It started with notebooks, but that wasn’t the master plan.
The next product should be a sustainable, not publicly traded company. If investors take majority ownership and IPO, Framework’s perceived mission will evaporate quickly in the inevitable search for ever growing profits. I sincerely hope Nirav and Co actually give a shit about the repairable product and retain majority shares. If not 👉👌…
I’d love to see them make other devices. But I want the company to actually be viable and entrenched before they spread themselves even more thinly.
They’re already having trouble releasing firmware and driver updates in a timely manner, especially for Windows users who can’t rely on driver updates packaged in the kernel.
But man I can think of a few cool Framework devices that I’d be into buying…
Cool. How about a repairable phone with a headphone jack? I’ll be a day one buyer.
How about a repairable phone with a headphone jack?
The Framework 16 notebook doesn’t even have a headphone jack, only a USB-C to jack adapter.
Modular ports would be great. I’d love to have two USB ports on a phone rather than a USB and headphone jack.
I’m pretty sure that a USB hub would work at least on Android, giving you as many ports as you want.
Repairable, open phone, you can load whatever OS you want. A phone that is more akin to a computer than a smartphone. A pinephone, but better.
If you don’t care about 3.5mm a FairPhone comes pretty close to that description.
A Framework phone with 2 modular Framework sockets would be amazing. I don’t care if it’s thick. Make it repairable and support Linux Phone OSes like postmarketOS and I would absolutely buy it.
Surely they are aiming for a repairable and modular smartphone eventually. That’s going to be super hard to do. My guess is their next form factor will be a tablet.
Any Linux phone is DOA for the foreseeable future because of the cellular radios.
We can say that for any kind of drivers needed to run a mobile phone.\ Manufacturers of components are less and less providing any documentation, just throw a binary blob and say “put it in your Android build”.
They didn’t say Linux phone though, it could still be android with a custom ROM.
Eh, Pinephone and Librem 5 made it work, but there’s still a fair amount of software limitations here, and I didn’t think Framework should be a software company. But the radios themselves probably aren’t the blocker you make them out to be.
They absolutely did not make it work. Go read any of the reviews and the complete unreliability of the cellular functions of both devices are chief among the criticisms.
My understanding is that those issues are due to suspend to save battery life, which isn’t directly related to the radios. A more appropriate SOC (i.e. one designed for mobile use) would probably be more reliable with the same radios they selected when going on standby.
Tablet is almost free, just don’t have a hinge and have a touchscreen. Release as Chromebook, it will run Android applications
Chromebook makes sense. They could also do full on Linux. Star labs has a tablet coming out, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel for software (I assume, I haven’t tried touchscreen Linux).
A reminder that if something can run Android or ChromeOS doesn’t mean drivers would be available for Linux. And usually they aren’t.
You can order that tablet with Ubuntu, mint, Manjaro, zorin, elementary, etc. There’s gotta be some kind of driver support to build on, no?
Arm machines that are repairable to compete with Apple would be very cool in my opinion. Maybe team up with an integrator like sys76. Could be very cool. I’d personally line up to buy.
Would love it if they just had a shell that takes single board PCs
Pine64 has a laptop that’s essentially that. The SBC inside could pretty easily be swapped.
As long as the company itself doesn’t become greedy and doesn’t change it’s mission & vision i always support it
I’m waiting for them to offer a chassis to convert their laptop parts into USFF PCs. Reusing old parts after an upgrade is pretty attractive. I think they mentioned this a while back, I’ve been waiting for it to happen.
I’d also like to see a thunderbolt or oculink GPU bay part that would enable eGPU use with their machines.
And if we’re wishlisting top facing speakers would be 🤌
Didn’t cooler master come out with one a little while ago?
Ah, I guess they did - thanks!
I thought they already offered 3d print models, you can just print out and presto?
I’m sure a Framework phone is at least an idea for them to produce. Definitely an extremely difficult challenge. It would be nice if it allowed for removable RAM, but it could be hard due to SODIMM being relatively large or due to RAM being put on SOCs. I imagine it shouldn’t be too much to ask for removable storage at least, given how small NVME drives can get. Upgradable SOC/motherboard is a must.
Please let it be a smart TV.
I’m curious to see where they go next. A lot of modern consumer electronics have repairability and upgradeability problems, but I also wouldn’t expect they’d be able to crack into the phone market as easily as the laptop market, so presumably there’s some more niche target they have.
It would be nice if they partnered with fairphone.
I have a MacBook for work. Can’t wait to have a Framework as a personal computer.
Do they offer touchscreens for the laptops yet? I’ve been waiting for that to get one, I won’t get a laptop without it.
This nonsense company is too expensive for regular people
This is my issue with Fairphone too. I love the idea and execution and I understand those things cause the product to be more expensive but twice the price to comparable products is just too steep for me.
