- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
While they were happy with what the fairphone 4 brought to the table, they seem to like what was changed for the fairphone 5.
What are you guys’ opinions on this? A welcome change? would you get one if your phone died within the next year?
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Too bad they don’t sell them in the US. I would buy one immediately.
they’re selling the 4 with degoogled OS in the US, so perhaps they’ll do the same with the 5 at some point.
Amazing.
I’m sick of buying a new phone every three years because the battery is dead or the processor is slow, nothing can be replaced without it being wildly expensive and now it’s a paperweight.
To be fair, I don’t think the Fairphone will help much with outdated processors. You can’t upgrade the processor inside, and it comes with a relatively slow processor from day one.
This phone is not for people that need performance; it’s a very basic phone for people that value an ethical supply chain and repairability.
Relative slow my arse imo.Its all about use cases and the (potential shitty) apps you run. Been using the fp4 just perfectly fine for months, and before that the one plus x on android 11 just fine.
I would like to know what apps you use that would need the speed of anything besides the “best”?
( and for anyone wondering, one of the reasons you cant switch processor is because of the imei thats burned in. Changing that basically means that the whole id of the phone changes, including links to your mobile provider. It isnt allowed in some places )
Games
Like…?
Lately I’ve been playing Need For Speed Underground 2 on the AetherSX2 emulator. A Fairphone absolutely cannot do that.
Look bud, I’m not trying to attack Fairphone, you don’t need to be defensive. I’m just setting expectations that this is not a phone for people that need a high performance processor. The chipset is low-end, objectively. I’m sure it’s fine for people who don’t care about that stuff.
Seriously. What mobile games are worth time or money? Aren’t they all just pay to win now?
If that’s the sum total of your reasons for needing a more expensive, less free, less repairable phone, then I have nothing left except to laugh at you.
No, I just don’t have the time to explain the hundred obvious ways that a fast processor might benefit somebody, so I chose a single, INCREDIBLY obvious item near the top of the list for most people, and was hoping that I wouldn’t get follow-up idiotic responses like this. But alas!
Great news, really hope the 5 is next.
For me, the problem was that they don’t support the right bands for US carriers.
That’s not fair
I generally try to check every few years to see if they sell to the US yet. Last I checked they would finally ship FP4 to the US, but it will only work on T-Mobile :/ gonna check back in a few more years.
Well if you’re on ATT or any of it’s mvno’s good luck ever using any devices that isn’t on their approved list. I can’t even use my carrier unlocked Oneplus 7T. Really the only choice for device freedom in the “land of the free” is T-Mobile.
I’ve being following Fairphone since 2013, waiting for them to sell to Taiwan. After a years of waiting, in 2019 I just said fk it and bought one from official store, ship it with international packaging forwarding service. Couldn’t be happier with my Fairphone ever since.
I really wish another viable mobile OS would come out. I don’t want android and apple iOS is wearing thin on me.
Have you tried Ubuntu Touch?
Perhaps next year will be the year of the Linux Phone. Alas, the same problems that plague the Linux desktop plague the phone. Lack of software.
It’s also very difficult to move out of the Apple ecosystem once everything just works the way you think it should. 
Linux desktop is far more mature and there isn’t even a year for the Linux desktop yet. Linux mobile will probably never take off within our lifetime lmao.
I’m quite interested in the developments on waydroid that would allow the use of Android apps on a Linux phone.
Now that’s an interesting concept.
Agreed. I don’t have a home computer. All of my online experience is done through my iPhone. I can’t be messing around with phones I constantly need to tweak or troubleshoot. I’ve done it to myself, but I’m okay with where I’m at rn.
Oh yes please stick with Apple. I don’t think I have ever heard of a better use case scenario.
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not.
Seems like an honest recommendation to me. You fit the apple use case pretty well, so if it works for you, great. I’d argue a stock pixel using stock android would be comparable in terms of not needing to mess with stuff since its a very curated experience, since google then controls the hardware and software, like apple.
The trade off is you’re giving google (or apple) 100% access and control to everything you do on your phone.
With a fairphone or any other android with (e, grapheneOS, calyxOS, lineage, etc) you WILL need to change some settings, maybe play around with it a bit to get it working how you want, but you are the one in control. Its really not that difficult to develop the small amount of technological knowledge needed given the amount of help available online and I’d say its a necessary life skill these days just like learning to use a computer became a necessary life skill.
I tried it on a spare old phone and found it pretty unusable tbh. Very limited application choices and I hated the UI / app management work flow.
Also I hated that by default the terminal (and superuser privileges) are VERY locked down.
It’s possible I just didn’t know what I was doing tho ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I’ve put Ubuntu Touch on a Pixel 3a and had a pretty similar experience unfortunately. I see potential, but it’s just not usable yet (for me at least).
Dang, I haven’t ever tried it. I was hoping for more configurability.
It would end up getting ignored or quickly devolve into the same shit as the others. 😞
Fuck, if Microsoft couldn’t do it, then there’s not much hope for anyone else.
Why not Android?
degoogling intensifies
If you do that too much you’ll go blind.
