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What is wrong with the FairPhone?
5 year warranty, parts repairable and the plan 4 OS Updates
Personally, I find the removal of the headphone jack unjustifiable as well.
Water intrusion? Other phones have had full water proofing with headphone jacks. It’s done the same way waterproof usb ports are.
It can break? Everything can break. If you want it repairable without soldering, then put it on a daughterboard, perhaps along with the usb port. One phone I recall having a headphone jack that had integrated lever spring contacts. It just pressed against contacts on the PCB. As easily replaceable as possible. But that may have been a custom part, or not available in a waterproofed version, so it’s not certain they could use that.
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USA and Canada coverage is a lie.
Or a partial lie by omission.
They fail to say that it’s missing several bands for proper coverage.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/8873147802257-Global-Network-Coverage
For the network coverage of a Fairphone specifically in the US, we recommend using T-Mobile.
Coverage in the US on a Fairphone is not optimized for Verizon and AT&T. You might find that some or even most features work with a different provider, but since there could be issues with emergency calls, download speed, and the general network connection, we cannot recommend other carriers.
In their language, it’s “not optimized” for T-Mobile either. It’s missing multiple bands, among them band 66 which was reported to account for 48% of T-Mobile’s network traffic. It’s just not designed for USA or Canada at all. Most people will not know this. How many delve into what freqencies their carrier uses, let alone tries to see how imporant each freqency is, which is harder to find, and just unavailable info for some bands.
For a company that seems to pride themselves on doing the right thing, I can’t understand them not telling people about this. Phones are lifelines. People will buy it without knowing that it will not work everywhere it should. With certain bands missing entirely, even when calling 911 it’s not going to have the coverage of a phone designed for USA & Canada. To pride yourself on doing the right thing & not make this problem extemely clear is unacceptable imo. Let alone to act like it works just fine on T-mobile.
I was enthusiastic about Fairphone, until I discovered that. You could say I’m not a fan anymore.
Tho I probably should have just linked to what I posted before about coverage
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Ok, that is a reason i can cover.
Missing Headphone jack anoys me to, but as a selling company they must offer what the people want. The most of them did use bluetooth Headphone and no wired.
So I could understand this.
You’re quite right.
Fairphone 5 has added band 66 to 4g & 5g. Along with band 2 added to 5g. FP4 / FP5 specs comparison: gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=12540&idPhone2=11136#diff-
Fairphone 5 looks good for T-mobile now, presuming VoLTE works without an issue on T-mobile.
Thanks for the correction on the FP5 Amoun.
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Just looking at the phone manufacturing landscape, its pretty impossible to break into the market.
It would require a lot of money just for R&D, not to mention everything else.
The market would be even more niche than on laptops. It would require major efforts (and money) to even be profitable.
Even some of the big players are not profitable on rhei mobile business, but as they are bog and have other venues that rake in cash, they can keep doing it. I dont think FW would ever have that.
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How long are you looking to maintain support / OS updates, security updates?
Ask yourself the same question and let me know your answer. (This is not an insult, just want to know what you look for in support.)
If I’m building the phone, depends on if I’m using a Qualcomm SoC and the resources I have available.
If I’m buying a phone, of course, it’s as long as I can possibly get.
Exactly. In my opinion, you don’t need to rely on the manufacturer for future updates to a device. That’s what the community is for.
Think of car culture, they tend to hang on to the cars they like for as long as possible. The manufacturer stopped supporting the said model of car or entirely went defunct, yet there are tons of people who still find ways to keep said car alive and well through custom parts. If that makes sense.
Same goes for consumer electronics, as long as people keep making updates themselves, it doesn’t matter how old the device is. You just have to build it to fit the performance of the hardware. (Of course someone is gonna say something to contradict that statment.)
The reason we don’t see this as much in consumer electronics is because companies lock down the device. Why let the consumer upgrade their device they like when we can purposely break it so they’ll have to buy a new one. Every. Single. Year.
This is also happening to literally every thing around us: cars, farm equipment, medical equipment, literally anything you can buy. Sorry, “Lease”.
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Ok and I dont really care if you asked or not. Just provided some general rhings from the mobile market
Seems like you do since you replied. I don’t care about how much money it makes or the cost. This is about giving people the freedom to actually own the devices they bought with their money. I only said didn’t ask because I literally saw that same reply elsewhere on the internet.
Eh you do undestand that FW needs to make money too? That is kind of the point.
Why create a product that first costs boatloads of money and then costs some more boatloads and afterwards doesn’t bring anything back. How long do you think it would last ?
Just because “it would be nice to own the phone” isnt really a good business reason
I’m afraid, unfortunately, that doesn’t work for mobile SoCs. I sure wish it did. Mobile devices are dependent on OEM driver blobs from the device manufacturer to support a newer OS. And the device manufacturer is dependent on the SoC maker to supply blobs to build on. The USA has been beholden to Qualcomm as they control many cellular patents & always make the best modems for USA frequencies. Cheaper phones sometimes use MediaTek, but they’re never able to compete & provide modems as capable. Samsung tries to use their own in-house SoC, Exynos, when they can, but they still feel forced to turn to Qualcomm for many devices. Google has moved to using their own Tensor SoCs currently built in collaboration with Samsung, and borrowing from Samsung’s Exynos. I assume assume the modems are the same as Exynos, not quite as good Qualcomm, but Google has had enough of Qualcomm sh!t. And being unable to support phones for longer. I guess they decided it’s worth the tradeoff, especially if they pack some Google Pixel exclusive stuff into their chips. I tend to agree. Anything to get away from Qualcomm’s chains.
And Qualcomm, well, they are a horrendous company in many ways. One of which is the length of time they will support their chips. And without support from the SoC maker, the device manufacturer has a very hard time supporting newer OS versions. Fairphone sorry, the phone manufacturer we are avoiding talking about, has managed to support their devices beyond Qualcomm’s support by putting in massive effort. And I think, even then, sometimes their updates can have problems.
TL;DR
@#$% Qualcomm. They need to die.
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Do you develop for Android?
I hope you can see this because I can’t reply for another 19 hours.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t unlocking the bootloader solve this problem?
Because the way I see it, every manufacturer has basically their own version of Android. And since Android is “open source” (I put quotation marks because Google bought and owns Android.) They update it and add their own features to Android. So the only thing that would stop a device from getting updates is if the manufacturer stopped sending updates. Again correct me if im wrong. I’m not a developer either.
I guess I sound like that, maybe a bit?
I don’t develop for Android.
I do rip out the factory android rom in my phones & tablets to install community versions of android instead. Community support for a device always ends at some point. Because the SoC maker stopped support and so there are no driver blobs to support newer OS versions. If you try to hold on to an old OS version, even security updates will stop not too long later because 1) without new OS versions some in the community lose interest 2) Google just moves on & your OS version becomes EoL (End of Life). Sometime, someone will try to release beyond when SoC blobs are available, but such releases are usually rough & buggy. I’m talking, the camera, wifi, & / or bluetooth might not work. Cellular will work to some extent, just because it would be kind of pointless to even release if that didn’t work. Pixel devices are the exception because they are very popular in the android rom community, so more skilled people work on them. Community support lasts the longest here. But they all die at some point. Hate it, but it’s just the way it is. Mobile phone aren’t like PC’s, where 20+ year old hardware can be running a fully security patched linux distro, safe to use online.
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Apologies for what I contributed in bringing things down.
I didn’t know those party favors were so flammable! 
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