Fairphone is unique in the world of smartphones. It’s pretty much the only company trying to build a sustainable device that isn’t glued together and hostile to the repair community. Today, Fairphone is announcing a brand-new flagship: the Fairphone 4, which brings an updated design and better specs while still shipping with all the modularity you would expect.
This should be a requirement for all hardware in my opinion. It’s incredibly fucked up that stuff like phones and laptops is only expected to last for a year or two and then get replaced.
I find it interesting that the modularity probably makes it much easier and cheaper for them to provide 5 year warranty. Personally I would even prefer them sending me the replacement part alone instead of sending the entire device back for warranty.
Imagine if any Apple store could easily repair any device that is brought in within 15 minutes… IMHO the entire debate around “right to repair” reminds me of the copyright and DRM debate, i.e. trying to fix an “issue” (piracy) with increasingly draconian methods, which they wouldn’t have if they would pull their head out of their asses and just provided decent customer service…
That’s an excellent point. Being able to swap components out easily makes it much easier to keep it running. Apple is by far the worst offender where everything is just glued together. It’s an ultimate case of form over function.
And I think we’re at the point now where things don’t need to be getting any thinner. It’s fine to have a slightly bulkier device if it means it can be repaired easily. And yeah, if it can be user serviceable that’s even better.
Apple is by far the worst offender where everything is just glued together. It’s an ultimate case of form over function.
Maybe I am wrong (never owned a Apple device) but from following a bit the right to repair debate it looks to me like they are actively trying to prevent 3rd party repairs. And they seem to have (had) at least plausible reasons for this.
Due to the mono-culture and relatively long service life of their devices it is easy to make nock-off replacement parts and accessories of substantially lower quality. And given that Apple is selling the original accessories and spare-parts for ridiculously high prices this “fake” product market seems to have been booming for a while. So Apple had to deal with a lot of support issues coming from 3rd party spare-parts and accessories.
A reasonable company would have decided that their customers would probably chose 1st party spare-parts and accessories if they were available and affordable, but Apple doubled down and started a war against repairability and all sorts of scare campaigns about using 3rd party chargers etc.
Apple deny this, but I definitely think that’s part of it. They take the idea of a walled garden to an extreme and try to remove third parties from the equation wherever they can.
Looks cool, but I’m not a fan of the notch and the reason for the removal of the 3.5" jack is spotty at best:
Fairphone calls the removal of the 3.5mm jack ‘a difficult decision’ in an explanation. “At the end of the day, it’s about making a product that will last five years. We had to remove as many vulnerable parts as possible, and a 3.5mm jack gets all sorts of dust over time. Plus, the phone with an audio jack was too wide. We don’t want users to throw away their working wired headphones and we’re making sure that a USB-C adapter is available for purchase through our sales channels.”
So let me get this straight: 3.5" jacks fill up with dust, but USB-C ports don’t? At least the Fairphone 3/3+ has one, I guess.
I mean, they need a USB-C port anyways.
But yeah, you can just take a needle and scoop out the dust from the headphone jack.
2 years after the FP3 was released…
I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but yeah, I assume this also means they won’t release too many new modules for the FP3 anymore.
With how fast-moving and non-stardardizable the hardware world is, I guess, this is something one could’ve seen coming anyways, but still unfortunate, and their FP3 marketing was somewhat dishonest there.Yes, if they bolster long-term use, repairability and upgradability, they should not have subsequent models coming out every two years…
I think you can still get FP2 parts, and they mentioned that they won’t drop FP3 parts
Mostly looks nice, but why would they get rid of the headphone jack? :(
That and the camera in the screen rule this one out for me. Not that it matters since Fairphone 3 is pretty fresh still. Hoping it lasts until better design trends come.
E: I’m kind of wondering if 3 and 4 are actually supposed to coexist.
The 3 has been discontinued but the 3+ according to their website is temporarily out of stock but will become available again.
That’s indeed puzzling but apparently Fairphone stated that due to the 5 year guarantee period the headphone jack wasn’t an option because it’s too vulnerable. Also the phone would have become too large with a 3.5mm jack. It’s a pity really I love the simplicity of the analog headphone jack.
That sucks.
Sliminess is such a stupid feature compared to an audio jack.
I love the idea of the fairphone, I’ve somewhat been looking forward to my 5 year old iPhone SE giving up the ghost so I can get one!
Still, I haven’t upgraded yet because there are virtually no phones smaller than 5" anymore much less a 4" phone like the original iPhone SE. Even the second edition SE was 4.7" and the new iPhone 12 “mini” is 5.4". I prefer a small phone that is comfortable to use one handed, that fits easily in my pocket, and that I can put a thick case onto to protect it. The 6.3" screen on the Fairphone 4 is a real bummer to me.
I’m with you on this. It’s hard to find a good small phone anymore. It took me a long time to upgrade but that was only because my previous phone wouldn’t charge anymore. Now I have this huge 6"+ nokia that’s clunky for me to use one handed.