I miss WebOS as a mobile OS and I can’t bear to see what LG has done do it.
Wait… was this ever good? I hate it so much on my TV.
I found it to be a very elegant OS, paired with a very elegant form factor in the Palm Pre. This was over 10 years ago, before Android had cemented its place, but WebOS was a bit ahead of its time, or at least out of sync with the time it was introduced. But it was a slick, intuitive OS that influenced the UX we take for granted today. I believe it was the first to have card-based task management. That satisfying “flick” to close an app was first seen on the Palm Pre.
Try Murena on fairphone!
Murena uses /e/OS, which is still Android though.
It’s less about the hardware and more about the software. I would love to use a fairphone
And I give it a 0/10 on having a 3.5mm connector
There is an adapter, buttt yeah I would really miss being able to just plug in a pair of headphones.
That is a solution to a problem nobody wanted.
If they gave us a second usb-c port instead I wouldn’t complain so much. So dumb that I have to choose between charging and audio
Is that really that much of an issue in the age of USB-C?
Yes, the 3.5mm jack is more durable than USB-C (since it is rotationally symmetric twisting doesn’t apply force to the connector), it maintains compatibility with billions of audio devices and doesn’t block your charging port if you use it.
Begs the question why aren’t charging jacks designed like audio jacks?
If you wanted them just for charging it would be fine. Barrel jacks are still pretty ubiquitous.
If you want them to also be data they get less great. They make 3.5mm/etc jacks with 3 “pins” and I assume more. But every time you’re inserting/removing the cable it’s rubbing past the insulators separating the contacts. Their failure per plug/unplug is higher than something like USB-C where the 24 contacts are being pushed together instead of brushing past each other. It would suck if you put in your USB-barrel and one of the contacts broke/bent.
There are plenty of products out there that use TS style audio plugs (more 2.5mm in my experience than 3.5mm) for DC power for portable devices. When you get to data transfer requirements, the higher pin counts of current connectors wouldn’t be space efficient.
See, you just described a thing and made a statement, but I don’t buy that one bit. I’ve broken several 3.5mm plugs but never once a USB-C.
I’m on the side of 3.5mm in phones, but there’s a reason XLR and 1/4" are the industry standards for audio.
I’m the opposite. I’ve broken several USB-C connectors, and not one 3.5mm
XLRs on phones? I can get behind that.
3.5 jack port is definitely not more durable than USB-C. If you have good headphones, the change that the 3.5 plug is gigantic in length and the cable thicc AF which causes a lot of stress in the plug due to very large leverage. Additionally, I prefer to use the DAC integrated in my headphones rather than using the low quality tiny DAC in my phone. And in digital, the cable thickness does not matter really.
Very few people are plugging their large headphones into their phones though. For a more reasonable pair of portable headphones or IEMs the size of the plug isn’t a problem.
But congratulations, you have hit on my biggest audio pet peeve! DACs matter very little these days. Anything talking about DACs and not the DAC/Amp stages is marketing BS. Even dirt cheap DAC chips will acoustically transparently convert the digital signal to analog in audio frequencies because it is so basic to do. DACs on their own are useless for audio anyway, what really matters in your audio signal is the amp circuitry after the DAC that applies gain to the signal to useful levels as the choices there do make an acoustic difference if the design is poor.
What makes you think the DAC/Amp in your headphones is going to be better than the one that is built into the SoC of your phone? I don’t think I’ve ever seen any measurements of headphone DAC/Amps.
I learned that from my father, who mostly listen to music from his phone using external headphone amp for his bayer dynamics studio headphones, or uses digital out (via Bluetooth) and let his other Bayern dynamics active headphones do the DAC. He is sure that he hears the difference, but of course that could all be in his head alone. I myself am not a hiFi enthusiast, I only find the tech behind it very interesting. (I listen to music using airPods and in my car using CarPlay, sorry iPhone user here, but thinking to migrate as soon as my iPhone X becomes unusable) But given my interest in tech, I appreciate the explanation, that cheap DAC chips are very good as well, these days.
I don’t get why you get so much downvotes, because it’s not as obvious as people make it out to be and there are plenty of adapters. So it’s a good question.
But yes. The 3.5mm jack had the thing companies say they are striving for: simplicity.
DACs are nice and everything but the phone can just decide to not connect properly. The DAC can decide it had enough of your phone. In either case you’d need to reconnect them. And that means unlocking your phone, because a secure phone will block streaming to ‘unknown’ USB-C devices, unless it’s unlocked during the negotiation phase. And if your connectors have become wonky for whatever reason: Well, no music for you.
And then there’s the issue where you have to have them at hand when you need them. In your car, on your person, while at work.
3.5mm is great because it actually “just works”. One of the few things that can claim such thing.
I recently bought a phone that lacked a 3.5mm jack, so I bought a splitter with a USBC charging port and a headphone jack. The problem I encountered was that the splitter reported to the phone that headphones were connected even if they were not. I was used to unplugging the headphones and have playback automatically pause, and resume when the headphones were put back in. With the splitter I was no longer able to do that. I don’t know if I bought a cheap ass splitter or if that’s the normal behavior for these things.
