looks way over priced for a mid range spec of a 2021 era hardware in both old and new devices that you’d pay £200 or less for back then but all it is is 2gb ram extra same type of ddr standard added on and only then 256gb compared to 128gb is thexdifference a sd card can be bought and used adopted storage method to go way beyond or equal to the difference for practically $4-10 so neither phone from fairphone is fair priced being as they are being priced up at $500-600 it’s 100% out of normal realms of common sense to buy it, they simply just won’t buy it in the numbers then to keep the comoany afloat because the pricing is ultra over inflated, it’s old spec standard hardware trying to be upsold for triple it’s retail value
For some kind of logical alternative product slightly less spec but half decent for that era’s hardware then a moto g range device a g10 and upward should be comparable bit slower half the ram at 3gb but some are much higher and the g10 new was just £120 delivered back in 2021 with a 8 core soc by snapdragon, so throwing weight in the product being worth triple that you’d expect about 9gb ram if that were a thing 256gb storage and a newer 3x faster chipset at triple that price it is £360 so you can imagine the shock at fairphone’s costing nearly twice that then they should be 6x faster and 12gb ram physical ram not virtual as well, the camera a 108mp or higher etc etc the specs do not justify the cost never will even halving it
The idea behind the fairphone is that it’s made fairly. It looks overpriced because they’re paying a fair price for the raw materials + production costs. If other companies didn’t exploit third world countries their phones would be priced similarly to fair phone.
You don’t buy fair phone for the specs, you buy it so you can be certain some child in south Africa didn’t have crawl in a mine to get the the metals that go into phones, or have a child sit in a factory putting together the chips that go into phones. Or you buy it because you don’t want to throw your phone away after 3 years because you couldn’t replace the battery or the screen or the charging port.
I say to all manufacturers and developers just get one OS and stick with it, and then there is no further e-waste if it’s cross compatible from a dual core spec hardware upward it just runs faster the higher spec you go, there will be no hardware or OS incompatability just an ever improving OS one fits all old and new.
All fairphone are going to do is become e-waste just with a smaller footprint than the rest but e-waste none the less, I do not see them surviving long either.
I say to all manufacturers and developers just get one OS and stick with it, and then there is no further e-waste if it’s cross compatible from a dual core spec hardware upward it just runs faster the higher spec you go, there will be no hardware or OS incompatability just an ever improving OS one fits all old and new.
But where does the new hardware come from? Google has one OS that is the same over all Pixel phones, it doesn’t stop them from churning out a new Pixel every year. It also doesn’t solve the problems Fairphone aims to solve which are a) ethically sourced materials and b) reducing ewaste by having higher repairability.
Let’s say they create their own OS. How is the OS going to make sure the underlying hardware is “fairly” acquired? It’s not. Nor is the OS magically going to turn a non-repairable phone into a repairable one. That’s the reason why Fairphone makes their own phones, so they can verify their materials are ethically sourced and the phone is repairable.
All fairphone are goinn to do is become e-waste just with a smaller footprint than the rest but e-waste none the less, I do not see them surviving long either.
Actually the company recycles its phones. If you don’t like your Fairphone you can send it to them and based on the model and the state of the phone they’ll reimburse it. And how long is long because Fairphones are over a decade old?
People should focus on a better single lifetime lifespan OS, not churning out further e-waste and recycled devices that will inevitably become none circulatory e-waste that will return back as what it once was, yes it will reduce that waste numbers for a time but not prevent it, wheras OS regulation to force a single unified OS per company name would stop it altogether wouldn’t it, if they said all hardware must have a unified OS that does not age out and all hardware must be able to here after use the same baseline OS development that also must be unified this day forward…now deal with it or close shop if you want to change this e-waste problem for real that is theoretically the only way likely you’d impact it in a stop immediately way for good.You’d apply it to both phones and computers and also consoles but allow the shells/housings to be made of fully recyclable materials so they can be re-housed slide out slot it design would work for motherboards aka a modular case/housing design.
I’ve already pointed out that most Pixel phones run on the same OS, it doesn’t prevent Google from churning out new phones on a yearly basis because hardware is independent from software. The same OS doesn’t prevent sticking in a better camera of a better CPU, it only prevents adding new features to the OS.
