Fairphone is great, but the one thing stopping me from buying a phone from them is the fact that they have a hefty price for low specs. I understand that the price is higher than normal, but I...
Fairphone is great, but the one thing stopping me from buying a phone from them is the fact that they have a hefty price for low specs. I understand that the price is higher than normal, but I don't want to buy a phone that is similar in specs to my old phone. I also think that hampers its promise of a long life: the phone may last 7+ years, but if it gets very slow, that doesn't matter.
I can understand your view. To elaborate on this. I feel we currently don't pay for products what they are worth. Somewhere along the production chain often people pay the price of this, either by...
I can understand your view. To elaborate on this. I feel we currently don't pay for products what they are worth. Somewhere along the production chain often people pay the price of this, either by overworking, mining in harsh conditions etc. We've grown accustomed to prices set by ignoring all these things. Ranging from clothing to electronics. I don't mind paying extra if I know the product will last me 3-4 times as long as any competitor. And to add to this, you end up paying less per year than other phones.
It requires a change of mindset to not having to get a new phone every 2-3 years to reap the actual benefits of a Fairphone or similar ethical product.
Exactly what you've written - current price we pay for most phones is that low compared to e.g. Fairphone, because of exploitation of workers in poorer countries, who make these phones. The price...
Exactly what you've written - current price we pay for most phones is that low compared to e.g. Fairphone, because of exploitation of workers in poorer countries, who make these phones. The price of Fairphone is actually the real price we should be paying for such phone if the wages and labour laws were alike in all parts of the world.
I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I don't want to buy such an expensive phone if it has outdated/mediocre specs. If it had mid to high end specs that were up-to-date, I would have probably...
I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I don't want to buy such an expensive phone if it has outdated/mediocre specs. If it had mid to high end specs that were up-to-date, I would have probably bought it.
Imagine what the high spec phone would cost if the labor was fair. I think the point is we are used to the idea that our money is worth more than other people's labor, especially if they aren't in...
Imagine what the high spec phone would cost if the labor was fair. I think the point is we are used to the idea that our money is worth more than other people's labor, especially if they aren't in our country.
I'm writing this on my OnePlus 3 to tell you that you needn't be overly concerned with that. The first thing that will limit you will be decreasing battery capacity, and that's where you'll notice...
I'm writing this on my OnePlus 3 to tell you that you needn't be overly concerned with that. The first thing that will limit you will be decreasing battery capacity, and that's where you'll notice increased hardware demands of apps, too. Mobile phones spend most of their time sleeping or bored, the few moments where the cores actually clock all the way up are important because you'll be staring at the screen, waiting, but unless you're gaming these bursty workloads won't get exponentially worse over time. And if you are the kind of person who is sensitive to a 8ms delay over a 6ms one than you're not in the target demographic anyway as you'll practically need to buy at least every second generation flagship.
I feel that many people in the US are influenced by iPhones, where OS upgrades actually do affect performance much more. I can also imagine that vendors that heavily tweak their Android and pack a lot of extra baggage in cough Samsung cough might release updates that aren't optimized for older phones and bog everything down.
With the modularity of the FairPhone, including the battery, you should be much more future proof than with a flagship.
Fair enough. I might be comflating reduced battery with worsening performance. I am not the type of guy to buy a new phone every year and I don't care about lightning fast performance, but I do...
Fair enough. I might be comflating reduced battery with worsening performance. I am not the type of guy to buy a new phone every year and I don't care about lightning fast performance, but I do want my phone to feel snappy in daily use (I don't game at all, I have my PC for that). It's also a question of price-point: if I am paying a high price, I want to get good performance, not mid to low-end specs. I wouldn't mind paying extra for that mind you.
If the only thing you do on your phone is browse the internet and socials chances are even a 5 year old phone will work just as fine. Specs don't tell the whole story. As a former gamer I was...
If the only thing you do on your phone is browse the internet and socials chances are even a 5 year old phone will work just as fine. Specs don't tell the whole story. As a former gamer I was hooked on what specs I could get for my money. Best bang for buck. It requires a change of mindset to allow yourself to let go of that and think about products from a different angle to appreciate what goes into making one.