This is not the normal behavior, but I’d consider the adapter part of you headphone cable and just leave it on there. If you want to unplug, just unplug the headphones (including adapter) from the phone?
That means the charging cable also needs to be unplugged if I want to step away. Thanks for the info about it not being normal, I guess I just got a POS splitter.
Ah, so thats what you meant by splitter. Might I suggest, there are some very cheap battery powered Bluetooth receivers. Those might be a good solution for you, in case you hadn’t considered something like that.
Yes, that’s actually exactly what I ended up buying. It’s got a pause/play button, so I hit that and take the whole thing with me.
Negotiation is a thing for sure. It is possible, though I haven’t ever seen it implemented, that digital audio over USB-C or bluetooth can be blocked by DRM. It would seem business suicide to do something like limiting audio output to certain audio products but I wouldn’t put it past any short term minded profit seeking enterprise.
Yes, I should be able to play music, AND charge the phone without a 9 wire adapter like those universal charger plugs from 10 years ago. Wild concept. I wonder when phone tech will be able to support such a thing
I think phones should have 2 USB-C ports
Only if I can charge 2x as fast!! 😉
There is one that offers this, it has to batteries as well.
Live by the wire, die by the wire(with a 3.5mm plug/jack of course)
Yes, it is.
OK
my issue right now is that i use one of those charging + 3.5mm splitters in the car, but when they’re both connected there’s a loud ass buzz. a 3.5mm ground loop isolator works but made bass sound terrible. i’m probably gonna get an old phone just for music in the car 🤦🏽♂️
Even if they gave us a second usb-c port instead of a 3.5mm jack I’d be fine with that, don’t make me choose between charging and decent audio
The car doesn’t have Bluetooth connection?
nah, it’s an 08
deleted by creator
In car, I can recommend using android in the car using the touchscreen of the car. There you can manage audio as well as charging the phone. One cable to rule them all.
Yes, it’s fucking ridiculous! My cans are now either useless or cumbersome and everything else sounds awful! It’s like you people who just want some noise have never even heard decent audio!
I’ve got the Bose QC 45 headphones which can do both Bluetooth and 3.5 mm. The audio quality is the same between the two delivery methods. The only difference I’ve noticed is an occasional video/audio synching issue with Bluetooth which quickly corrects itself and is usually only an issue with older devices. It’s my understanding that this and the audio lag issue have been solved recently in newer devices.
I personally think Bluetooth is a shit standard that has slowly been fixed over the years, but it’s pretty much 100% there at this point
The real question I have is: is a decent DAC that hard to find? I bought a shit one because it’s only a back-up option for me, but I can’t imagine the good ones are scarce.
Tell it to the phone companies. A DAC and amp should be part of my phone.
Bose is shit.
No, the DAC used should be one that the headphones are designed for, so using integrated DAC of the Headphones should lead to best results just using a high end external DAC would be better.
Lol, your phone has not a good enough DAC that this would be hearable ä, but you do you
No way i’m carrying a dongle
New headphones come with lightning and USB C cable these days
I ain’t buying new ones either
See it positive: you don’t have to choose from many phones if you that much want a headphone jack 😄
Attach the dongle to your wired headset.
As well as a 5.25" floppy disc drive and betamax, you call that a phone?!? No thank you, I’ll stick with my x-phone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nezImUP0w
People complaining about 3.5mm jacks remind of the people who complained about how the iMac G3 didn’t have a 3.5" floppy drive. At first yeah it was weird to leave it out, but it’s been 9 years since the first smartphone launched without a 3.5mm jack (the OPPO R5 in 2014).
If you want ancient tech then your options will be limited.
Ancient tech? Looks at literally every laptop and desktop sold.
Headphone jack removal is anti-consumer and any device without one is missing a key component. Why would I buy a device missing a key component?
Plus you can find wired headphones EVERYWHERE. Walk into any gas station and pick up replacements for $10. Sure they may not be the best quality, but they work. Also, no charging, just plug them into your device. Also, no setup, just plug it in.
Ancient tech? Looks at literally every laptop and desktop sold.
I can’t tell you if any of my laptops have a 3.5mm jack. If they do, I’d rather have another USB-C port instead. And arguing that just because it’s still used in desktop computers, then it can’t be ancient, I’d like to draw your attention toward the rs232 port that still isn’t phased out entirely.
Why would I buy a device missing a key component
In case I missed it, would you like to point out where exactly you’re being forced to buy a specific phone?
I happen to be writing this on an android 13 phone with a 3.5mm jack (I had to check, but it’s there), it’s not like you can’t get a phone with the connector.
i actually find this argument flawed. Bluetooth is great but does not provide feature parity. correct me if I’m wrong but aptX was supposed to be lossless audio, but it has been shown that it has compression artifacts. I’ll be happy with Bluetooth only if we can have absolutely lossless audio
This is not a well thought out response.
