increase of minimum sdk version.
Garmin in particular makes it mandatory to use their app for SOME connected functionalities (while others work just fine on wifi or wifi tethering). They unsupported old version of android for the garmin connect app pretty fast (my mom's phone was incompatible within 4 years of its release) while they don't support you to connect older devices on newer phones and say they know it doesn't work.
As a user, I don't care whose fault it is.
I ditched both Google in favour of degooglized android on older Xiaomi and Pixel phones that support custom ROMs, and Garmin for any sport equipment.
My next phone will be a Fairphone if they make something with a smaller screen.
I don't know which app you're doing, but I would most likely permanently just not download it or find an open source alternative if it stopped working for me, as no app is essential. Pay attention to the user-base, in particular is your app is supposed to work with a web of users.
I use a FP3 too, but I am a little surprised
Sure, you don't get meaningful hardware upgrades (apparently there were some small ones), and Fairphone are far from the only ones selling spare parts for their phones. But in terms of keeping old phones alive with authentic parts and easy to execute disassembly steps, they are pretty good
That said, I bought a fairphone about 4 years ago, in that time, I've had a bunch of issues that'd have meant replacing the phone for other non-fairphone models (this list doesn't make me look great at taking care of things): - USB charger broke after getting mortar in it - Screen broke after dropping the phone directly onto screen - Battery replacement (due to age, not my fault this time!) - Screen broken yesterday after dropping my phone onto concrete after falling over during a run.
If I'd had a Samsung, or non-repairable phone of another kind, I'd be buying my fourth phone today, instead I ordered a spare part and will repair things easily in a couple of days when it arrives.
So, hard to beat the sustainability of second hand tech, but definitely from an economical point of view, my fairphone has easily been a good call.
Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you are better at taking care of things than me.
Edit: worth saying, the fairphone 4 was discontinued a year or so ago, but that isn't the same as saying parts aren't made for it. Spare parts are still really easy to get hold of.
I personally don't think it's worth it to buy a Fair phone for the extremely low chance that a component breaks and you can't get it repaired.
I might be misreading you, but this comes across a little like "that one use case doesn't prove you need a fairphone so don't buy a fairphone".
I don't think most people are evaluating tech like that. Only a zealot is going to consider a fairphone as the only option, they probably are looking at a bunch of criteria and options.
There's no correct answer to "what phone should I buy?" in a way that could be proven / argued for. I think people here are just saying fairphones have great repairability.
If you're just considering repairability, a fairphone is almost certainly one of your best options. But like you point out, that doesn't mean all other options can't be repaired at all.
That's a fallacy. By buying second hand, you enable the second hand market (people get better prices for selling their first hand phones). There are users who always buy the latest iPhones (or other flagship device) and sell their previous one. In effect you, as a second hand buyer, use the devices in the second part of their full lifetime, the first buyer uses the device in the first part. The device is used the full duration of its usability, which is good, but it's not better than if the first buyer would use it for the full duration. Nothing is saved overall.
This is not true. You're missing that, if there is no second-hand market, phones get an early, premature grave, meaning more e-waste.
Imagine there are 10 million people in the world and they all want a phone. 1 million neophiles only ever want the latest phone, released yearly. The other 9 million are luddites who are OK with a second-hand phone. All phones last exactly 10 years before failing, and never become obsolete or damaged.
No second-hand market allowed: 1.9m phones sold per year, 1.9m discarded.
Neophiles buy and discard 1m phones (into the dump with 9 years of life left). Luddites buy and discard 900,000 phones (they have no second-hand market to buy from, so they buy new phones, but they use them for full 10 years instead of just 1, so the 9 million only buy/discard 900,000 phones per year on average).
Second-hand market allowed: 1m phones sold per year, 1m discarded. 900,000 less!
Neophiles buy 1m new phones but sell their old phones to luddites, discarding none. Luddites then use them for 9 more years before discarding. There are 9 million luddites with 9 years of phone use meaning they need an average of 1m second-hand phones per year, which happens to be how many are on the market thanks to the neophiles.
> Nothing is saved overall.
This might be the most ridiculous POV of the second-hand market I’ve ever read.
There’s definitely some people who are buying new phones purely because they are ok with eating the difference between the new phone’s cost price and the old one’s sale price. I’m certain that’s a tiny niche of the entire market. And there’s the even smaller niche that actually use their phone till its very last breath. On the other hand, there’s an immeasurably larger part of the new phone market, formed of people who just buy a new phone anyways when they feel like it and leave the old one in their drawer.