My old Nokia 1020 from 2013 (which I've sold) would probably still make better photos than most smartphones on the market today if you know how to make use of its capabilities.
It boils down to, do you really need a flagship phone with top notch specs to do the same browsing and social media watching than on a 200EUR phone? If most people were honest they probably should pick the 200EU phone. And even then, is that 200EUR phone actually worth 200EUR? How many people were cut short so that I can have this phone for so cheap.
When you buy the phone the specs are good for the current software, and probably will hold up well for any future software. But as you get updates over the next few years those updates will be for...
When you buy the phone the specs are good for the current software, and probably will hold up well for any future software. But as you get updates over the next few years those updates will be for better and better hardware, but the hardware you have won't change.
If your phone has great specs when you buy it, that can help curb this for a while, but if the specs are low (like on the fair phone), this will happen much faster.
I remember this reasoning from decades ago in the desktop PC ecosystem, but my current computer is 13 years old and it hasn't gotten slower or less usable with current software, and it certainly...
I remember this reasoning from decades ago in the desktop PC ecosystem, but my current computer is 13 years old and it hasn't gotten slower or less usable with current software, and it certainly wasn't very powerful when I bought it. I still remember being quite disappointed when I upgraded my Pentium 100 to a Pentium 200 MMX and I almost didn't notice a difference. The only time I was actually happy with an upgrade was when I bought my first SSD.
But maybe this is different in the smartphone ecosystem.
Also, I would expect the Fairphone company to actually test updates before rolling them out, so any performance issues could be addressed by custom patches for old devices.
This is anecdotal, but my old iPhone 5s could handle running Spotify flawlessly back when it was "current". Although even then it was a few years dated. But now Spotify's UI is incredibly laggy,...
This is anecdotal, but my old iPhone 5s could handle running Spotify flawlessly back when it was "current". Although even then it was a few years dated. But now Spotify's UI is incredibly laggy, which is fine as I'm only using it as a dedicated device to cast my desktop Spotify to, but still. The hardware didn't change and the OS saw only a few minor updates, but the thing that really changed was the app. More powerful phones mean developers can cram more resource-intensive features into their apps. It also means performance optimization can slip without it being as much of an issue. And you unfortunately can't install old versions of apps on iPhones (maybe you can with .apks on android?), so you're at the whim of developers who are developing their apps for whatever the most popular devices are. And if yours isn't one of them, you're going to see a performance hit.
I'm sure Fairphone will make sure their OS updates are performant, but they can't control 3rd party apps, which is where most of a phone's usefulness comes from.
You can run old versions of apps on Android - in theory. But many online services cut them off beyond some date. I don't know if that applies to Spotify, though, but Netflix is an example where it...
You can run old versions of apps on Android - in theory. But many online services cut them off beyond some date. I don't know if that applies to Spotify, though, but Netflix is an example where it happens. Sometimes it's because they want more DRM, sometimes it's because the API changes, sometimes it's a conscious decision to force users to upgrade from buggy versions or to reduce the workload for their support, and sometimes it's pure spite and planned obsolescence.
Resources are more limited on a mobile, compared with a PC. So if an OS gets more demanding it won't make as much of an impact as it would on the phone.
Resources are more limited on a mobile, compared with a PC. So if an OS gets more demanding it won't make as much of an impact as it would on the phone.
The OS itself doesn't really get more demanding (the kernel and most Android libraries get faster if anything), but some apps do, and even if you'd freeze your whole app situation (which isn't...
The OS itself doesn't really get more demanding (the kernel and most Android libraries get faster if anything), but some apps do, and even if you'd freeze your whole app situation (which isn't practical, but let's pretend), the most demanding app would still be the browser, and it would be at the mercy of the complexity of the web sites you visit, which tends to go up (until people get sick of the cruft and reinvent minimalism, after which the cruft begins to accumulate again).
Some vendors push updates that aren't optimized (compared to the factory version where they squeezed everything out for benchmarks) or plain buggy, of course, but that can hit you with any phone, and I think FairPhone is less likely than most to do that because they're very close to stock Android.
