Fairphone 4 is coming to the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#111

Post by crossroadsguy » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

Shawnj2 wrote: post #108

crossroadsguy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wished there was a Graphene/Lineage OS phone (OEM supported; not “flash it yourself” sorcery needed kinda thing). And something within the size of original iPhone SE or Mini with just even an above average battery. I’d pay a premium for that phone. It’s my wishful thinking about smartphones.

Apple tried to bring small phones back and not that many people bought the mini relative to the regular size iPhone. Other than a few attempts by android phone manufacturers the iPhone 13 mini will probably be the best small phone made.

I was on 12 Mini. Was getting a crazy trade deal and the seller didn’t have 13 Mini. So I ended up buying 14.

Yesterday, after months, I was inside an Apple reseller store and picked iPhone 13 Mini and was immediately made aware of the monstrosity that was in my pocket.

Yeah I think Mini is finally dead.

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#112

Post by crossroadsguy » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

alwaysbeconsing wrote: post #109

Shawnj2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple tried to bring small phones back and not that many people bought the mini relative to the regular size iPhone. Other than a few attempts by android phone manufacturers the iPhone 13 mini will probably be the best small phone made.

The thing is, for people who want a small phone, the 13 mini still has a pretty hefty feel. Compared to the 5s/orig SE body it's massive and it's only a tiny bit shorter and narrower than the 8/new SE, while feeling thicker.

It’s battery is very lacklustre. I believe that phone that size in this age and time deserves much more battery.

I wish Apple kept Mini alive. Maybe at a premium and with a better battery.

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#113

Post by coding123 » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

$600? Doesn't it make sense to buy 3 shit phones that can't be repaired for $200 each? Is this phone worth $600?

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#114

Post by yesbabyyes » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

pSYoniK wrote: post #71

miduil wrote: post #12

I really wish Fairphone 4 had GrapheneOS support, but after almost 4 years of Fairphone 3 I decided to go with a Pixel instead. 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 I would have hoped for them continuing the FP3 architecture, feels such a waste that they've now instead developed a much more expe…

A thousand tims this. When I moved away from stock Android and on to cuwtom ROMs a few years ago, I didnt find anything that met my needs but then I stumbled on GrapheneOS. I understand why it doesn't run on non Pixels but their approach to handling Google Services and preinstalled software in particulqr should really be copied by other ROM maintainers and developers (something I'll give a shot in a few short months)…

> My only gripe now on my 2nd Pixel with Graphene is exactly what Fairphone is fixing, which is easy hardware maintenance + 3.5mm jack.

The hardware maintenance is true (even though I suspect the repairability of the usb-c port is what made me need to replace it in the first place) but starting with the 4, Fairphone doesn't have a 3.5 mm jack.

Source: I have a Fairphone 4 and have so far replaced the screen, battery, usb-c port and back cover.

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#115

Post by Shawnj2 » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #112

alwaysbeconsing wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, for people who want a small phone, the 13 mini still has a pretty hefty feel. Compared to the 5s/orig SE body it's massive and it's only a tiny bit shorter and narrower than the 8/new SE, while feeling thicker.

It’s battery is very lacklustre. I believe that phone that size in this age and time deserves much more battery. I wish Apple kept Mini alive. Maybe at a premium and with a better battery.

TBH there’s not much you can do about that, it actually has a better battery life than the 8 IMO

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#116

Post by Shawnj2 » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

alwaysbeconsing wrote: post #109

Shawnj2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple tried to bring small phones back and not that many people bought the mini relative to the regular size iPhone. Other than a few attempts by android phone manufacturers the iPhone 13 mini will probably be the best small phone made.

The thing is, for people who want a small phone, the 13 mini still has a pretty hefty feel. Compared to the 5s/orig SE body it's massive and it's only a tiny bit shorter and narrower than the 8/new SE, while feeling thicker.

By 2023 standards it’s the smallest flagship phone you can get, no one makes a flagship tier original SE style phone

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#117

Post by ctenb » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

lawn wrote: post #29

I've been using my Fairphone 4 for around a year or so and it's been great. An easily removable battery is a godsend and the phone is surprisingly durable as I've been dropping it a lot (me clumsy). I haven't encountered any issue and the one complaint I have is the lack of 3.5 jack. It was quite hard to find a USB converter that worked and having to use an adapter is really annoying. Still if this one breaks I can r…

I bought a converter too, but it just didnt work at all! Which adapter worked for you?

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#118

Post by gsa » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

I really want to love my Fairphone 4 but they really need to improve their software support. I have a bunch of bugs with my device: the screen dims after a short period making it unusable in bright daylight, NFC is erratic and needs a restart to fix, 5 GHz hotspot hasn't worked for months. The brightness bug is the biggest killer for me. There's a whole list of bugs tracked on the Fairphone website [0], and progress is unfortunately very slow.

[0] https://forum.fairphone.com/t/known-reproducible-and-reporte...

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#119

Post by londons_explore » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

verall wrote: post #97

londons_explore wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted to do this 'opensource', your best bet is to try and get the GPU to do the work. You'd need hardware/HAL support for streaming raw data at ~15Gbits to GPU accessible memory, and after that you can probably do most of the rest using software without hardware/kernel involvement. At a minimum, the GPU needs to be able to generate image scale pyramids, align them using optical flow, have a sensor noise mode…

The SoC in the fairphone has an ISP, they can just use that.

The ISP is locked down and can only run qualcomm-code. Perhaps with the right licensing agreement they'd let you run your own code on it.

Re: Fairphone 4 is coming to the US

#120

Post by ctenb » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 6:38 PM UTC

My experience with fp4 has been pleasant. No problems. The only mild annoyance was the finger print unlock mechanism, which feels less user-friendly than my previous phones. But you get used to it.