Fairphone has created a smartphone that owners can repair themselves - This sustainable smartphone aims to reduce global electronic waste::In a bid to reduce global electronic waste, Fairphone has created a smartphone that owners can repair themselves. What makes its technology so sustainable?
When I couldn’t repair my Nokia and replace the 5 € USB-Port because there happened to be a small crack in the screen (of course you have to remove the glued on screen to accese the innards), I caved and bought a Fairphone 3.
Worst decision ever. The stupid thing refuses to break to let me even use the better repairability.
you got me
Can confirm, nothing broke yet :(
is this an ad?
I see it more like a hacker news style “show HN”
I believe the concept behind Fairphone sounds interesting, but I think this thing about being environmentally friendly shouldn’t be focused on high-end devices, if the Fairphone 5 costs the same as 10 cheap devices(considering cheap devices have a lifetime of 1.5 years) and a biggest % of people would be able to afford a 60 bucks device vs a 600 bucks one I don’t see the point here, maybe they should make a device focused on the cheap budget pocket to really fight with the devices consumerism who are the ones what mainly create the e-waste problem. I’m not an expert but this is my humble POV.
I wonder if its just cheaper to make the crappy disposable devices, either because just gluing shit together is easy, or because the existing business model & supply lines based on planned obsolescence are established and optimised.
Ultimately any business model based on chasing anything but the most money is going to be at a disadvantage under capitalism. Want to prioritise good products, less waste, human dignity, not destroying the ecology? Well, you’re going to make less money, so you can spend less on capturing market share and you will always have a more niche and more expensive product that will be left behind by products that focus on money above all else.
I believe anything don’t cost by itself, I mean money and prices are a man-made concept englobed into economy, so I believe making cheap stuff and making expensive stuff are just two concepts englobed into capitalism.
My point would be, to get rid of e-waste we don’t need eco-friendly corporations, we need to get rid of the mayor problem which it’s capitalism by itself and it’s consumerism practices.
Yeah, in a better world where the people have control of the means of production, we wouldn’t care at all about financial return when making something. We’d make it to work well and to last and to be repairable, just like current open source hardware is. We’d make it for us.
True dat folk! ✌️🤞
Imo, paying a small extra for the device makes sense because it’s not a huge company, and the r&d must be expensive.
Yeah I mean for people who can afford any phone out there it’s not a big problem, but if you are from IDK maybe the 80% who cannot do it I believe it’s better if they focus or at least have a line of products for the people who would be interested in a budget price phone, people who don’t need the most great-eco-friendly phone with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of ROM, maybe something optimized for work with 4GB/64GB configuration and could last 5 years it’s a better idea for me but anyway I’m really not interested into having 24 cores CPU and 350 megapixel camara just to watch porn and news in Lemmy haha. It depends of the needs of the user but maybe focusing too into a more practical phone for the 80% of users could be good for the business.
It’s a very neat idea (I myself would get a mid range phone like that), but I wonder if they can actually do that… Has anyone ever asked them?
The problem I think it’s about the production and costs, all corporations nowdays manufacture in China so I believe if there would be a great budget/eco-friendly phone or another products what can actually fight in the global market it have to be a Chinese company who make it. But I believe the Chinese are not interested in it if they can keep making cheap stuff and sell it like hamburgers for the hungers. So for Fairphone being an European company I think it’s better to stick in the high-end niche. At least that way they can sell their stuff to eco-friendly wannabes and keep making a good profit in the side.
With geopolitics being what they are I think there is a lot of onshoring coming. As well as moving production from China to other places.
I do sometimes feel like what we really want is something a little bit more like how Framework are doing things. Yes it’s easily repairable, but it’s also easily upgradable.
Upgradability isn’t really a design consideration for fairphone. So everyone is stuck with the kind of mediocre camera that they decided to put on it. It would be nice if the option was there to have something a bit better.
Actually, they do.
The Fairphone 3 was upgradable to the Fairphone 3+ by buying spare parts like the camera and installing them yourself.