Also people tend to pick up apps over the lifetime of a phone and most sd cards get slower when they fill up, which all conspires to make old phones feel more sluggish than when you got them.
I think the real hidden tax is typically security updates. As holes in security are uncovered the updates do generally effect performance. Negligible on a small scale, but through a devices life...
I think the real hidden tax is typically security updates. As holes in security are uncovered the updates do generally effect performance. Negligible on a small scale, but through a devices life they can stack up.
Yeah if it was just one or two security updates, but we have a lifetime effect of security updates. Not saying we don't need them, but the original code will usually be snappier because it doesn't...
One of us doesn't understand how security updates work on Android. I just assume they work like security updates on regular computers and those work like this: Some piece of code has a security...
One of us doesn't understand how security updates work on Android. I just assume they work like security updates on regular computers and those work like this:
Some piece of code has a security issue. For example it reads instructions from memory it doesn't own, allowing other processes to trick it into executing their instructions.
The developer fixes that issue and makes a bugfix release of the whole application. Nothing else is changed. The code performs just as well as before. There is no reason it shouldn't.
On your phone, the old release of the application is completely removed and the new application is installed in its place. It behaves exactly like the old release, except that it doesn't have the security issue.
Not every security update is performant impacting. Sometimes the patch can require more steps like validation. Maybe you need to double check a location you called information from to get parity....
Not every security update is performant impacting. Sometimes the patch can require more steps like validation. Maybe you need to double check a location you called information from to get parity. Maybe you need to restrict what is and isn't allowed to be input and where and where you can't call a file from. These rules require additional memory calls and cycles to compute. I know our smart rocks switch on an off at stupid rates, but little bits add up over time and nothing is free.
Yes, technically, the bugfix might result in a few more CPU cycles, but modern CPUs are so fast that these don't impact performance at all. Much, much slower computers were able to run secure...
Yes, technically, the bugfix might result in a few more CPU cycles, but modern CPUs are so fast that these don't impact performance at all. Much, much slower computers were able to run secure software decades ago. They could perform TLS handshakes quickly even though they reuquire a lot more CPU instructions compared to unencrypted connections.
At least for desktop computers, modern software requires better hardware because developers expect it and write their software accordingly, and because the software does more stuff.
I replaced my then current phone only because it's battery got really unusable + I've accidentally broken screen and it was rtoo costly to repair. It was a phone running Lineage OS Rom. I bought...
I replaced my then current phone only because it's battery got really unusable + I've accidentally broken screen and it was rtoo costly to repair. It was a phone running Lineage OS Rom. I bought it new in 2013, so about 10 years ago. Besides these issues, the OS itself and apps were working pretty good, I wouldn't replace it if didn't have screen and battery issue. It was Xiaomi Redmi 4 Pro. Replaced it this year for a Fairphone, since, well, the price is justified I think. This is the price we should actually be paying for such phones, if the wages and labour laws around the world were alike.
[edit]
Grammar corrections
I really don’t want to be the devil’s advocate, but based on a recent HN discussion, it doesn’t seem to be as repairable a device as one might think. It has no spare parts, the default service...
I really don’t want to be the devil’s advocate, but based on a recent HN discussion, it doesn’t seem to be as repairable a device as one might think. It has no spare parts, the default service support does only replacements instead of repairs, etc.
But the ethically sourced components seem to be true, so if that is your main motivating factor, go for it of course!
Can any owner of Fairphone please comment on this observations from HN comments?
Can any owner of Fairphone please comment on this observations from HN comments?
Too many hardware bugs with the FP3 that were never acknowledged by the vendor and unhappy customers with bricked FP4's that requires sending them back in.
Also buying a Fairphone instead of a wider used phone means you'll be able to repair it - but because all the internal parts are super customized, phone repair shops won't have their usual source of spare parts.
To add to that last point, after some time being frustrated with an FP4 and browsing the FP forums: it's not just availability of spare parts to repair shops. There doesn't appear to be a single mention in the forums of a repair shop willing to work on the FP4. There are numerous mentions of repair shops that are unwilling to, and of people being unable to find repair shops.
