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Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

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Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#71

Post by toast0 »

mikece wrote: post #12
iandanforth wrote: post #11

I'd buy one if it had a headphone jack!

How many current phones have a headphone jack? When I upgraded from my Pixel 4a to the 6a (both running Graphene OS) I never noticed that the headphone jack was "missing" because I use a Bose bluetooth headset. And when I want to route the audio through my car speakers? Oh... I have a USB-C pigtail splitter which allows for power to be passed through another UBS-C port and connection to the car audio system through a…

Looking at the GSM Arena Phone Finder [1], there's currently 494 cataloged phones released in 2023, and 286 of them have headphone jacks. I won't buy a phone without one, as I want to charge and listen to the movie I'm watching on a plane, and I'm not doing wireless headsets because I hate bluetooth and I hate unnecessary audio latency.

[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#72

Post by potatopatch »

maegul wrote: post #53
binkHN wrote: post #4

> Fairphone promises five Android version upgrades and at least eight years of security updates, with an aim for a total lifespan of a decade. Impressive

So I’m completely out of the loop on the whole de-googling your Android phone thing. How workable is it today and how well would it work on a phone like this?

The de-google issue is Google's proprietary play/Gapps setup which expects to have higher privileges and sells itself as nicer APIs and cloud services to app developers. Many apps can just fallback since not all regions and devices use official Google Android, etc. The other alternatives to not installing any support for them are, installing them like normal but on your non google distribution, an emulator of the services like microg, or wrapping them to put them in the standard app cage like grapheneOS does.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#73

Post by LeoPanthera »

q0uaur wrote: post #61
izacus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you reeeaaally? If you really wanted a phone like this, you'd just get the tiny USB-C to Jack adapter. How much of a chance that you'd find some other detail that's not ok if it had a jack?

not the other guy, but... any advice how to find a decent usb-c to audio jack dongle? i've ordered a cheap one and it's absolutely unusable, horrible sound quality and constant noticeable static. not feeling like gambling on another one.

Apple's USB-C to headphone dongle works on Android, I believe, and is regularly reviewed to have the same audio quality as comparably expensive DACs. It's $9

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#74

Post by ppseafield »

technothrasher wrote: post #56
numpad0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qi receivers on phones don't wear out as fast as physical connectors do. There are no hard reasons why wireless is better in durability but practically they tend to be more reliable.

This is exactly when I've used wireless charging the most, after my physical connector has broken. It let's me extend the life of the phone.

I've had three phones' (two Nexus 5Xs, one Samsung S21) USB-C ports fail on me unexpectedly, and without wireless charging suddenly I can't charge the phone. I'm unlikely to buy a phone without wireless charging for that reason.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#75

Post by jancsika »

sowbug wrote: post #8

Motivated by this article, and already thinking about handing down my current phone to a family member as a Christmas gift, I visited the Fairphone store ( https://shop.fairphone.com/ though likely available only on Amazon in the US) and read one review ( https://www.theverge.com/23895548/fairphone-5-review-price-f... ). Here's why I'm holding off. 1. No wireless charging. Switching to this phone would require a big…

> I've been taking Pixel photos for years, and my phone is always the one people ask to use for group shots at social events.

If the average social gathering is more than two people, this is already a minority use case.

If the average is even just 10 that's only at most 10% of cell phone users like you.

In short, I believe you've just written the first formal proof of obscurantism on HN. :)

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#76

Post by calamari4065 »

Buxato wrote: post #26
sowbug wrote: post #8

Motivated by this article, and already thinking about handing down my current phone to a family member as a Christmas gift, I visited the Fairphone store ( https://shop.fairphone.com/ though likely available only on Amazon in the US) and read one review ( https://www.theverge.com/23895548/fairphone-5-review-price-f... ). Here's why I'm holding off. 1. No wireless charging. Switching to this phone would require a big…

1. Always sad for me to know how much popular are wireless chargers, wasting 47% more energy aprox for charging the same as a wired charger. https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-... (too much catastrophic conclusions in this article but that percentage is real, you could check it in another tests, articles, whatever ..) 2. Totally agree with that, if camera is fundamental for you maybe not the…

If you use fast wired charging, which most phones do, you're causing significant wear to the battery. With daily fast charging, I've seen phones chew through their battery in under a year.