Source: User surveys and research I conducted in another life
Well, also buying out-of-production new phones (i.e. 1 or 2 gen behind) it's saving phones to be e-waste without having been used even once. Although I guess that companies manage stocks also with this signal in mind, so a 2nd-hand is always better.
https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?categ...
Within a year, the USB port wore out. Contacted the support as the phone was under warranty and was given two options: Order the replacement part online and get reimbursed for it. Or send the entire phone back, but it would get wiped clean.
I had some data that wasn't backed up and didn't want to loose, and because I couldn't charge it, I decided to go for the first option. It's supposed to be easily reparable, why go through the hassle of sending it back? Well the problem was that the part was unavailable on their store for months. I even looked at third party stores, that specific part couldn't be found anywhere in Europe. After three months of having a "repairable" paperweight on my desk, the part was finally available and I could change it (replacing it took seconds and I've done it while sitting at a café, gotta give credit to Fairphone for that).
Meanwhile, I see my friends with their iPhones getting them repaired within a few days or even the same day! Battery change, charging port replacement, screen change, etc. All could be easily and quickly done by a local repair shop.
In the end I realised it's not about how easy it is to repair your phone, it's about the availability of spare parts. iPhones, especially a few years ago, make it difficult to be repaired. Yet, they are the easiest to get repaired. Fairphone's spare parts are specific to their phones, and even specific to some models. Using generic parts or having some compatible across models would create more need for them = more parts available.
Actually, taking on used phones with unknown history means that you'll likely end up 'bottom-feeding' where each unit bought is cheap, but you'll need to exchange them often. This strategy is even harder for less-interested who can't say what's the EOL for a phone model.
Maybe my argument doesn't hold in richer societies where you are effectively subsidised by people who'd still exchange phones every 2 years making them better value.
You're doing great for everyone involved!
There has to be second hand users tough, otherwise the second hand devices that, for a reason or another, are not used to the end by their original buyer never get used again.
Is there very visible success of Framework? How many people in your everyday live have you encountered with a Framework laptop?
I love there mission, but Framework from all the feedback from users online seems to still be a product that you'll only buy if you put sustainability over performance/convenience.
> a YC-backed attempt
If any successful attempt would be launched, there would be no reason for it to go through YC. In the mass consumer hardware market their little funding and the network they provide doesn't do much. I would strongly assume that a challenger would appear in a similar form as it did with framework with nrp.
That would product that I and countless others would be gladly willing to buy on the smartphone market.
I mostly focused on the "YC disruption" part in GPs question without considering whether there is actually an opening for a disruptor. I think Fairphone may already be filling that gap.
Also, your information is slightly out of date. It’s possible to do the replacement yourself if you want. Here’s an ifixit guide based on apples official repair guide - https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+17+Battery+Replacement/1...
They are talking about this kind of battery replacement: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Fairphone+3+Battery+Replacement... . The "TV remote" battery replacement kind.
MacBooks tend to last a long time. I used my 2012 Macbook Air for 7-8 years easily. It's still working today. My M1 Pro 16" has had no issues at all for nearly 4 years. They’re extremely reliable (except butterfly era).
Personally, I don’t think Framework laptops are. I think they are only more environmentally if you upgrade your MacBook every year or every other year. I think this is extremely niche. Not only are you getting a laptop with much worse battery life, noise, heat, screen, build quality, you are also getting a significantly slower CPU and GPU. AMD and Intel chips simply can't keep up with Apple Silicon.
One thing important to take into account in the life of a device is what happens when it's thrown out.
A friend of mine works at an electronics recycling facility, and with regular desktop or laptop they're able to take them apart to scavenge some rare metals, separate inert materials like cases from dangerous ones like the battery.
That's much more costly for Apple products because of how they're integrated, so they end up not recycling much.
the most reliable test of durability is prices in the second-hand market. Apple laptops hold their value very well.
You can get something like a "Motorola Moto G86 5G" for less than 200$ and that comes with a 120 hz full hd screen, 8 gigs of ram, 5200 mAh battery and so on. Basically everything you could ever need unless you're deep into photography or gaming. Instead of ordering a battery at 40$ and replacing it, I might as well buy an entire new phone and get a minor upgrade on everything every few years.
> without being tied to Google
That's a contradiction.
You must be thinking of the Google Play Services but these aren't required by GrapheneOS.
Every Android ROM is critically dependant on Googles work to actually develop and secure the OS.
Hopefully that can change, in the future
Now if GrapheneOS was its own thing without additional AOSP code updates.
