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Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

androidcentral.com

421–430 of 531 posts

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#421
post #11

Was lucky enough to get my Fairphone 4 on sale, but I'd happily pay full price now - even though the Fairphones are pricey for the specs, unless you absolutely need 24 cores etc. I'd say they are worth it, knowing the company is at least trying to improve the parts supply chain, and knowing you stand a chance of fixing the devices yourself (luckily I've only had to replace the USB-C port, which was trivial) About the…

The removal of the phone jack is so obviously planned obsolescence, it is ironic that this project for sustainability follows the trend. Wired headphones still have better sound quality. Don't need charging. Don't break with software update. But because of that it means less consumption. Think about how insane it is that companies can remove the phone jack and glue in the battery with the very obvious goal of planned…

I would pay $2000 without a second of hesitation, if that's what it took, for an Android phone with

* headphone jack

* usbc port

* removable, large battery

* under 5 inch screen (with phone body size to match)

* dual sim

* sd card slot

* cameras just good enough to take pictures of license plates on illegally parked cars

* 5g antenna

I don't care if it needs to be hella thick to accomplish this, I don't care if the screen is OLED or has a >60hz refresh rate, I don't care about telescopic cameras or faceid or anything like that. I just want a small fat phone that I can plug my IEMs into and use as a wifi tether for my laptop without the battery dying in a couple hours.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#422
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the new EU Ecodesign regulation, smartphone manufacturers must provide software updates for at least 5 years after the date of last sale, not 1-2 years. (Applies to newly released devices, not to devices which were already on the market as of June 20). https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules...

Would that translate in 5 years Android updates or just security updates?

The law only cares about security, but manufacturers are free to do better than that.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#423
post #254

Why phones are so huge nowadays? How are you people carrying them? Oh how I wish for a compact sized phone, something like iPhone 13 mini, but with USB-C connector. And those camera bumps, don't get me started on those. If you cannot fit camera into phone, why not make whole device a bit thicker.

The market has decided the benefit of a bigger battery and screen outweighs bigger size.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#424
post #265

I am still waiting for Fairphone and Graphene OS collaboration. This is match made in heaven. Any Fairphone/GrapheneOS developer reading this? Just do it, document if something is not secure enough for you, but do it. Nothing to think about, you fit together like hand and a glove and any seconds thoughts are depriving the planet of THE PHONE! Pick the cash we will throw at you and make second generation with the cpu…

I recently suggested that GrapheneOS support devices with average security on Mastodon. Much like yourself, I think "moderately okay security" is better than "just use Google's spyware infested OS". The GrapheneOS folks replied in disagreement, insisting that this is a terrible idea because security would be less than perfect. They then started making up stories about me and throwing around unfounded accusations. I d…

> I recently suggested that GrapheneOS support devices with average security on Mastodon. Much like yourself, I think "moderately okay security" is better than "just use Google's spyware infested OS".

For most use cases, like mine, I agree. But I understand GrapheneOS disagreeing with that statement. "average security" is not their goal, nor the use case they are working for. GrapheneOS' focus is security. They just happened to make the best AOSP version there is out there. So lots of us wish they better support our use cases disregarding the use case they work for. But they obviously don't want to spend resources on it, and I'd assume they wouldn't even accept extra resources to do those things, as it would dilute their "most secure mobile OS" brand by having less secure versions of it.

For those of us who don't need the best security, another fork of AOSP that incorporates many of the features GOS has, like sandboxed Google Play and contact and storage scopes would do. But we can't expect GOS to be the one doing that.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#425
post #254

Why phones are so huge nowadays? How are you people carrying them? Oh how I wish for a compact sized phone, something like iPhone 13 mini, but with USB-C connector. And those camera bumps, don't get me started on those. If you cannot fit camera into phone, why not make whole device a bit thicker.

The market has decided the benefit of a bigger battery and screen outweighs bigger size.

The market? The manufacturers or the people?