Not a FairPhone owner, so I can't comment on #1, but I did work as a phone/tablet repair tech for 3 years, so I want to give my thoughts on comments 2 and 3. #2 is absolutely true. Shops can only...
Not a FairPhone owner, so I can't comment on #1, but I did work as a phone/tablet repair tech for 3 years, so I want to give my thoughts on comments 2 and 3.
#2 is absolutely true. Shops can only stock a certain amount of parts so its usually parts for the most common phones (iPhone, Samsung, Google being the main ones). Think about how every Walmart store you walk into doesn't have every item you can find on the Walmart website. They also curate items so the items most people come in for are in stock. Repair Shops do the same.
#3 This is true and is often a sore point Techs don't like to talk about. Repair Shops (especially franchised locations) Will decline to work on items (even if they can get the parts) for Liability Reasons. This one's explanation will get a little lengthy.
First the obvious liability: If a Tech doesn't have familiarity with a device (each one is different) the possibility of damaging the device increases. If the tech damages the device during the repair a good repair shop with either order more parts to replace the damage or replace the device entirely if needed. This also costs the store in Time because the Tech will need to go slower in order to learn the process of repairing a new phone. For example I could swap screens on iPhones in about 15 mins, but learning a new phone could easily take over an hour.
Now the less obvious liability: Most shops offer a warranty on parts, therefore on specialty orders the phones will typically order at lest 2 of whatever part they need for two reasons:
If they only get one part in and its doesn't work they can use the other without having the customer wait. (bad batches happen all the time) The longer a customer waits the more likely it is for them them to go somewhere else or buy a new phone entirely.
If they need to warranty the part latter, they already have an extra in the store so the customer doesn't need to wait again.
However this comes at the downside of ordering parts you may never need, eating into any profits made from the repair in the first place and now the shop needs to store extra one-off parts
All of this costs the Repair Shop (franchise) money. Money that you could use for other things. For those reasons the franchise may put limits on what devices can be worked on. For example my shop didn't let us work one OnePlus phones because in our area they weren't popular enough to justify all the extra costs mentioned above even though we had the technical skills to do so. Most Shops aren't willing to take on all that liability for a phone brand most folks haven't heard of. I know the shop I worked at wouldn't.
Fairly happy. The specs are more than enough to handle anything I do with it without issues, the fact that it has survived a year in my care (or lack thereof) is a testament to its durability...
Fairly happy. The specs are more than enough to handle anything I do with it without issues, the fact that it has survived a year in my care (or lack thereof) is a testament to its durability (although to be fair I'm also using the soft case and screen protector also sold on their store, the latter already having saved the screen from a bad fall) and the battery life is good enough. The only downside in my book is the lack of a headphone jack, though at the time I bought the phone, they were offering a pair of wireless earbuds which mitigated the issue.
I moved to one from the Samsung note. Only negative is that it feels a bit cheaper to touch, a little thicker. Otherwise it works well. Not had an issue with it.
I moved to one from the Samsung note.
Only negative is that it feels a bit cheaper to touch, a little thicker. Otherwise it works well. Not had an issue with it.
Ok great, but are they shipping outside of the EU yet? I've been waiting for them to support Australia since before the Fairphone 3 was even announced (since at least 2016, Fairphone 3 was...
Ok great, but are they shipping outside of the EU yet? I've been waiting for them to support Australia since before the Fairphone 3 was even announced (since at least 2016, Fairphone 3 was announced ~2019), and no I don't count as "shipping to Australia" the site they linked me to that literally doesn't even have an option for reading the website in english-language.
I'm fine with buying online instead of at retail, but I need to use my phone for work, so at a bare minimum I want an official "yes, this thing will work in Australia" and at least some pretense of a warranty.
Cmon, it's been 7+ years already. If not for the Fairphone 2, then at least for the Fairphone 4.
Definitely just "no", and not a "not yet". Since I started waiting my old old phone died, and I'm looking for a sustainable option to replace my "new" phone (which is getting old). It's great to...
No(t yet?).
