Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

ifixit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 491 posts

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#191

Post by alain94040 »

pwagland wrote: post #182
WheatMillington wrote: post #177

I don't understand why this is such a priority for people. I've never had to have a phone repaired, and unless you're buying top-of-the-line phones aren't expensive anyway. Changing my phone out every 3 years isn't exactly adding piles of e-waste.

Per person, it's not. But if you have 3 billion people changing their phones every 3 years, that's a billion phones per year. Assuming that the average phone weighs 100g, that's 100 million tons of phones per year. In the aggregate, it adds up a lot.

Is your math wrong by order of magnitudes? I try to visualize the amount of waste I generate every year and try to imagine one cell phone next to it. Doesn’t feel very significant.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#192

Post by throwaway81523 »

mappu wrote: post #175
throwaway81523 wrote: post #96

It sounds nuts that they reorganized the phone to increase the battery size from 3900mah to 4200mah. Also this phone is too expensive to be a practical device rather than a statement. Someone please just make a straightforward phone powered by replaceable 18650s dammit. If it runs AOSP out of the box then great.

You're at least on the right post. The only example I could find of a cellphone using 18650 cells was a modded Fairphone - https://forum.fairphone.com/t/making-a-phone-that-would-use-...

People have apparently modded other phones for 18650 as well. I will have to look into it sometime.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#193

Post by lukeschlather »

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…

I can't instantly switch audio inputs to my phone with Bluetooth when I'm in an unfamiliar location. If there's a jack I can plug in and play music in seconds. If it's bluetooth... could be 30 seconds, could be 5-10 minutes before I can get the bluetooth working. Meanwhile the music is off. Maybe I just wanted to share one song, but I've possibly killed the party. Not even worth the risk. Headphone jacks are really excellent and just work. I've lost hours of my life troubleshooting Bluetooth.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#194

Post by CarVac »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #80

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 p…

This is why I like the Framework way: keep the chassis the same so you can just buy a shiny new motherboard with the latest processor if your old motherboard dies.

It's probably not as suitable for phones what with changes to antenna requirements and such though.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#195

Post by massysett »

solardev wrote: post #188
pwagland wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per person, it's not. But if you have 3 billion people changing their phones every 3 years, that's a billion phones per year. Assuming that the average phone weighs 100g, that's 100 million tons of phones per year. In the aggregate, it adds up a lot.

I wonder if the decrease in desktop computers, CRT screens, printers, scanners, fax machines, etc. lowered overall e-waste volumes at all. Even though there are so many phones, each one is a lot smaller than personal electronics used to be.

All this assumes that volume is the problem. Deliberately extreme example: cleaning up my yard results in a large volume of heavy waste - enough bags of waste to equal hundreds, maybe thousands, of discarded phones. But surely all the metals in the phones - maybe even from just ONE phone - will have much more environmental impact than a mixture of dead leaves, grass, and old mulch from my yard.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#196

Post by daggersandscars »

pwagland wrote: post #182
WheatMillington wrote: post #177

I don't understand why this is such a priority for people. I've never had to have a phone repaired, and unless you're buying top-of-the-line phones aren't expensive anyway. Changing my phone out every 3 years isn't exactly adding piles of e-waste.

Per person, it's not. But if you have 3 billion people changing their phones every 3 years, that's a billion phones per year. Assuming that the average phone weighs 100g, that's 100 million tons of phones per year. In the aggregate, it adds up a lot.

1,000,000,000 phones * 0.100 kg = 100,000,000 kg = 100,000 metric tons (tonnes).

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#197

Post by lotsofpulp »

onedognight wrote: post #184
tdba wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped my iphone 14 in the ocean. It was in there 2 days until it washed up onshore. A fisherman picked it up and it was still on and it had service. It was in lost mode so he was able to call my emergency contact and I got it back. Aside from minor scratches on the screen it has no damage and works perfectly. That experience taught me that Apple takes reliability extremely seriously, even if they dont care about…

We found an iPhone in the ocean in Mexico. Verizon put us in touch with the owner who said it had been there for a week. It worked fine. I agree, reliability can be a proxy for repairability.

> I agree, reliability can be a proxy for repairability.

I think you mean a trade off.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#198

Post by jiminymcmoogley »

rootusrootus wrote: post #159
singleshot_ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an iPhone 11 Pro. The back is made out of glass which is easily breakable. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why, because behind the glass is an opaque piece of aluminum. The glass broke on the third day I had the phone when I tossed it from knee height on to a folded up sweatshirt that was sitting on a rug on a tile floor. Oh, actually, I guess I do know why an opaque part of a thousand dollar phone is m…

You tossed it onto a tile floor, and it broke. That's unfortunate, but not entirely a surprise no matter who manufactured the phone. Glass is glass.

technically they tossed it onto the earth's core, which is estimated to be around 5000°C. though even if it had been a (completely uncovered, unrugged, and un-folded-up-sweatered) tile floor, i would absolutely expect most manufacturers' phones to hold up just fine at that height...

to get serious for a moment though, id like to go against the anti-glass grain by pointing out that supposedly, successive generations of Corning Gorilla Glass get stronger by some multiple each time, yet we see phone screens smashing with the same regularity because manufacturers are just using thinner panes each time (probably chasing thinner phones more so than some kind of planned obsolescence conspiracy, although both explanations are credible). so we end up with a tradeoff between thickness, durability and glass backs, but that beats having to rule out durable phones with glass backs entirely from being able to exist

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#199

Post by solardev »

massysett wrote: post #195
solardev wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the decrease in desktop computers, CRT screens, printers, scanners, fax machines, etc. lowered overall e-waste volumes at all. Even though there are so many phones, each one is a lot smaller than personal electronics used to be.

All this assumes that volume is the problem. Deliberately extreme example: cleaning up my yard results in a large volume of heavy waste - enough bags of waste to equal hundreds, maybe thousands, of discarded phones. But surely all the metals in the phones - maybe even from just ONE phone - will have much more environmental impact than a mixture of dead leaves, grass, and old mulch from my yard.

Well, yeah, that's why I mentioned other electronics instead of biodegradables. Is there something especially bad in the raw materials of phones that older bigger electronics didn't have?

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#200

Post by throwaway81523 »

ppseafield wrote: post #74
technothrasher wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yikes. I've had multiple laptop and phone power connectors flake out gradually but never so far suddenly. I just got my first USB-C phone because my old micro USB one was crapping out among other things. I'm gradually migrating from the old phone to the new. That would be much more hassle if the old phone was totally unable to charge. Now I'm worrying about USB-C, ugh.
Post reply on HN