alt Hacker NewsYou can buy used Pixels, e.g. from 8a up. I'd claim that this is much more ecological than buying a new Fairphone. I suppose that a Pixel is of a higher quality and has less defects than a Fairphone (which changed the ODM several times). --
This said, I would never use /e/ and Murena as I read too many things I don't like.
Fairphones have very poor updates with rapidly degrading privacy and security over their lifespan. They don't keep up with important updates from the beginning and it gets much worse over time. Updates are very important for sustainability. They're also missing important hardware-based security protections which are needed to protect user data in the real world. They've consistently had major issues such as using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and OS images which they've usually failed to acknowledge.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch with no movement to updating to a newer one. Fairphone 6 is set to end up in the same situation and it isn't far away. They nearly entirely stop providing Linux privacy and security patches once this happens.
Android patches come around half a year late since the Android Security Bulletins themselves are published very late and Fairphone lags 1-2 months or more behind those.
There's extremely little information available on Fairphone's ODM partner T2Mobile and their supply chain. The information is mainly a list of suppliers without information on working conditions, pay, environmental protection or nearly anything else. T2Mobile has been their ODM since the Fairphone 4 and earlier information is no longer relevant. They moved away from their original ODM partnership to another with the Fairphone 3 and then to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4. It's unclear if pay and working conditions are better at T2Mobile for Fairphones than they are for their other products and in what way they're better. It's unclear how it comes to Foxconn for Apple and Google phones.
Apple and Google design their devices and handle the firmware and software. Fairphone is using hardware, firmware and software provided by T2Mobile. Fairphone is heavily reliant on what's provided by their ODM. For example, their move to T2Mobile coincided with dropping the 3.5mm audio jack. It's likely not something they wanted to do and many of their supporters were unhappy about it, but it's not really their phone hardware. The phones are essentially T2Mobile devices and there's not a lot of information available. It isn't clear why they switched to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 or why the earlier switch to another ODM happened with the Fairphone 3.