Definitely just "no", and not a "not yet". Since I started waiting my old old phone died, and I'm looking for a sustainable option to replace my "new" phone (which is getting old).
It's great to see they're finally broadening their shipping options, though.
Could you tell me about your experience /eos? I have been a Pixel die-hard (stock Android) but I have always had issues with repair-ability (lack there of) and until recently, updates for longer...
Could you tell me about your experience /eos? I have been a Pixel die-hard (stock Android) but I have always had issues with repair-ability (lack there of) and until recently, updates for longer than 2 years. I have wanted a FairPhone since I found out about them, but being in the US made them hard to come by.
It's been pretty good, I have had no issues with banking apps for example. I think it's mostly hindered by the hardware of Fairphone 3. But it's def not for those who need google stuff.
It's been pretty good, I have had no issues with banking apps for example. I think it's mostly hindered by the hardware of Fairphone 3.
As a Fairphone 4 user: 😑 But all jokes aside, this is fantastic news. The repairability of this phone is amazing, and seeing it also get software support (if slow/late, it is happening!) for years...
The company also just released Android 13 for the Fairphone 3
As a Fairphone 4 user: 😑
But all jokes aside, this is fantastic news. The repairability of this phone is amazing, and seeing it also get software support (if slow/late, it is happening!) for years to come is amazing. I wish more phones were like this. At least we might get right-to-battery-replacement soon.
How well should one expect Android 13 to run on such an old device? Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. I've honestly started dreading major OS updates because at the end of the...
How well should one expect Android 13 to run on such an old device? Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. I've honestly started dreading major OS updates because at the end of the day it sure makes my phone slow.
Did Fair phone crack the code or do they optimize the OS in some way?
I'd rather like to explore being a partner/franchisee with Fairphone. Although increasingly rare, I love auxiliary storage in an SD slot (a 256GB card is like $25 now), and the forked OS they...
I'd rather like to explore being a partner/franchisee with Fairphone.
Although increasingly rare, I love auxiliary storage in an SD slot (a 256GB card is like $25 now), and the forked OS they offer could be a boon to buyers who want a little more privacy, although where/how one browses, the apps they use, etc., still compromises that.
Only working on GSM (and they suggest only TMobile) is a bit of a narrow market, though, and it might be hard to get traction to sustain a franchise. I doubt Fairphone could keep one supplied sufficiently if they did establish, but I really like the Fairphone mission.
Fairphone is great, but the one thing stopping me from buying a phone from them is the fact that they have a hefty price for low specs. I understand that the price is higher than normal, but I don't want to buy a phone that is similar in specs to my old phone. I also think that hampers its promise of a long life: the phone may last 7+ years, but if it gets very slow, that doesn't matter.
I can understand your view. To elaborate on this. I feel we currently don't pay for products what they are worth. Somewhere along the production chain often people pay the price of this, either by overworking, mining in harsh conditions etc. We've grown accustomed to prices set by ignoring all these things. Ranging from clothing to electronics. I don't mind paying extra if I know the product will last me 3-4 times as long as any competitor. And to add to this, you end up paying less per year than other phones.
It requires a change of mindset to not having to get a new phone every 2-3 years to reap the actual benefits of a Fairphone or similar ethical product.
Exactly what you've written - current price we pay for most phones is that low compared to e.g. Fairphone, because of exploitation of workers in poorer countries, who make these phones. The price of Fairphone is actually the real price we should be paying for such phone if the wages and labour laws were alike in all parts of the world.
I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I don't want to buy such an expensive phone if it has outdated/mediocre specs. If it had mid to high end specs that were up-to-date, I would have probably bought it.
Imagine what the high spec phone would cost if the labor was fair. I think the point is we are used to the idea that our money is worth more than other people's labor, especially if they aren't in our country.
I'm writing this on my OnePlus 3 to tell you that you needn't be overly concerned with that. The first thing that will limit you will be decreasing battery capacity, and that's where you'll notice increased hardware demands of apps, too. Mobile phones spend most of their time sleeping or bored, the few moments where the cores actually clock all the way up are important because you'll be staring at the screen, waiting, but unless you're gaming these bursty workloads won't get exponentially worse over time. And if you are the kind of person who is sensitive to a 8ms delay over a 6ms one than you're not in the target demographic anyway as you'll practically need to buy at least every second generation flagship.
