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How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

arstechnica.com

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Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#51

Post by awelxtr »

Grombobulous wrote: post #31
mhitza wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairphone makes their fair share of blunders. Software updates are a big issue, especially around the times that critical vulnerabilities need to be patched. With the hardware I'm not impressed, and on their own forum I've seen plenty of people reporting issues with overheating on the Gen 6. Hopefully kinks have been ironed out on their 6+. The current CEO also has a persona that would stir up any community (read a f…

Ultimately, a lot of the “fairness” of the Fairphone is offered by “just buy a really popular manufacturer.” Everyone and their dog can repair an iPhone because it’s the most popular phone on the planet. Are those repairs accessible to the consumer at home with amateur skills? No, not really. However, newer iPhone models are significantly easier to repair and come along with lower repair costs direct from the manufac…

The new Sennheiser earbuds have replaceable batteries too so the fairbuds are no longer unique in that regard. I haven't read comparisons on sound quality though

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#52

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

colingauvin wrote: post #12
jqpabc123 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So "longevity" is actually about 5 years. Or less if you live in the USA.

Early Fairphones were not necessarily designed for repairability. That is a principle that has emerged significantly in the last few iterations. The FP4 was the first that was really designed and marketed as fully modular from what I remember, and parts are still available. For the American piece, the FP6 was the first available from OEM in the US.

The FP 3 was marketed as "you can replace the camera for a better one"

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#53

Post by fsflover »

Cider9986 wrote: post #46
ValdikSS wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well. Just as physical security, digital security most of…

>GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well. Yeah, iPhoens are made that way as well. It's just…

> people think they will get better privacy/security with a /e/ fairphone when it's actually much worse than an iPhone

Does /e/OS illegally collect users' data for ads and sends a lot of telemetry to their servers like Apple? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#54

Post by ValdikSS »

Cider9986 wrote: post #46
ValdikSS wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well. Just as physical security, digital security most of…

>GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well. Yeah, iPhoens are made that way as well. It's just…

iPhone is top-of-the-line as well, because they control the whole software and the whole hardware (starting from basically all the chips). That's very rare in the industry.

There are just a bunch of companies which afford to do the same. Maybe Xiaomi will be the next one.

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#55

Post by artisinal »

iririririr wrote: post #48
artisinal wrote: post #43

The recently released Fairphone 6+ runs on Android 16. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, their website doesn't even clearly state that. Android 16 is 14 months old at the moment. Android 17 was released to manufacturers 6 months ago and had a general release 2 months ago. So why does a brand new phone run an operating system from over a year ago? Does it really take over 6 months to update a phone to a new version…

this is 100% in the hands of the SoC manufacturer. Android versions are locked to kernel versions, which are locked to binary drivers to run your hardware. there's no way around that and you can't reverse engineer or do anything if you want that SoC vendor to continue to fulfill your orders (which you're already at the bottom of the fulfilment list because of low volumes)

If this were genuinely 100% a Qualcomm limitation, I'd expect every Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 phone to be similarly stuck. But Motorola's Edge 70 Fusion uses the same SoC and was already in Android 17 beta testing in February, and Nothing's Phone (4a) and OnePlus Nord CE 6 are also slated for Android 17. So it seems the SoC isn't inherently preventing Android 17.

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#56

Post by SahAssar »

ValdikSS wrote: post #33
Valodim wrote: post #10

Not an expert, but I recently heard that apparently not everything is perfect in fairphone land: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...

GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well. Just as physical security, digital security most of…

> That's why Xbox, PlayStation, Switch all run on a custom silicon and not an ordinary chips!

Not really. Xbox and PlayStation both run on pretty standard AMD Zen 2 chips. Somewhat customized, but standard enough that people by binned playstation 5 motherboards to use as computers with normal OS'es (lookup BC-250). The last gen with more customized chips was the PS3/Xbox360 era, when both went with a variant of PowerPC, same as Gamecube/Wii/WiiU.

Switch runs on basically the same Nvidia Tegra CPU/GPU as multiple android tablets.

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#57

Post by prmoustache »

eleventen wrote: post #34

Are ya'll really repairing your phones? I replace mine when it can't run Google Maps smoothly anymore. After 4-5 years, on every phone I've ever had, user interactions begin to lag noticeably. Apps launch much more slowly. Intense graphical apps like maps become frustrating to use. At some point I can't take it anymore and replace the phone, long before its physical parts or battery have worn out.

I am not sure what you are doing to your phone for it to act like that

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#58

Post by eloisant »

Cider9986 wrote: post #41
jampekka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems you have to compromise on HW openness and ethics vs paranoia.

It's paranoia to want ≥ security than an iPhone or stock Pixel?

It depends who you are. If you're Edward Snowden, or even a high ranking politician, it's a sane precaution.

If you're just a rando like me yes, it's paranoia.

Re: How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+

#60

Post by mapontosevenths »

artisinal wrote: post #43

The recently released Fairphone 6+ runs on Android 16. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, their website doesn't even clearly state that. Android 16 is 14 months old at the moment. Android 17 was released to manufacturers 6 months ago and had a general release 2 months ago. So why does a brand new phone run an operating system from over a year ago? Does it really take over 6 months to update a phone to a new version…

I am a user. What does Android 17 do for me that 16 doesn't?
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