Hence why these efforts should not rely on US institutions good will in first place.
https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/design/
https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/harmonyos/develop/
8 out of the top 10 Android manufacturers are Chinese.
Google would just lose the ownership of Android to a Chinese consortium used by everybody else.
I like the devices, but I've stuck with Pixel devices for the better security practices. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that a university wouldn't be concerned about late security updates and the like.
It doesn't matter if their os gets security updates late, becase security updates depend on the rom maker this case grapheneos.
The security issues stemming from such things are likely real, as well. There was a paper released some time back, about binary blobs, that found:
> Our results reveal that device manufacturers often neglect vendor blob updates. About 82% of firmware releases contain outdated GPU blobs (up to 1,281 days). A significant number of blobs also rely on obsolete LLVM core libraries released more than 15 years ago. To analyze their security implications, we develop a performant fuzzer that requires no physical access to mobile devices. We discover 289 security and behavioral bugs within the blobs. We also present a case study demonstrating how these vulnerabilities can be exploited via WebGL.
(From https://arxiv.org/html/2410.11075)
But with the long-term support and access to spare parts (the university can stock them), this seems like a good move. Also happy for FairPhone that they are getting more traction.
As far as I know only Gigaset and HMD manufacture in Europe. And even those two only do final assembly in Europe, the components are still made in China.
Technically Fairphone could ship you a box of parts and have you assemble the phone yourself. Then it would be "Made in Europe" (or where-ever you live).
Perfect is the enemy of the good (it also took HMD a while to have a model that was manufactured in Europe).
Philips, ASML, Inventum and many other companies used "Made in Holland" on their products despite not being in the provinces of North and South Holland.
This no different from the fallacy of using Chrome and VSCode forks.
Good move from a service perspective, repairs while you wait instead of backing up, transfer to new phone, sending the old one in for service, yada yada yada. Also great for Fairphone's growth to have a stable business partner.
It’s also tacit, but I assume it helps them to interface with a Dutch company. Did they get any financial incentive for it?
As mentioned in another comment. Universities already have in house it services. Being able to fix the phone right there with spare parts is likely very cost efficient.
My university, for example, is gradually removing all office phones (already voip) and replacing them with Teams voip as the only phone system for the university, encouraging personal phone use of Teams, but having computer-based use as the option for people who refuse. As they don't provide mobile phones, however, they can't require Microsoft Authenticator, and so at least officially will still give hardware keys on request (and fortunately still allow TOTP, even if they don't advertise it).
https://tweakers.net/nieuws/241846/surf-biedt-opensource-nex...
Many individual universities are also making decisions to reduce dependence on US tech, see e.g.:
https://rug.my-meeting.nl/Documenten/Keuzevrijheid-IT-oploss...
(Apologies for the Dutch links.)
It says "Do you require a (replacement) smartphone for your work at Radboud University?", so it's probably for a handful of board members and the like, not the actual faculty staff.
I just want a screen with a headphone jack and a web browser on a device that isn’t serviced by Apple or Google.
I don’t even care about having the battery being removable. It doesn’t even have to be able to make phone calls.
I’m getting ready to go back to a dumbphone and digital camera because no one is making what I’m looking for, and it sort of seems like they never will.
Which browser though? But what you're describing sounds a lot like a Linux tablet, which do exist: https://itsfoss.com/linux-tablets/
EDIT: jolla also sells this, has a jack https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone
But for now it seems like I'll remain with a Pixel and GrapheneOS.
For me another feature is what disqualifies it. Fairphone 6 would have been otherwise acceptable for myself, as it has quite decent specifications, but it only has USB 2.0.
Other smartphones at around the same price not only have USB 3, but also DisplayPort 1.4 (e.g. from Motorola).
I hate when I see even on many smartphones over $1000, that they save a few cents by implementing USB 2 instead of USB 3, and a few dollars at most by not implementing DisplayPort.
The SoC used in Fairphone 6 supports both USB 3 and DisplayPort, but its designers have saved a few external components by not offering these features.
Pixel is also disqualified for me by the same reason. Unfortunately only some smartphones made in China offer complete features and without excessive locking of the phone.
How so?
I think all pixels starting from 6 or 7 have DisplayPort output through USB C.
I watched a movie the other day with my projector connected to my pixel 10 running grapheneOS. Other than getting a phone call halfway through the movie and a few hiccups selecting the audio Jack output, everything ran smoothly.
On Google Store there is no information about this and other sites, like Gsmarena, also do not have any information on it, unlike for the smartphones from other vendors that have DisplayPort.