The things you mention had workable replacements and/or were the loser in a standards war. Bluetooth headphones have weaker audio, battery limitations on the headphones and the streaming device and the argument for removing them is just not justified outside of forced path to profits for proprietary headphone sales. Also, there are USB-c headphone options and problems are two fold - clunky, costly adapters and increased stress on the phone’s main charging port.
It’s not even close to ancient and you’re argument is extremely weak.
Bluetooth headphones have weaker audio
Please define “weaker”.
forced path to profits for proprietary headphone sales
What are you talking about? How are you forced to buy some specific BT headphones for your phone?
And the argument about USB-C headphones being clunky? Sure, it may not be optimal, but you could always just buy a phone with a jack or give in and switch to BT.
So, the smaller version of the connector that studios use to this day is ancient, huh?
pfft musicians what the hell do they know about music
NOTHING
My electrician says that woodworking doesn’t need ancient tools like hammers.
Actually it’s even older. And it’s also not used in a phone.
The argument that 3.5mm jacks are somehow superior to a digital stream is so laughably flawed. The 3.5mm jack is a shit connector, always has been. It got its success from being paired with the original walkman, not exactly hifi equipment. The durability of the jack is wanting and a few specks of dust in the socket and you’re getting static when you move about.
I don’t know how many sockets I’ve had to replace over time because a male jack broke off in the socket. It’s one thing that the jack is so thin that it can break in your pocket. But when manufacturers then mount sockets, that doesn’t allow you to push the broken part out, and also uses some weird one-hung-low socket with a weird footprint that you can’t source with less than a 5k MOQ, and that is only after searching for an hour. Which then leaves you having to do all sorts of weird cowboy tricks in order to have a working sound output… Then you will get to my level of annoyance with the 3.5mm jack.
All those problems are not really a thing with 6.3mm jacks, but, by all means, keep believing that 3.5mm is superior because professionals use something that looks like it, and disregard everything else.
Ethernet must be ancient tech to you.
In an end-user device? Yes, it’s irrelevant. Use wifi unless you have a special usecase.
Wow, so gaming with reliable latency is a special usecase? Wi-Fi is awesome for convenience but it can never be better than wired because of physics.
so gaming with reliable latency is a special usecase
Yes, yes it is. Most people couldn’t care less, they just want convenience.
What are the physics you’re talking about?
Wi-Fi is a shared medium where airtime is split amongst multiple clients on a radio spectrum that is open for all the public to use… Wired gives each device dedicated bandwidth with no interference. Wireless gets better and better, but it can never, and will never, be faster than a dedicated cable.
None of that are physical limitations, it’s purely implementational. Legacy ethernet was half-duplex as well, before switching and dedicated pairs for tx/rx became the norm. Handling of the shared medium is done with CSMA-CA and not -CD, which was used for ethernet, so at least we learned something.
Copper is also susceptible to interference, both RFI and EMI. Sure you can mitigate the effect by shielding and twisting the wire pairs with different amounts of twists pr length. But in the end, copper is also susceptible to interference.
I’m not an RF engineer, and I don’t have an idea of what can be done to mitigate noise in wifi even further. But claiming that it’s an inherent physical limitation, that can’t be mitigated, that’s just defeatism. It’s about the implementation, not physical constraints.
The difference here is that 3,5mm jacks are not obsolete.
Nobody besides a few grumpy folks opposed the switch from microUSB to Type-C, for example, because we got something better instead.
Floppy drives got obsolete, because again, we got something better - disks! And then flash drives! Always a better, more convenient and functional option.
3,5 mm jack, however, is still completely relevant and is not replaced by anything. It is the only widely adopted consumer-grade standard for analog wired audio. Wireless audio has objective drawbacks: one more battery to control, lower reliability, poorer sound quality (not a big issue with most phones since their DACs are normally not audiophile-grade anyway, but still), higher price, pairing issues, and many more. And USB-C to 3,5mm dongles are obviously terrible: they can get lost, they don’t allow you to listen to music while charging your phone/transferring files, and they are yet another component to manage.
Essentially, wireless audio has been pushed down our throats, and we do not appreciate that. For me, not having a 3,5mm jack is one of the criterions that immediately kill any desire to buy that phone. It will just be a massive pain in the ass for me, and I don’t want that.
agree, and not just for 3,5mm jacks. If there is a way to do it with a cable, i will choose the cable instead of a wireless solution. The only time I didn’t was with a wireless mouse that, after a while, I just kept on the cable anyway. They are so very convenient, especially the 3,5mm jack.
Yes, same applies to everything. Thank God USB exists and powers so many wired (and also wireless) devices.
Also, Ethernet on computers is a must.
I don’t know if it’s me you’re calling a troll. If it is, I can assure you that I truly believe that the 3.5mm jack is a shit connector, it’s only place was in portable equipment, and that it’s superceded by bluetooth.
Maybe I presented my views in an inflammatory way, but as I’ve stated elsewhere, I wanted to get my view across in as little text as possible. Maybe also be a little provocative, so I’d actually get people to read the comment. But I believe what I said and it wasn’t formulated in that way to piss people off, just to entice and drive the point home. Exaggeration promotes understanding, but maybe my exaggerating got a little too much and disabled the understanding part.