What you’re suggesting could work if ALL pixel phones had to run on the same OS which effectively stifles technological advantage. I don’t think you fully understand the impact of your suggestion. What you’re basically saying is that 99% of personal computers should be using windows 3.1 (or I guess actually MS DOS) because that’s the OS Microsoft created and that’s what ran on the first PCs. Even the jump to Windows 95 is impossible because it literally might not fit on hardware that’s designed to run windows 3.1. You could argue that it’s a silly argument as it would start now, but guess what, 40 years from now Windows 11 can be just as ancient as Windows 3.1 is right now. If we somehow figure out quantum computing for consumer market you couldn’t really benefit from it because you need to support windows 11 that has no idea how quantum computing works. Not to mention it actually makes entire companies obsolete because a brand new company could make an OS that supports quantum computing and everyone switches to that company OS because that OS doesn’t need to support decades old hardware.
Forced baseline OS does not solve the issue. It only creates worse issues.
Puppy linux has done what I refer to for years requiring just 300mb to 400mb install space for the distro and about 2gb ram and a core2duo cpu minimum to run it well.
So I put it to every phone maker then, how does a 2007 PC run a distro an OS faster than rest of machines of newer specs on newer OS’s, but a puppy distro achieves better on older sh@t spec machines which to this day is still getting software built and maintained and has an active community on Discord that is yes small but great.
how do phones need to do anything differently to run as well? Why do you need 8-16gb software ROM files for them? Why do you need 8gb ram and more on a mobile OS then? lol what is the aim of all these supposedly required updates as well to… if not simply to recharge sales on hardware, but if you made the software like Puppy does you just sell loads of great apps instead of handsets to make the money and there’s a lot less work involved and cost outlay as you just retain that one custom OS through your own independent life long server that contains the files being kept alive not dropping the servers for the apps and so on to again force hardware sales through incompatibility at a software level.
A fairphone is trying but more like trying in the wrong way because e-waste is the bi product of forced software itterations and hardware requirements to suit an unessicarily large and power hungry Android and or IOS operating system thus it’s a endemic greed problem that nobody is forcably tackling, their just basically allowing all this toxic mess to build in someone’s backyard until it posisons everyone or everyone goes glow in the dark before dying at age 1 or some sh@t or for the kids of the next genertion to breathe the fumes off into their lungs and die younger at this rate they’ll need need some of those air purifiers off the Aliens movie to fix the air quality from all this e-waste lol.
A fairphone will not put a dent in it at all really, well it will gradually albeit far far more slowly than the rest are adding to that e-waste dump, so it’s somewhat pointless really yes it’s a nice gesture a really nice thought, but it’s totally un-survivable at a product market level at triple the cost of phones of a similar spec of hardware.
Hardware necessity is clearly more or less somewhat of an illusion to sell more sh@t and sh@t expands to space available or in this case old e-waste does.
I’ll let you have the last word as it’s becoming a game of comment tennis lol.
Right. So let’s imagine everyone uses Puppy OS for the phone OS? How does that prevent phone manufacturers from creating a new phone every year? It doesn’t. I’ve already pointed it out with Pixel phones, TWICE. Pixel 5 runs the same OS as Pixel 9 and obviously it hasn’t prevented Google from releasing 3 different version of Pixel 6, 7 and 8, and then also Pixel Fold and 4 different version of Pixel 9. If every Pixel phone moving forward would be stuck on Android 14 they’d still be able to release a new version every year because you still get marginally better camera, marginally more memory, marginally better processor etc. Using Puppy OS wouldn’t prevent manufacturers from spitting out a new model every year because the other issue with phones is that they’re not repairable. If your screen breaks or battery dies or charging port stops charging you can’t really fix it without paying usually over half the price of a new phone, which means people just buy a new phone. A fixed OS doesn’t solve hardware failures which leads to people buying new hardware. Regular wear and tear is the main reason for e-waste, because you can’t fix your fucking phone. This is literally the reason EU is forcing phone manufacturers to make replaceable batteries a thing again, because it’s the primary point of failure for most phones.
Solving e-waste doesn’t start with the OS, it starts by making hardware easy to repair or replace. And that’s exactly what fairphone does. And it’s super weird how you’re both “the hardware on fairphones sucks” and “hardware necessity is an illusion”. You’re undermining your own points.
