alt Hacker NewsNearly impossible? How Fairphone built the ethical, repairable Fairphone Gen 6+
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The recently released Fairphone 6+ runs on Android 16. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, their website doesn't even clearly state that. Android 16 is 14 months old at the moment. Android 17 was released to manufacturers 6 months ago and had a general release 2 months ago.
So why does a brand new phone run an operating system from over a year ago? Does it really take over 6 months to update a phone to a new version of Android?
How am I supposed to believe a company is committing to supporting a phone for a long time when at release it already runs outdated software?
Not an expert, but I recently heard that apparently not everything is perfect in fairphone land: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
Great what they are doing - yet I found Shiftphone to be also fair, equally or better repairable and even more open for alternative Operating Systems. I think Fairphone supports 2 OSes officially, Shiftphone has a whole custom ROM list of ~10.
I've always been a bit curious about Fairphone, but as I only get phones that cost less than $200 (and use them until they physically break), I'll probably never get one.
Still only on my second smartphone, so I'm not worried about producing more e-waste.
Are ya'll really repairing your phones? I replace mine when it can't run Google Maps smoothly anymore.
After 4-5 years, on every phone I've ever had, user interactions begin to lag noticeably. Apps launch much more slowly. Intense graphical apps like maps become frustrating to use. At some point I can't take it anymore and replace the phone, long before its physical parts or battery have worn out.
I love the phone, but I really hate the "ethical" framing of device repairability. This is an engineering problem and we don't need to twist it through a moral framework.
Phones that are repairable have superior engineering, not superior morality.
I have a Fairphone 5, chose that mainly because of repairability. :)
Ethical phone maybe only hardware wise, software wise with Google it is far from ethical
What they are doing is really great in my opinion. I really hope to see more of this in the future!
Reminder that Android is not Linux. The Linux phone experience is completely different from Android. People who utilize distro's like Ubuntu touch or postmarketOS demand that even firmware level binaries are open sourced. GrapheneOS is great, but it's not Linux, and not even close. If we start to confuse the two, we're confronted with the question about Unix, which is shared among both Android and iOS, so you could even say that Android is technically an iPhone. This is obviously wrong but utilizes the same logic as people claiming Android is Linux.
I would love a Fairphone, but no headphone jack is a nonstarter for me. Still blows me away that a company saying they are focused on longevity would get rid of a universal audio interface that we've had for decades. In the article they claim it's to fit other features in, but frankly that's not a believable claim. Other manufacturers manage to get a headphone jack in just fine, without any noticeable downside.
The new $650 Fairphone Gen 6+ is designed both for longevity and easy repairability.
I applaud the concept but to see how well this actually holds up in the real world, let's check the Fairphone web site.
Where are the parts to repair any version prior to Gen 6? I don't see them listed anywhere.
So it would appear that "longevity" is actually pretty limited.
Happy FairPhone 4 user here. Running 3+ years, only replaced the battery once. Aim to keep it 7-10 years, barring unforeseen events like theft. Not going to replace it just because a newer model is released.