I’ve been tinkering with electronics for close to 30 years by now, and my electronics engineering career is in its 3rd decade, and I have encountered issues with 3.5mm jacks time and again.
Trying to repair broken sockets or broken off jacks, still seated in sockets, is tedious and so low reward, when you can just get some BT headphones.
The BT headphones will break, sure, but I’d rather have good use of some 100€ headphones and a 300€ phone, not be frustrated by the wires tangling, and then discard the 100€ headphones when they break than the phone which can live for much longer. Besides if you’re buying the right BT headphones you’ll be able to source parts for it much easier than an obscure 3.5mm socket with some weird footprint.
Maybe it’s not time for the 3.5mm jack to die, for some, but for the rest of us, we don’t really care about it. Live and let die, but please stop moaning about it.
This is just proof smartphones are toys and not real tools.
They do everything poorly. iPhone video and photo looks like garbage compared to a real camera and now you can’t even play music without overly compressed bluetooth. This is like wanting a flip phone filter for your camera. It’s asinine and backward and you defend it like a lemming because HURR FLOPPY DISK SMALL. Apples and oranges. A universal connector capable of delivering a strong signal is not the same as a low capacity storage format.
But please do go on about how great your tracking device is
you do know that you could have made your point in a nicer manner, yes? why would we want to bring the strenuous tones of hollow outrage from reddit to here?
we are all better than that, even the big danish guys.
He didn’t even make a point. That was all insult and comparisons that don’t compare.
I’m sorry, but I had to say something. I’m so tired of non-technical people moaning about the out phasing of the 3.5mm jack, and especially the arguments about audio quality and vendor lock in that has been raised in this thread. I had to make sure that it was understood, that the view is not unopposed.
Could I have done it more diplomatically? Maybe, but I also wanted to drive my point home in as short a post as possible.
I asked chatgpt to help out rewriting my comment, but with your criticism in mind. It came up with:
While 3.5mm jacks may seem like a staple, it’s worth noting that technology evolves. Much like the transition from 3.5" floppy drives, change takes time to be widely accepted. The omission of the jack in smartphones isn’t about dismissing tradition but adapting to newer, more versatile alternatives. It’s been nearly a decade since the OPPO R5, and as technology progresses, embracing these changes can lead to a broader range of innovative features.
I don’t want to bore people to death, but I can also see now how perhaps I could have attacked the technology instead of the people.
We are better than our old /u/ on reddit, and we must strive to keep it that way. Competing with reddit on toxicity, will be a fight we’ll never be able to win.
Thank you for calling me out on my BS, and helping us all to keep the fediverse a better place.
Technology evolves?
You need an extra clump of stuff in your pocket that’s terribly unreliable now or your top shelf standard audio equipment now needs replaced by our branded earbuds that sound terrible. PROGRESS.
This isn’t progress. This is forced obsolescence. Literally everything about it is worse. I can put my phone in a plastic baggie when it’s raining, but I’m not carrying around an extra fucking DAC/amp everywhere. I just have to deal with crappy wireless earbuds.
your top shelf standard audio equipment now needs replaced by our branded earbuds
What company does this? I keep hearing the argument, but I have no clue who it is.
I haven’t found a phone my Jabra headsets couldn’t connect to. Only my ps4, but that is not really part of this discussion.
Thank you!
Much appreciated, unironically. All hail the fedi!
You know the kind of guy who writes nothing but bad things and troll comments, and then wonders why his life sucks? Well… that was me. Every time something good happened to me, something bad was always waiting around the corner. Karma. That’s when I realised I had to change. So, I switched from reddit and joined the fediverse. I’m just trying to be a better person. My name is
Earlbigdanishguy.We need to be better, reddit can go suck a donkey, but if we want this to be a viable alternative down the road, we need to be better. Calling each other out on bull shit behavior is warranted from time to time.
Get over it, gramps 🤣
The number of comment that says " I would buy one, but" is amazing !
What this company is doing is what every company should do, from laptop to tablet. As well as tractors. Dot being able to repair what you buy is fundamentally flawed!
TBF it’s not available in the USA, and a lot of us are in the USA…plus even if we got one, a lot of the bands wouldn’t work, so it’s not like you’d have a good connection with it.
How tragic. I’m sorry. As a dirty Yuropoor I’ll buy one in your place and enjoy it for you.
Please do lol, I’d love to own one but it’d be a wifi brick at best here state side.
It’s compatible with most of T-Mobile bands.
Unfortunately T-Mobile is really crap in most of the USA outside of major cities. I’m basically in a dead zone with T-Mobile in my town. ATT isn’t much better and Verizon is the best but both are still lacking… literally dropped calls in some areas.
That sucks when you are stuck in an area like that. I’ve had t-mo for about 15 years now and they’ve been great and have solid coverage everywhere I’ve been in and outside the state. Verizon really is a better option for more rural locations though generally. I had them for a little while when T-Mo didn’t have great coverage where I was. And I really dislike ATT so they were a hard pass lol
That’s the biggest thing for me. If I can get a similar phone to work in the US with no stability or functional compromises, I’m happy.
