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Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

fairphone.com

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Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#81

No Verizon support. :(

Why use Verizon directly? It's insanely overpriced. US mobile and others provide better prices, service, features, security, and customer service. If it doesn't work on their towers, US mobile allows you to switch to at&t and t mobile towers.

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#82
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only 264 replies in that forum total, and not every reply is a unique individual. I would say that it’s easy to make an argument that this is quite an insignificant number of users even for a niche smartphone manufacturer. I can’t imagine that a lot of people actually dock their phone to use as a desktop. I would be surprised if the percent of smartphone users who do that eclipsed 0.5%. My understanding in…

See, that's all fine and dandy, but I would not recommend this phone to normal people anyway - especially with their record of introducing random bugs. Their whole strategy is going after niche buyers. Most people just want a phone and go through their carrier or Apple. I have a friend who was looking into the phone and he was about to purchase it before I mentioned the port, but yes we are just geeks.

I think their early adopters being niche tech nerds is a very different concept than who they are targeting through their marketing.

Scroll down the marketing page and take note of which subjects take up the largest chunk of the page space:

https://us.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-plus

The first section talks about a long warranty and sustainability. It talks about long battery life and the replaceable battery.

The next section, which is rather large, talks about the camera benefits. This is a huge section and is a very mainstream selling point.

Next is AI and Gemini, a small section.

Next is Moments, their phone mindfulness suite aimed at people battling smartphone attention/addiction issues, a very common concern among users.

Finally, the last section talks about sustainability as well as tips on switching and “what’s in the box.”

So really, zero of the marketing is aimed at niche buyers. They’re looking to sell to people who want a very normal phone experience but want something long-lasting, intentional, and sustainable, and they still need it primarily as a device to capture photos and memories as well as all the normal daily life use you’d expect.

There is zero mention of niche/nerdy features in the marketing. Tinkering and software customization is never mentioned. Professional/enthusiast use cases are never mentioned. There’s nothing talking about terminal emulation or alternative operating systems or anything of that sort.

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really irks me that it still can't get the contrastive clauses right. "it's not about adding (more features), it's about (more features, but with a different emphasis)" is so empty of meaning. how do people copy edit this and not notice?

how do people copy edit this and not notice? If they wanted to pay trained copy editors, they wouldn't use A.I.

Where do copy editors train?

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#84
post #8

No Verizon support. :(

How is that still a thing? I can’t think of a phone here in Europe that you can’t just put a SIM card from any carrier in and it will work.

That's been true for much of the history of cellular networks, as far as I know - universal standards in Europe, US phones can't (always) be moved between service providers. It used to be even worse in the US, with phones locked to individual carriers regardless of technology.

That's some of the European over-regulation that everyone complains about, compared to unfettered American competition.

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The device claims AT&T and Verizon only, I’m curious about that…

To which device are you referring? The Fairphone 6+ is compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the US and their MVNOs. https://us.fairphone.com/carrier-compatibility

Oh this is weird. They have some contradicting information.

https://us.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-plus

Click on “see all tech specs” and under “compatibility” it says AT&T and Verizon.

But it lacks Verizon’s primary band and clearly can’t be used with it.

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how do people copy edit this and not notice? I would assume they don’t, and they assume many people aren’t reading it either. Which includes me, even before LLMs came out. I would always skip the marketing and jump to tech specs and pictures/video.

Why have the marketing blurbs at all then? it's just throwing away tokens if most people don't read it.

SEO, basically. Same as before

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#87
A friend had the Fair Phone 4. It broke after a year. Hostile customer support, not worth her time. Idk. Stories of "good guy" indie companies who drop you as soon as you fell for their marketing keep piling up. It may be greed, short sightedness or an incompetent understanding of what it means to have customers, the results are the same. See Framework for another example of this.

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#88
post #19

No Verizon support. :(

Yeah, that’s a bummer. But I’m seriously thinking about switching to AT&T over this, but I would need to know if the frequencies are covered as good on AT&T. I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?

How are you going to innovate installing hundreds of thousands of cell towers across the USA?

Mobile network via satellite might increase number of network providers by 1 or 2, but the physics problem of needing tons of physical assets to create a wireless network usable by small, low powered devices remains.

I guess you could innovate some new physics that allows you to send wireless signals through more surfaces, that is also not ionizing radiation to animal and plant tissue, and doesn’t need a lot of power to send from a mobile device. That is a lot to ask, though.

Re: Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

#90
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previous versions of the Fairphone did have USB3, and also Displayport Alt Mode, so you could plug the phone into a display and use Android Desktop. There's more to a given version of USB than line rate.

I have a fairphone 5 and actively don't like it when it asks me if I want to mirror my screen when I plug it into a charging cable attached to a monitor.

Then you can make a tidy profit upgrading to the Fairphone 6 series and selling your phone to someone who wants that functionality. What is the point you're trying to make? We already knew different people have different preferences.
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