I feel that many people in the US are influenced by iPhones, where OS upgrades actually do affect performance much more. I can also imagine that vendors that heavily tweak their Android and pack a lot of extra baggage in cough Samsung cough might release updates that aren't optimized for older phones and bog everything down.
With the modularity of the FairPhone, including the battery, you should be much more future proof than with a flagship.
My OnePlus 3T is still kicking as well! I am now in that "barely use my phone at all anymore" stage, so that may factor in, but the thing still rocks.
Fair enough. I might be comflating reduced battery with worsening performance. I am not the type of guy to buy a new phone every year and I don't care about lightning fast performance, but I do want my phone to feel snappy in daily use (I don't game at all, I have my PC for that). It's also a question of price-point: if I am paying a high price, I want to get good performance, not mid to low-end specs. I wouldn't mind paying extra for that mind you.
If the only thing you do on your phone is browse the internet and socials chances are even a 5 year old phone will work just as fine. Specs don't tell the whole story. As a former gamer I was hooked on what specs I could get for my money. Best bang for buck. It requires a change of mindset to allow yourself to let go of that and think about products from a different angle to appreciate what goes into making one.
My old Nokia 1020 from 2013 (which I've sold) would probably still make better photos than most smartphones on the market today if you know how to make use of its capabilities.
It boils down to, do you really need a flagship phone with top notch specs to do the same browsing and social media watching than on a 200EUR phone? If most people were honest they probably should pick the 200EU phone. And even then, is that 200EUR phone actually worth 200EUR? How many people were cut short so that I can have this phone for so cheap.
I loved my oneplus3. It kept on chugging like time didn't matter until it took a swim in the river.
Why would it get slower over time? (Sorry if this is a stupid question, I've never owned a smartphone.)
When you buy the phone the specs are good for the current software, and probably will hold up well for any future software. But as you get updates over the next few years those updates will be for better and better hardware, but the hardware you have won't change.
If your phone has great specs when you buy it, that can help curb this for a while, but if the specs are low (like on the fair phone), this will happen much faster.
I remember this reasoning from decades ago in the desktop PC ecosystem, but my current computer is 13 years old and it hasn't gotten slower or less usable with current software, and it certainly wasn't very powerful when I bought it. I still remember being quite disappointed when I upgraded my Pentium 100 to a Pentium 200 MMX and I almost didn't notice a difference. The only time I was actually happy with an upgrade was when I bought my first SSD.
But maybe this is different in the smartphone ecosystem.
Also, I would expect the Fairphone company to actually test updates before rolling them out, so any performance issues could be addressed by custom patches for old devices.
This is anecdotal, but my old iPhone 5s could handle running Spotify flawlessly back when it was "current". Although even then it was a few years dated. But now Spotify's UI is incredibly laggy, which is fine as I'm only using it as a dedicated device to cast my desktop Spotify to, but still. The hardware didn't change and the OS saw only a few minor updates, but the thing that really changed was the app. More powerful phones mean developers can cram more resource-intensive features into their apps. It also means performance optimization can slip without it being as much of an issue. And you unfortunately can't install old versions of apps on iPhones (maybe you can with .apks on android?), so you're at the whim of developers who are developing their apps for whatever the most popular devices are. And if yours isn't one of them, you're going to see a performance hit.
I'm sure Fairphone will make sure their OS updates are performant, but they can't control 3rd party apps, which is where most of a phone's usefulness comes from.
You can run old versions of apps on Android - in theory. But many online services cut them off beyond some date. I don't know if that applies to Spotify, though, but Netflix is an example where it happens. Sometimes it's because they want more DRM, sometimes it's because the API changes, sometimes it's a conscious decision to force users to upgrade from buggy versions or to reduce the workload for their support, and sometimes it's pure spite and planned obsolescence.
Resources are more limited on a mobile, compared with a PC. So if an OS gets more demanding it won't make as much of an impact as it would on the phone.