The thing is that phones don’t really need upgrades.
phones don’t really need upgrades
Huh??? I went through 4 phones during the lifespan of my last PC
Yeah and you didn’t really need any of them.
A smartphone from 9 years ago is still enough hardware to handle everything a smartphone needs to do.
Maybe if you don’t communicate with people regularly lmfao.
My current phone is about 3 years old and is getting slower with age, the camera is mid when compared to newer models, the under screen fingerprint sensor is ass, etc
My first phone? A slow mess, not running a modern operating system, overheated if you looked at it funny, camera looked like there was Vaseline on the lens, battery was shit, usb micro-b, etc
My phone is 5 years old, I’ve replaced the battery twice, and it runs just fine. I was planning on keeping it for a long time yet, but I’m going out of the country and US border patrol can take a copy of your phone when entering or leaving the country, so I’m gonna buy a new phone right before I go so it doesn’t have much data on it in case they decide to take a copy.
the camera is mid when compared to newer models
This is a weird take. New phones having newer features doesn’t mean yours got worse than it was when you bought it.
A factory reset and battery swap will restore most old devices to their original state. If they were good enough three years ago there’s no reason it’s not now.
Right, except the original comment was that phones don’t need upgrades. I’m saying that my circle of people, myself included, all appreciate getting new phones for newer features. So the notion that upgrades are unnecessary is a little delulu
For battery swaps, I’m not arguing against that. This is all under the main comments about frameworks strategy of designing upgrades into their product – so i don’t have to buy a whole new phone to get a new camera and battery :p
Appreciating an upgrade isn’t the same thing as needing one. I’m glad(?) that you recognize you and your friends are submitting to social pressure and consumerism but if you’ll forgive me I think it’s still a very weird take when not buying something you don’t need is still an option.
I wish that was true but it feels like the opposite to me. Running videos in a browser on my phone seems to be worse than when I first started using it - I suspect due to them becoming more demanding.
Fairphone 5 Please come to the US ☹️
If you have friends in the EU, maybe you could pay them what it would cost in terms of buying and shipping the phone over here. Or, if you can find one, maybe there’s someone online who does imports that might be willing to help import one.
But yeah, I really hope they expand their business here even though they’ll be absolutely 100% legally bullied out of business and forced to leave the US market because cApItAlIsM.
It won’t even make a dent in the amount of damage that oil companies are doing.
When are we going to get worldwide shipping Fairphone? Next year maybe?
Own a 4 had to replace the screen, and it was refreshingly easy with the modular system. My only issue is parts availability at times.
I’ve replaced a few screens that were glued in place (Samsung being one), just had to warm them with a hair dryer and used a playing card to cut through the adhesive. Easy-peasy.
I’m writing this on a Fairphone 5 right now, the hardware is great, the only slight issue is the USB C Port is a little looser than I would like, not enough for a problem, alas.
The main issue currently is the software, there’s a few well known bugs that cause annoyances that the Fairphone forum widely know about, one of which requires you to hold the power button down and force restart the phone. I am confident that the developers and customer support are aware of these bugs and are working to fix them.
Overall I’m happy with it, £700 isn’t too bad for a phone that I’m going to try to keep for the whole 8 to 10 years that have promised security patches. Sure its doesn’t have flagship specs, but no day to day tasks for me require that power.
USB C Port is a little looser than I would like
Maybe yours is one that barely passed QC. That’s one of the replaceable modules though right? Might be worth contacting CS about.
I mean I would if the cable kept becoming unplugged, its more it wiggles more than I’d like
It’s a great thing, and I hope the industry (with motivation by EU) will follow a trend towards repairability and sustainability. However I think the most sustainable way is buying used devices.
Unfortunately you need something with long firmware and software support. Qualcomm is your enemy, they stop updating the firmware of their chips after about two years and that’s why android phones often stop getting updates less than 2 years after you buy them.
That’s true. I use LineageOS to get at least OS updates, but firmware is definitely problematic. I just wished mobile hardware would be more generic like in Desktop PCs, that would solve a lot of problems.