“Not available” in a given country doesn’t really mean anything these days. You can buy anything online and get it shipped anywhere. The question I have is does it work on American wireless networks? Because if it does, you can figure out how to acquire a phone…
You’re right, it is amazing. These people are giving honest constructive criticism of a product. Companies often have to pay money to get that information. These complaints are generally valid as well.
The company’s commitment to repairability is commendable but it’s in lieu of other important factors. If I have to make the choice between having the newer OS with stronger, more powerful hardware or the ability to repair my device I’m going to choose the former every time. From the get-go the device might last longer simply because I won’t want to get rid of it as quickly. The 5 is of course a significant improvement over previous releases but it’s still behind. If they can deliver a device that is not immediately outdated in comparison to other phones of similar price then this would be a no brainer for me and likely others as well.
Similarly availability is another major factor. You can’t buy what you can’t get your hands on. Even more importantly it’s even more futile to buy one for a network that doesn’t support it at all. Obviously the creators just aren’t ready to expand into another market and that’s fine but it doesn’t make the criticism any less important for their mission.
For the same price, a Fair Phone is always going to be outdated. They can’t scale as much as the big manufacturers can and they (are trying to) avoid slave labor etc.
It’s simply not possible to be as cheap as the others who do everything to be as cheap as can be.
Yet they don’t sell in the USA, and they don’t have a headphone jack. A company meant for repairability and reliability not having a headphone jack. That’s like when framework removed it from the 16 inch laptop.
I don’t think your comparison to Framework is justified since 1) they made a headphone jack expansion module that’s available along with all the other ports and 2) the Framework 16 has 6 expansion bays instead of 4. If you need a headphone jack you get a 25% increase in configurable ports, and if you don’t need one you get a 50% increase in ports. Plus, you can easily switch between those two cases.
- that is a solution to a problem nobody wanted.
- Technically 5 if you’re using one of them for the headphone jack (which you wouldn’t need if it was included on the device ready). Also the one with 4 already has a headphone jack included, so you’d still have 4 available ports.
And 3.
They’re small and I could lose it and would have to spend even more money for a replacement.
If my FP4 dies in the next year, I will fix it. Because iFixit gave it 10/10.
I would love one of it wasn’t so big. I’m sick of big phones.
This. I just ordered an S23, just because it’s pretty much the smallest phone you can get (apart from the zenfone, which has a worse update policy).
Got a Zenphone 9 because I don’t really care about wireless charging. The hardware is great, but the software has it’s problems sometimes, like some missing QoL features. On the upside: Not nearly as much bloatware as other phones, especially Samsung ones.
To me I’d still say the ZenFone isn’t a small phone. Not only is it bigger than my current phone (pixel 3) its also bigger than some phones in the 2010s that were lauded for their large screens. We literally have no mainstream small phones, what we call small now are just smaller than the ginormous ones that have been normalised.
Samsung basically has a duplicate app installed for each stock Google app. And I think short of disabling it via adb, there is no option. But Samsung has really turned around and has a relatively good update policy in place. If not the Pixel, then Samsung is okay for me. I had love to have the Fairphone but it seems like they sell in limited markets only worldwide.
I never buy phones without bootloader unlocking capability for that reason
Agreed, I happened to just make this mockup chronicling my journey through screen sizes. I loved the HTC One m7, the pixel 2 despite being a bit larger was still comfortable because it still has a “chin” at the bottom. I thought going to the pixel 5 would be fine and I chose it because it’s within ~1mm of the same body dimensions, but I forgot to account for the screen going all the way to the top/bottom - trying to press the back button at the bottom of the screen with 1 hand is so much more of a stretch and it sometimes makes my hand sore. Given that I’ve had the P5 for a while and my hand still hasn’t adjusted I just can’t go to a bigger phone, especially since the P5’s
increased height over the 2lower screen bottom compared to the P2 makes it want to flip backwards out of my hand when I’m trying to reach down to the back button. At a minimum I need my next phone to be same or smaller than the P5.(Comparison: https://i.imgur.com/gAc306o.png )
That said, I get that FP wants to make a repairable phone that appeals to the masses, and it might hurt that mission to cater to a specific crowd instead of competing with the veritable hand-tablets that other companies are producing. I just hope that they grow large enough to be able to make a “Luddite” version though with a non-cramp-inducing size and a headphone jack. I don’t care either way about headphone jacks but I feel like there’s a lot of overlap between the crowds that want smaller phones and people who want headphone jacks.
Agree, I want something that fits in my pocket and that I don’t have to perform hand gymnastics to use.
I would buy one in a heartbeat if it was smaller… My S22 barely fits in my pants pocket, and barely usable with one hand.
Still waiting for compact phones to return…RIP sony xperia
Same. I got a fairphone 4 after my beloved one plus X which was the perfect size… I just dont use a big part of my screen
The OnePlus X is such a beautiful phone. Sadly there’s no ROM left that’s being maintained.
Ye, latest rom i found back then was a lineageos rom that was android 11, june 2022 release iirc ( or 2021? ). It was awesome and worked great. Alas, after 8 years it is now my spare phone incase of issues :)
S10e forever.