The OS itself doesn't really get more demanding (the kernel and most Android libraries get faster if anything), but some apps do, and even if you'd freeze your whole app situation (which isn't practical, but let's pretend), the most demanding app would still be the browser, and it would be at the mercy of the complexity of the web sites you visit, which tends to go up (until people get sick of the cruft and reinvent minimalism, after which the cruft begins to accumulate again).
Some vendors push updates that aren't optimized (compared to the factory version where they squeezed everything out for benchmarks) or plain buggy, of course, but that can hit you with any phone, and I think FairPhone is less likely than most to do that because they're very close to stock Android.
Also people tend to pick up apps over the lifetime of a phone and most sd cards get slower when they fill up, which all conspires to make old phones feel more sluggish than when you got them.
I think the real hidden tax is typically security updates. As holes in security are uncovered the updates do generally effect performance. Negligible on a small scale, but through a devices life they can stack up.
Security updates shouldn't affect performance at all unless they are mitigating hardware bugs like Meltdown/Spectre, but those are really rare.
Yeah if it was just one or two security updates, but we have a lifetime effect of security updates. Not saying we don't need them, but the original code will usually be snappier because it doesn't have so many extra steps.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/default.html
https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security.html#tabs-f457c20a21-item-343ee79b37-tab
https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2023-07-01 (these are just in the last 13 days)
There are a TON of security updates being performed all the time that over a course of a few years can start to be noticeable.
One of us doesn't understand how security updates work on Android. I just assume they work like security updates on regular computers and those work like this:
Why would that slow down anything on your phone?
Not every security update is performant impacting. Sometimes the patch can require more steps like validation. Maybe you need to double check a location you called information from to get parity. Maybe you need to restrict what is and isn't allowed to be input and where and where you can't call a file from. These rules require additional memory calls and cycles to compute. I know our smart rocks switch on an off at stupid rates, but little bits add up over time and nothing is free.
Yes, technically, the bugfix might result in a few more CPU cycles, but modern CPUs are so fast that these don't impact performance at all. Much, much slower computers were able to run secure software decades ago. They could perform TLS handshakes quickly even though they reuquire a lot more CPU instructions compared to unencrypted connections.
At least for desktop computers, modern software requires better hardware because developers expect it and write their software accordingly, and because the software does more stuff.
I replaced my then current phone only because it's battery got really unusable + I've accidentally broken screen and it was rtoo costly to repair. It was a phone running Lineage OS Rom. I bought it new in 2013, so about 10 years ago. Besides these issues, the OS itself and apps were working pretty good, I wouldn't replace it if didn't have screen and battery issue. It was Xiaomi Redmi 4 Pro. Replaced it this year for a Fairphone, since, well, the price is justified I think. This is the price we should actually be paying for such phones, if the wages and labour laws around the world were alike.
[edit]
Grammar corrections
I really don’t want to be the devil’s advocate, but based on a recent HN discussion, it doesn’t seem to be as repairable a device as one might think. It has no spare parts, the default service support does only replacements instead of repairs, etc.
But the ethically sourced components seem to be true, so if that is your main motivating factor, go for it of course!
Can any owner of Fairphone please comment on this observations from HN comments?
Not a FairPhone owner, so I can't comment on #1, but I did work as a phone/tablet repair tech for 3 years, so I want to give my thoughts on comments 2 and 3.
#2 is absolutely true. Shops can only stock a certain amount of parts so its usually parts for the most common phones (iPhone, Samsung, Google being the main ones). Think about how every Walmart store you walk into doesn't have every item you can find on the Walmart website. They also curate items so the items most people come in for are in stock. Repair Shops do the same.
#3 This is true and is often a sore point Techs don't like to talk about. Repair Shops (especially franchised locations) Will decline to work on items (even if they can get the parts) for Liability Reasons. This one's explanation will get a little lengthy.
First the obvious liability: If a Tech doesn't have familiarity with a device (each one is different) the possibility of damaging the device increases. If the tech damages the device during the repair a good repair shop with either order more parts to replace the damage or replace the device entirely if needed. This also costs the store in Time because the Tech will need to go slower in order to learn the process of repairing a new phone. For example I could swap screens on iPhones in about 15 mins, but learning a new phone could easily take over an hour.