Conversely, the rather slow charge rate of wireless helps extend battery life quite a lot. This is why I never use fast charging, avoid wired charging in general, and limit my battery to 85% max charge. It's been three or four years and my battery is still at ~80% health.

Which is worse, wasting a small amount of power or trashing your phone's battery in a year or two? One has significantly higher monetary and environmental costs.

Besides all that, wired charging is not nearly as efficient as you think. The charge circuitry in your phone is optimistically 80-90%. The wall adapter can be anywhere from 50 to 90%, and scales pretty closely to how much you paid for it. Efficiency also goes down with faster charge rates.

I design switching converters and lithium charge circuits for my job. They're pretty great, but not nearly as good as you'd think.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#77

Post by astowaway »

izacus wrote: post #44
iandanforth wrote: post #11

I'd buy one if it had a headphone jack!

Would you reeeaaally? If you really wanted a phone like this, you'd just get the tiny USB-C to Jack adapter. How much of a chance that you'd find some other detail that's not ok if it had a jack?

I didn't buy a fairphone 4/5 having previously bought a fp3 that got broken mostly beyond repair. I didnt buy the updated version as it didnt have a headphone jack. I opted for a used phone instead.

It flies in the face of claiming to care for repairability and sustainability. Wireless earbuds (maybe including the ones they sell) I by and large dont have replaceable batteries. That isnt sustainable.

If my USBC jack breaks from wear and tear being in my pocket with a cable attached to them, I no longer have a working phone and need to buy a part to fix it, if the headphone jack breaks, I can live without headphones and still have a functional phone. If the selling point is sustainability, they miss the mark by creating extraneous rubbish, even if its not direct

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#78

Post by dtx1 »

fgeiger wrote: post #69
dtx1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks for answering! So in regards to security let me first refer to this thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/7208-8y-security-updates-on... And it might sound unfair to compare the fairphone to a pixel device or a pixel device with grapheneos but the practical reality is that if this is going to be my one phone, than it will be the hub for all my private conversations, my bank forces me to use an app base…

Okay, that is fair: I am also not happy about us being late with security patches for several weeks. I am not directly involved in that anymore, but I believe, we currently have a policy to release updates quarterly. Back when I was still working on security updates, this took up so much resources that we struggled to work on anything else (bug fixes, major upgrades, etc.). It is unfortunately a compromise that we cu…

Yeah, I feel you, especially reading the "I would buy a fairphone if..." Thread here. I really appreciate what you are doing.

Google is planning 7 years of Security Support for their Pixel 8...which really doesn't help much when the battery is glued in...

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#79

Post by calamari4065 »

prmoustache wrote: post #60
sowbug wrote: post #8

Motivated by this article, and already thinking about handing down my current phone to a family member as a Christmas gift, I visited the Fairphone store ( https://shop.fairphone.com/ though likely available only on Amazon in the US) and read one review ( https://www.theverge.com/23895548/fairphone-5-review-price-f... ). Here's why I'm holding off. 1. No wireless charging. Switching to this phone would require a big…

1. People in my household put their phone to charge only once a day, when they go to bed. How hard is it to plug a phone once a day?

How hard is it to drop your phone on a charging pad?

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#80

Post by fancyfredbot »

I owned a fairphone 3. It was expensive but very easy to take apart and promised years of updates. Then it broke, after about 18 months. Fine, I thought, I'm glad I got a repairable phone. I'll just fix it, it'll be easy. I determined the problem was with the main logic board and found that a) a new one would cost much more than an entirely new, and more capable phone and b) it was out of stock.

I just bought a new phone. I didn't feel good about my fairphone experience.

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