On some older Pixel models, it has been discovered that DisplayPort existed in hardware, but it was disabled in software by the Google operating system. It could be enabled only by replacing the OS. I see that you also do not use its native OS, so this condition may have remained true.
About newer models, it was supposed that the hardware support might have been removed.
How did you discover that DisplayPort exists on your Pixel 10?
Was this mentioned in its user manual?
Do you have the plain Pixel 10 or some Pro version?
Do you happen to know whether you have DisplayPort 1.2 or 1.4? I.e. which is the maximum resolution at which you have used it, can it do 4k @ 60 Hz on a monitor or projector?
Did you have to use the audio jack because the smartphone does not know to send the audio through DisplayPort, or was that a limitation of your projector (or perhaps of some DisplayPort/HDMI converter that you may have used)?
Having this feature and not documenting it for the potential buyers is even more stupid than not implementing it, as this can lead to lost sales. Like with Fairphone 6, I have considered buying Pixel 10, which at least has USB 3, but I have eliminated it from the possible choices for the lack of DisplayPort.
EDIT:
Googling now, I have found an article at Google's "Pixel Phone Help":
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2865484?hl=en
which says "Connect your phone to a display device (Pixel 8 and later)",
So indeed, DisplayPort is supported officially starting with Pixel 8.
Nevertheless, it says nothing about what kind of DisplayPort is supported, i.e. which is the maximum resolution that is achievable on a monitor/projector, and this help answer is well hidden, you have to search specifically for it, instead of having clear technical specification of the Pixel phones, easy to discover by potential buyers.
Moreover, it can do only screen or window mirroring, instead of having a desktop mode like other vendors, so I think that it probably is limited to 1080 lines, which is the resolution of Pixel's screen (non-Pro models, but Pro are only slightly better). In that case, it still does not do what I want, which is a 4k resolution on a monitor/projector (it can record 4k movies after all, so I would have expected to be able to play them).
I wonder what the take rate will be from people rejecting the Fairphone and requesting their own SIM instead. The inner IT purchasing cynic in me says this is just a simple way to cull out your purchasing costs by only issuing one quasi-unpopular* device.
* I used to issue out phones at a large hospital and we allowed device choice. We saw ~90% iPhones, 10% Android in our fleet.
As far as what people want... it depends... A lot of people have two phones anyway, since they don't want to pay the additional taxation for using a company phone privately. Also because it's easier to turn it off when you're not working. In education I would imagine a lot of teachers/professors would prefer to not give their private numbers to students.
The Fairphone 6 is a pretty good phone.
The reason is how messaging works. In the US (and Canada?), SMS was affordable since before smartphones, and people kept using SMS once smartphones became common. Apple automatically integrated iMessage into that. Americans are used to texting using the default messaging app, and using an iPhone to text another iPhone provided a better experience than plain old SMS/MMS.
In Europe, SMS was extremely expensive in the late 2000s/early 2010s, so people never really used it, and instead started using cross-platform internet messengers. MSN, Skype, then WhatsApp. Android was/is seen as the same or better quality for a lower price, so why buy an iPhone?
Which probably explains the 35% market share if that's true.
But I get it, you wanted a cheap shot.
Also nice would be replaceable plug-in modules a` la Frame.work laptops.
It doesn't have to be cheap. It might for example resign into a security camera or a doorbell. A metal bracket with a connector, a button or a connection for one, a seperate psu with a bell or a relay for one, screws to attach the wires, perhaps a stripped down end of life OS (altho it could just be a mode) and it becomes a very good doorbell with motion detection, a good amount of storage, two way video if you want it. Share with someone [temporarly]. Backup footage on laptops, pc's, phones, storage devices etc etc
For $100 in parts it would be highly competitive in the space but it could be more expensive as it can basically do everything a $1000 security camera offers and more. Battery backup, sim card, etc. A big phone brand might even be able to get a contract with local law enforcement so that they can have/request [emergency] access.
It's just one example, a small/portable computer could resign into many things. The device only needs to know it is now a TV remote control.
I think what we really need is legislation to force all phone manufacturers to at least make the batteries and screens relatively easily replaceable. Maybe a cap on the replacement costs and a minimum support time would be a reasonable way to do that.
We are slowly getting there, user removable/replaceable batteries are part of the following regulation (first link I've got)
https://www.brownejacobson.com/insights/compliance-obligatio...
The big caveat will be that some leeway is going to be given to "waterproof" devices. Remains to be seen how many producers jump on that angle to avoid serviceability.
They did that to get longer software support from Qualcomm, but now they can get long support for Snapdragon chips.