People just don’t seem to buy compact phones. The IPhone mini was a flop.
My daughter really loves my old S10e. Apart from the dwindling battery life, it’s still an awesome phone, capable of taking beautiful photos.
Yeah it’s a shame the processor also wasn’t that power efficient yet. The new Snapdragon Gen2 would bring insane battery life to small phones.
The Zenfone line is your best bet for a compact phone today. I switched from the LG V60 to the Zenfone 10 when it came out and it’s no contest. I loved my V60 but its laughably massive to me now
I want the headphone jack back.
Lack of one is an immediate showstopper for me, too.
Genuinely curious, is it the lack of Bluetooth earphones? I can’t remember the last time I saw someone using wired earphones
It was definitely a showstopper when Apple first did it because most people were still using wired earphones, but these days everything is wireless
Not who you asked, but I also refuse to buy a phone without a headphone jack. I am constantly listening to music/podcasts/audiobooks on my phone while out and greatly prefer using wired headphones over wireless for a number of reasons-
-Bluetooth can be finicky in connection. No matter the pair I’ve used, just the act of walking can make the connection falter at times and there’s no way to fix it
-Bluetooth headphones have a much worse cost/performance ratio than wired when it comes to sound quality.
-I use the mic when taking calls and even a cheap wired mic is dramatically better than any bluetooth one
-Wired headphones don’t have a battery. This is huge for me. I hate, hate, hate it when caught out and my headphones run out of battery. Additionally, batteries put a life span on electronics that I like not having to think about with my headphones.
-Simplicity. If I want to use my headphones, I plug them in. If I don’t, I unplug them. I can quickly switch to a new device when I want to use them on something else. I don’t have to think about what they are paired with at any time or fiddle with it when swapping devices
-Small case, but I like that when I need to take my headphones out for a bit, I can just ease one out and leave it wrapped around my ear rather than deal with the case just to talk to a cashier
Absolutely that, confirm as OP.
For me it’s mostly two major reasons: Security and ease of use.
I don’t leave Bluetooth turned on unless I actively need it.
And wireless headphones are just one more thing to charge. I’ve tried them. It ended up more of a hassle than just…plugging in a wire.
Oh okay. For me, the hassle of coiling the wires and resolving knots was infinitely greater than keeping track of the limited battery life of my earbuds
One of the best headphones I’ve ever used had magnets in the buds which basically eliminated tangles completely. Highly recommend sport earbuds with magnets.
No, it’s because of batteries. At least for me. We’re creating more ewaste by shoving Bluetooth earbuds down our throats due to no headphone jack.
Edit: Currently rocking the Pixel 7 Pro, and once I’m done with this phone (I hope to have it for at least 4 more years), I hope Sony still has headphone jacks on their phones. Since that’s what I’ll most likely go for.
My $350 Motorola phone has a headphone jack and an SD slot. And apparently superior build quality from what I’ve seen of my girlfriend’s and coworker’s P7s.
I too can vouch for Motorola. I have the 200$ G31 and it’s got a headphone jack and micro-sd-slot. I’m very pleased with its quality and performance so far, and hope it lasts some years to come.
Honestly I feel that.
The delay inherent to bluetooth headphones is unbearable for me
Also, you know, wired headphones don’t have batteries
BT delay is such a pain in games. And honestly for me not needing fucking batteries for every damn device in my life is a highly preferred feature. Fucking hate that every device has a separate time limit that I have to keep track of.
I could plug a MIDI keyboard to my Galaxy Note 9, play it on FL Studio Mobile and send the audio to a mixer
Not OP, but some cars don’t have bluetooth. My 2009 honda civic didn’t have bluetooth for music. It had bluetooth, but just for the handsfree calling (really dumb), but I also swapped the head unit myself to an android head unit. While there are adapters for USB-C to aux, I found the ones I got weren’t super reliable. My phone doesn’t have an aux, but I wanted one. I made the sacrifice of no aux to get 5G on a different model phone instead. It’s worked out, but when looking for phones in the future having an aux port is a point in that phones favor.
This is why I hope to go for Sony in the future.
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For me it’s the micro SD card. Which the FP5 has… but I use my phone for emulators, and their phones aren’t as powerful as I would need. Also, they don’t sell in the US, so I couldn’t use it even if I wanted.
I would buy one if they shipped globally and it was about 100-150€ cheaper. The specs are not worth 700€. I would also need official GrapheneOS support as well.
The specs are not worth 700€
That’s what those specs are worth if everyone who’s part of it gets compensated for their work appropriately.
Imagine the price of a Galaxy S23 if Samsung actually was fair to everyone involved.
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It wasn’t free. You paid for it
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Someone gifted you a phone and you are not paying them money at all?
They’re probably talking about mommy and daddy that got them the phone. Which is why they’re responding like a 5 year old.
That is no way to insult a five year old!
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Agree with the message but not with the tone. I buy used phones from eBay and they are awesome. Like $100 for a newish device.