Phones that were biggest size/weight only six or seven years ago are now not even available anymore. Why? I cannot imagine that all(!) people want phones that now weigh at least 180g (most even 200+g) and have huge displays.

Do people need to play games all the time? I don’t. I just want a phone to support me with some helpful apps like train/bus timetables, play music, do a quick internet search, make a picture, do alarms and notify about things. Nothing fancy, and nothing where a really need a 7" display nor a 5Ah battery.

When my current phone (Samsung A40) will die someday, I will be very sad as there is nothing today even remotely comparable to the compactness and usefulness of this device.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FaceID does have two flaws in my mind. 1) I frequently unlock my phone while it's laying flat on the desk a good distance from my face. The camera can't see me, and certainly not well enough to identify me. 2) I don't believe that you can add a second FaceID. Currently I have a few fingers added to my TouchID, including my wifes index finger, allowing her to unlock my phone.

Regarding flaw 2, this was the case at launch, but they added an option to register an “additional appearance”.

Nice, I did not know that. Thank you.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#427
post #254

Why phones are so huge nowadays? How are you people carrying them? Oh how I wish for a compact sized phone, something like iPhone 13 mini, but with USB-C connector. And those camera bumps, don't get me started on those. If you cannot fit camera into phone, why not make whole device a bit thicker.

People are not buying small phones. If you want a small phone, the best thing are flip-phones, there is tons of them now.

These are not smartphones. You cannot do anything with them except phone, SMS, some alarms and make pictures with very crappy quality. So these are effectively just phones, like 20 years ago. They are not extensible by any app, just what the manufacturer adds for factory provided programs.

I would be small (lightweight) phones. I cannot bare these 180–220g devices. If I want something heavy I buy a tablet.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and her sister can unlock each other’s iPhones using the face unlock feature which blows my mind because they do NOT look super similar and are 4 years apart. I’ve turned off all biometrics and use only a PIN. I’m extremely skeptical of the tech.

My sister in law's mom and her daughter have the same thing too where the daughter can unlock her mom's phone with faceID. I researched this and apparently, if you have an unsuccessful unlock first and then you enter the code to unlock, then the phone may train the faceID with the new face too.

> if you have an unsuccessful unlock first and then you enter the code to unlock, then the phone may train the faceID with the new face too

Ay wat? That sounds completely backwards, like if an incorrect password for account login would automatically reset the account password to the incorrect one, how would that make sense?!

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#429
post #254

Why phones are so huge nowadays? How are you people carrying them? Oh how I wish for a compact sized phone, something like iPhone 13 mini, but with USB-C connector. And those camera bumps, don't get me started on those. If you cannot fit camera into phone, why not make whole device a bit thicker.

You don’t even have to make it thicker.

My Samsung A40 is less than 8mm thick. It has a FullHD display, 440dpi sharpness, weighs only 140g and is less than 145mm in length. The cameras support 16Mpx back and 25MPx front (not that it’s needed much). The quality is not the best, but very suitable.

It has support for fingerprint, microsd, 3.5mm jack – everything necessary. (Only thing missing is esim, but that can be added by an adapter.)

So it IS possible. The manufacturers just don’t WANT.

Re: Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

#430
post #233

I will repeat again what I'm saying since they announced the Fairphone 4: being able to repair the phone is good, but what I really would like to see is for them to go the framework route and design a phone with a standardized form factor. It doesn't need to be crazy modular, I'd just like to be able to upgrade mainboard/camera/display/storage/battery independently, and I'd like to push product development around the…

Your phone feels slow either because you are now used to faster devices or because the software used is becoming bloated. There is no reason a phone feels slower except for these two reasons (or maybe if thermal got worse over time but it should not). Personally I don’t care if a phone feels slower compared to other devices as long as it is not becoming slower because of crap software updates.

It is not just the CPU. The camera was sub-par, the display was just okay, storage capacity is always important if you are like me and don't want to be dependent on the cloud... all those things can be improved independently, and consumers would benefit if they could upgrade them whenever the price/performance/availability reached a satisfactory point.
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