Now the less obvious liability: Most shops offer a warranty on parts, therefore on specialty orders the phones will typically order at lest 2 of whatever part they need for two reasons:
However this comes at the downside of ordering parts you may never need, eating into any profits made from the repair in the first place and now the shop needs to store extra one-off parts
All of this costs the Repair Shop (franchise) money. Money that you could use for other things. For those reasons the franchise may put limits on what devices can be worked on. For example my shop didn't let us work one OnePlus phones because in our area they weren't popular enough to justify all the extra costs mentioned above even though we had the technical skills to do so. Most Shops aren't willing to take on all that liability for a phone brand most folks haven't heard of. I know the shop I worked at wouldn't.
I hope this helps answers some of your questions.
To be fair, if that is a criterion you'll be pretty much limited to Samsung.
Current owner of a Fairphone 4, seeing the Fairphone 3 still chugging along is encouraging to see regarding the future of its successor.
How happy are you with the Fairphone 4?
Fairly happy. The specs are more than enough to handle anything I do with it without issues, the fact that it has survived a year in my care (or lack thereof) is a testament to its durability (although to be fair I'm also using the soft case and screen protector also sold on their store, the latter already having saved the screen from a bad fall) and the battery life is good enough. The only downside in my book is the lack of a headphone jack, though at the time I bought the phone, they were offering a pair of wireless earbuds which mitigated the issue.
I moved to one from the Samsung note.
Only negative is that it feels a bit cheaper to touch, a little thicker. Otherwise it works well. Not had an issue with it.
Ok great, but are they shipping outside of the EU yet? I've been waiting for them to support Australia since before the Fairphone 3 was even announced (since at least 2016, Fairphone 3 was announced ~2019), and no I don't count as "shipping to Australia" the site they linked me to that literally doesn't even have an option for reading the website in english-language.
I'm fine with buying online instead of at retail, but I need to use my phone for work, so at a bare minimum I want an official "yes, this thing will work in Australia" and at least some pretense of a warranty.
Cmon, it's been 7+ years already. If not for the Fairphone 2, then at least for the Fairphone 4.
Outside of EU? Yes. Australia? No(t yet?).
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/fairphone-is-coming-to-america/
Definitely just "no", and not a "not yet". Since I started waiting my old old phone died, and I'm looking for a sustainable option to replace my "new" phone (which is getting old).
It's great to see they're finally broadening their shipping options, though.
I have Fairphone 3+ with /e/os which was pre-installed. Solid phone, works for my needs and I can repair it if needed.
Could you tell me about your experience /eos? I have been a Pixel die-hard (stock Android) but I have always had issues with repair-ability (lack there of) and until recently, updates for longer than 2 years. I have wanted a FairPhone since I found out about them, but being in the US made them hard to come by.
It's been pretty good, I have had no issues with banking apps for example. I think it's mostly hindered by the hardware of Fairphone 3.
But it's def not for those who need google stuff.
As a Fairphone 4 user: 😑
But all jokes aside, this is fantastic news. The repairability of this phone is amazing, and seeing it also get software support (if slow/late, it is happening!) for years to come is amazing. I wish more phones were like this. At least we might get right-to-battery-replacement soon.
How well should one expect Android 13 to run on such an old device? Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. I've honestly started dreading major OS updates because at the end of the day it sure makes my phone slow.
Did Fair phone crack the code or do they optimize the OS in some way?
I'd rather like to explore being a partner/franchisee with Fairphone.
Although increasingly rare, I love auxiliary storage in an SD slot (a 256GB card is like $25 now), and the forked OS they offer could be a boon to buyers who want a little more privacy, although where/how one browses, the apps they use, etc., still compromises that.
Only working on GSM (and they suggest only TMobile) is a bit of a narrow market, though, and it might be hard to get traction to sustain a franchise. I doubt Fairphone could keep one supplied sufficiently if they did establish, but I really like the Fairphone mission.