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Yeah it’s just crazy watching you be ableist as if you have a point
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I want a fucking headphone jack, thanks. Also 3 full size USB ports, a physical keyboard and a inch-thick battery, because fuck you.
They got us in the first half.
Okay but I’m absolutely serious and I bet a lot of the upvotes on that ARE unironic. There is a market for chunky, powerful portable devices -few manufacturers seem to want to cater to that type of customer however, probably because of a worldwide capitalism hegemony that exists to make you as placated and dumb as possible rather than empower you as a individual or something
It’s definitely more than the market is not large enough or willing to pay enough to make it worth while. A phone with 3 USB ports, a physical keyboard and a huge ass battery?
That’s not a phone, that’s a laptop. The amount of people willing to pay for that is going to be miniscule.
Capitalism isn’t purposeful in that way. One company might be, but if there was really a huge demand for that kind of thing someone would make it.
You’re mistaken. Imperialism is capitalism, my friend. War is just easy profit to some. Regardless, tech companies LOVE to work with the state to design products; most motherboards do have backdoors used by the likes of the NSA. So I think there’s a fair case to be made for it being more of a don’t-piss-off-the-government decision rather than scarcity of parts or demand.
There are products like the pinephone or what have you and they aren’t very successful, because most people demand convenience and not seeming weird to their peer group, both understandable impulses even as they lead us astray.
The government isn’t stopping manufacturers from making phones with bigger batteries and headphone jacks.
@invaderDJ @Porous_gray_matter. SBCs and their recent popularity show there IS a demand, as well as the existence of the pinephone period. I’m not convinced either. The government, -especially the USA’s undeniably has a vested interest in keeping versatile, powerful technology out of reach for most.
I wouldn’t say the Fairphone 5 wins prizes for looks or functionality but it does show that it is entirely possible to make a phone with a replaceable battery and repairable components in a modern form factor. If they, a small boutique phone maker can do it, then there is absolutely no excuse that Apple, Samsung, Oppo etc. cannot do the same.
One failing of Fairphone is you cannot buy the mainboard (the core component) from their store. All the other components yes, but not the mainboard. The core is not just the CPU, flash but also some other things like microphone are on it. It would also be nice if people could order all the parts that make up a Fairphone 5 and assemble one entirely from scratch.
I’ve also read through their ethics / green reports in the past, and while it talks it up with “supply chain engagement” reports and so on, most of their components are still made to order by Chinese OEMs so how far does it go down the chain in reality.
One failing of Fairphone is you cannot buy the mainboard (the core component) from their store. All the other components yes, but not the mainboard. The core is not just the CPU, flash but also some other things like microphone are on it. It would also be nice if people could order all the parts that make up a Fairphone 5 and assemble one entirely from scratch.
good point. with the mainboard available they would be on Framework’s level and that would be amazing
then there is absolutely no excuse that Apple, Samsung, Oppo etc. cannot do the same.
There is an excuse: it costs them money. If you can easily and cheaply repair your phone, you won’t buy a new one.
Technical excuse I meant.
Oh I know. But there is no technical excuse and they know it.
greed isn’t an excuse. Oh, sorry I was late but I have a good excuse: I’m lazy
“Sorry I’m late, it’s because of who I am as a person” is my usual reason.
Yes my apologies. I gave a really good excuse though gestures to self in the general
Few comments here that id like feedback from somebody, if possible :
- fairphone does not sell mainboards seperately because things like the phone imei is linked to it, which in itself is often linked to the mobile provider. Changing this isnt always allowed, depending on the country/state/whatever
- afaik they do still order from china oems, but i think they choose parts that are certified to not be made with childlabor, unethical stuff etc etc. If it is like that, nobody knows. Thats the problem with the whole fight against unethical stuff
this is great! i have a friend who needs a new phone and is ordering one, and i’m gonna get my hands on it to help him out and eventually flashing LineageOS on it if it comes out
i just wish they complied with the android stack security features so that it would be compatible with GrapheneOS. it would be the perfect phone
For real, we need more phones that are compatible with GrapheneOS. Going to Google for THE De-googled phone is nothing shy of extremely ironic and borderline hypocritical.
Can you ELI5 on the Android Stack Security compliance thing?
I would like to know about ASS, too.
NICE ASS
I really like the idea of these phones and I’d really buy one of my employer wasn’t providing me a phone and allowing me to use it for my private stuff.
Of course, it might be expensive for the hardware, but just look at the price of a non repairable and non ethical iPhone.
I’d jump on the Fairphone first thing if not having a single tie to an advertising/tracking company was an option. But here we are.
Also when visiting Fairphone forums, I get “This community is not accessible in your location.”
It is still a business and a business is gonna business, thus never gonna be as ethical as one would want.
Well I would buy the Murena version of the Fairphone. The one with /e/os installed. Apparently everything works on it, without google learning too much about you.
Still no 3.5mm jack, still no dice for me.
I don’t like it (that’s why I keep a Galaxy S9) but that ship has sailed.
I’ve got a Galaxy S9!
Same, terrible shame too
Just get a dongle.
I would totally buy one if they brought it to the US.