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Personally, I don’t see a problem with this as 128 gigs of storage is fine for me on a phone. In fact, I currently have a 64 gigabyte phone and I’m not using all of it, even now.
Good it exists, for people like you.
Once the OS stopped letting me use my SD card with my phone, by 256GB internal storage has not been enough for me, I’ve had to remove some stuff I’d prefer to have on my phone off it.
What are you putting on your phone that needs that much storage? Photos or videos should be moved onto something with redundancy
I have my storage both in my phone and computer with Syncthing, I want it entirely on my phone too. I also have English Wikipedia downloaded, and about 40GB of movies/TV Shows
the solution to that is wanting back normal sd card support. I’ll never buy a phone without it, and I’m not just saying it. I need the removable storage that is not a USB stick but something inside of the phone, and I think this is a basic thing. it’s a shame though that in the fairphones you can only access it after getting out the battery.
Well, my phone has an SD card slot, which I bought a 512GB micro SD card to go in, and I used extensively, then about a month ago the OS stopped letting me write to it. And there aren’t any alternate OSs for my device, just Motorola Android
You might want to consider googling the problem and fixing it.
Well, I wouldn’t use Google, but I have already detached it on DuckDuckGo, asked HuggingChat, and Lemmy, and the consensus seems to be that there’s no way to fix it on this device.
Perhaps you can do a chargeback on the credit card? Has the manufacturer been stringing you along?
can you write it from a PC? or did it stop working after an update?
I haven’t tried taking it out and trying to put it in my computer, maybe I should check that
maybe the card is just faulty. while you’re doing that, you could also make a backup and reformat it. but, it’ll lose the factory formatting that was possibly done with a few optimized params that make it wear out somewhat slower
I already formatted it before, so formatting it again won’t hurt. Most of the things on it are already hacked up to my computer, the ones that aren’t are stuff like app data.
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Just like my cell phone plan, I get to pay $15 per month for calling texting and 5 gigabytes of data because I know for a fact that I’m not going to use 5 gigabytes of data where everybody else is paying $60 or more for unlimited.
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I was curious and checked, i need 91 gigs right now, and i’m pretty sure i can easily deal with 64 if i would just unload and delete all the junk that is sitting on my phone for no reason.
Since the memory and storage are soldered to the mainboard though, and that’s one of the few components that’s not sold separately, there’s no official support for turning a 6GB/128GB Fairphone into an 8GB/256GB model though.
Cant they just sell a replacement mainboard like Framework?
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vis-a-vis graphene and calyx besides
Wat?
Fair phones do not have grapheneos support
I believe fair phones main selling point is greenwashing the normal cell phone experience.
Greenwashing is a bit harsh, no? From what I’ve seen, Fairphone is fairly involved in the improvement of production processes and usage patterns of phones (fairer wages, safer/cleaner ressource extraction, long-term software support, easier repairability for a wide audience) to the extent that this is possible for a relatively small company. They haven’t always delivered on every one of these points, but have had a pretty strong record in recent years, stronger than any other company I know of. Or maybe there are other companies that do this better or similarly well?
Good point. Green washing might be too hard. How about the greener cell phone experience?
Well I appreciate fairphone moving in the direction it is, they are still a venture back startup, which means they need growth in revenue. They’ve chosen to take the green route, which is nice, I wish them the best of success.
Another missed opportunity to bring back the headphone jack.
the Fairphone 5 has sold for €699 and up since it launched last summer, making it kind of pricey for a device with mid-range specs.Now the company has dropped the price to €629 and introduced a new €549 model for customers willing to sacrifice a little memory and storage.
both phones have a microSD card reader. So you’re paying €150 more for just 2 more gb of RAM?
That 2gb can make the difference between apps being reloaded or not. 6GB is the barely minimum if you use your phone more than just a phone. In a few years 8GB will be the new minimum.
No, you’re also paying for an extra 128 GB of onboard storage. The onboard storage is faster than an SD card and can run applications.
The Fairphone isn’t a good deal price wise. That’s not what it is marketed as in the least.
I looking for a simple and very user friendly phone for my 74yo father in law. Would this be a good option?
