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Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

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Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#261

Post by pjerem »

Gigachad wrote: post #233
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…

It's glass because it needs to be transparent for the wireless charging coil. There is a hole in the aluminum frame for this coil. The options are basically just plastic or glass. At least with the current phones it's now possible to replace this glass if it breaks.

I have memories of a time where Apple was praised for their polycarbonate quality. You know, those expensive devices they called MacBook and iPod. They even released the iPhone 5C which, ironically, only made consensus on its good design.

Really nothing is forbidding them to release nice plastic phones.

The only reason they won’t is that they want this shiny aspect in their App Store because the consumer will hide this under a mandatory case if they intend to keep it for years.

Well It’s a shame thinking of all those nice things we could have if we actually decided to break corporate monopolies. But now we are stuck between stupid glass phones without default applications and Google spy phones.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#263

Post by pjerem »

fomine3 wrote: post #239
sasaf5 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All reviwers will complain about products being "plasticky" or "a fingerprint magnet", none of which are an actual issue for users.

"plasticky" is one of the most widespread invalid criticism for me. It's a feature, like we can throw GameBoy to the bed.

Also, it’s pretty false. Apple already did it with the iPhone 5C and the plasticky aspect was about the only positive thing in the reviews of this phone.

Apple largely have the competence and the marketing power to make everyone believe that their premium plastic is amazing. In fact, they managed to make us believe that for glass which must be one of the cheapest materials on earth to produce.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#264

Post by aurareturn »

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…

Fairphone is a for profit company. What is there to prevent the company from choosing not to use the highest quality parts so that you will need to buy more parts to repair it later on?

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#265

Post by whatevaa »

josefx wrote: post #252
dymk wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the point of a repairable phone if parts are out of stock?

One of dozens of parts is out of stock and as the other comment points out itself it is also the part that makes the least sense to replace.

I was looking into Fairphone seriously recently and got repulsed by this parts out of stock thing. It's not just one occurrence, peolle are complaining about different parts out of stock for prolonged period or times (or still not available to this day). What's the point of repairability if parts cannot be acquired? Not much of used market, either.

And their support tells you to pretty much f-off without are purchase receipt, even if you want to buy the part. It's garbage.

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#266

Post by helpfulmountain »

Gigachad wrote: post #237
iandanforth wrote: post #11

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

Seems like the problem with targeting a niche market is that the buyers all have some very specific hard requirements. It has to have a headphone jack, it has to have wireless charging, it has to have cameras as good as the iphone, it has to have an AV1 video decoder, etc. Same problem with the Framework laptop. Everyone has a different set of obscure hard requirements.

Headphone jacks are hardly obscure hardware

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#267

Post by sentientslug »

rtpg wrote: post #206
sneak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the phones haven’t been through an architecture change recently, while the laptops and desktops have. I think you’ll be safe on ARM macs for 10 full years.

but the i7s are still there, and still getting updates. I get that there's a legit question of having 2015 MBPs lying around, but honestly just having a switch to let you install it feels legit. It's not like the hardware is changing that much over the years, and they have to have the OS support a bunch of hardware configurations anyways

Metal is one of the reasons the 2015 macs were dropped from support: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102894

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#268

Post by john61 »

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…

Did you look for a broken (for example glass) used one?

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#269

Post by ThatPlayer »

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.

In a similar vein, my Nexus 7's microUSB port died and I continued using it for years with wireless charging. Not really a common feature on tablets anymore

Re: Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?

#270

Post by whatevaa »

VoxPelli wrote: post #134
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.

With a 7-10 year lifespan it’s only the initial cost that may be big, the cost over time is much less and the resell value once one upgrades also holds up much better over time

I don't think this will hold resell value :) Fairphones aren't popular enough. You would have problems selling it in the first place.
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