Wow. Two FP posts in a night. Paste of my comment.
Faiphone is being frog marched out of Australia. Each telco is shutting it down and blocking IMEIs. Sucks for the people that imported them.
Cant even use it as data only. So unless you use it as puerly on WiFi it’s going to landfill. 😔.
TBH wifi only is what I’d like to have. I just want a device I can hold in my pocket without worrying about cell service, but still call a rideshare because I don’t drive and those stupid services don’t do a request-by-phone. I’d ditch it entirely if I could.
Any links to this story please? Couldn’t find any
Search Telstra 3G shutdown. They were the first to block all in 2024 (and can confirm still blocked) Optus is now blocking on the 10th March. There’s one telco left in AU. Everyone else sells one of these three.
Much discussion in this FP5 thread. https://forum.fairphone.com/t/3g-network-closure-australia
Despite what people say the phone works and has all requirements for the network, VoLTE calling and emergency calling. The telcos tho don’t want to take a risk with “unknown” modems. So they disable network.
my mum bought a fairphone 3 about 5 years ago and is extremely happy with it, so far she’s gone through one usb-c port and one battery. it looks and feels exactly like a normal phone but it pops open with just 4 screws. helping her fix it has taught me that phone manufacturers could make repairable phones easily and they all just choose not to
I used to run a small electronics repair business and you are 1 billion percent correct. Slowly watching things over the years become unrepairable was just such an obvious business decision for profit over customer satisfaction. There is absolutely no reason to make those changes unless you have a profit driven motive. So so so many electronics used to be like the fairphone your mom has. Pop it open, take out what’s broke, replace it with some OEM or 3rd party part you bought for like 2 dollars and you’re all set. It’s so frustrating nowadays with how purposefully difficult manufacturers make any repairability. Can’t even change a damn battery in your phone now! lol
Man I remember when my Mom was actually able to fix a VCR at home with simple tools as well. That VCR lasted as long as sears repaired shops and then they were out of business and the VCR was out for good.
I want GrapheneOS more than repairability, personally. I hope the Fairphone + GrapheneOS combination is possible some day…
The Graphene devs explicitly only support Pixels. Sticking with Graphene means continuing to give Google the profits from your hardware.
/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.
This is a big issue that the fairphone doesn’t have its dtb open yet. It’s not easy to build ROM for it. Despite their core claim of sustainability, without addressing the blobs, it remains just a tad more convenient for green minded people. We need a full Fairphone.
That’s fair and all, and I see your point. A 100% “fair” phone is the end-goal.
Butin the battle against corporate douche-baggery, if we keep making perfect the enemy of good, we’ll never get anywhere.
And besides that, fairphone is just greenwashing when it comes to repairability, good luck finding parts for previous generations.
That demonstrably false by just going to the store…
I don’t know why people keep saying that.
You can still get cameras and screens for the Fairphone 2 from Fairphone. No they’re not making more, but they also have never said “unlimited support forever”.
That the process doesn’t require prying apart glue alone makes it significantly more repairable than any other mainstream phone.
/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.
I switched to e/os on a couple of motorolas that supported it and it’s great so far.
The comparisons to GrapheneOS are fair to some degree, but also not. Graphene is meant to be privacy and security hardened, whereas e/OS, while it is more secure than regular android, is more concerned with privacy hardening. The biggest misconception people have seems to be thinking that privacy and security are the same thing; and while that is true on the surface level, security (a la GrapheneOS) goes much deeper.
So while my phone may not be as “hack resistant” as a GrapheneOS, it’s degoogled and very protective of tracking, which is what I’m primarily concerned with. So I’m happy.
I just wish I could afford a fairphone in Canada.
FYI, I think your third mention of Graphene was meant to be /e/OS.
Whoops. Thanks for the catch.
I just bought a refurbished (as new) Pixel 9 to use Grapheneos.
Saved ~50% and didn’t pay Google.
Genius! That is exactly how I buy my slaves
What the fuck dude
I’m sorry, your what??? 😳
That wasn’t as funny as you thought it would be.
Phrasing?
Google makes way more on services so I don’t think they are making that much off the phones.
They said “possible someday”, not “possible currently”.
What maskes you want Graphene over e/OS? I’m not so familiar with how they feel.
Graphene modifies AOSP for much more security.
E.g.
- you can disable USB data at a hardware level
- Receives Kernel updates even faster than Google’s phones
- uses a different memory allocator, hardened_malloc
- changes the way zygote launches apps, so ASLR actually works
- doesn’t allow apps to ptrace themselves
- disables JIT per-app
- disable network access per-app
I dont think e/OS is as security oriented, more privacy oriented
Thanks for sharing. For someone who is not so well versed in these technicalities, what does that mean for the user? That you’re more susceptible to fraud and hacking and malware?
From a user’s perspective, when you install an app, you can:
- Determine if that app is allowed to access the internet.
- If it needs access to your contacts, you can share which of your contacts, it can see (or none at all)
- If it needs access to your files, you can determine which files/photos/music it sees (or none at all, but the application still believes it has access to everything)
There are a bunch of other, security features it provides, but from a “normal user” experience, the ability to take control of your data is probably one of the most impactful.
It is possible to do similar things with other CFW, but AFAIK, graphene is the only one to cleanly integrate it as a polished feature of the ROM.
edit: fix formatting
I see, and it can’t be installed on Fairphone?
No, the Graphene developers insist on hardware functionality that is not present on the Fairphone.
No, currently only on Pixels. Plans to support another future platform exist.
Hmm, in mean time I prefer buying Fairphone over supporting Google.
A big thing is gOS not using JIT compiling. So, app updates are pretty slow but this kills a lot of malware exploits.
So if I were to choose graphene over eOS it would mainly be to be more protected from malware?
That and privacy, you also have a lot of control over what each app can do with gOS’s permissions settings vs standard ROM and most of that is enabled by default. Can break some apps, especially banking related. I have 122 installed, of that three gave me a little bit of trouble where I had to disable some protections to get them functional. DeGoogled by default, I use microG for some limited Play services to get stuff like Youtube Revanced working.
You would choose it for security hardening in general. E.g. it is harder for malware to infect, harder for unauthorized parties to gain access to data when the phone is locked, etc.
I recently moved from an iPhone 11 Pro to a Fairphone (Fairphone Gen 6), and it’s been a genuinely great change.
It’s made me realise how little I actually use most of the features you end up paying extra for in flagship phones. Because of that, I’m really looking forward to keeping this device for five years or more.
The only thing I occasionally miss is camera quality especially at concerts or when travelling but it’s a small trade-off rather than a deal-breaker. I’d love to see future Fairphone models improve on this.
Hopefully, Fairphone helps set a trend as more people start looking for products that are ethically sourced, repairable and built to last.
Ya I just want to browse , bank, text and msg and call.
Do they work on US networks?
If it supported GrapheneOS I would be using one too.
deleted by creator
The choice of only supporting Pixels comes from GrapheneOS’s side, not Fairphone. Fairphone got some great ROMs support, and even have an official partnership with one of them (e/OS).
I love Fairphones, but GrapheneOS developers are very clear on why they son’t support phones other than Pixels. If other phones complied with those requirements, they would support them. I really hoped the OEM they’re working with to support from another brand would be Fairphone, but the most educated guess I’ve seen is Motorola
I know that. So I stand corrected that I should have written “If it were supported by GrapheneOS…”
Doesn’t change, that its a show stopper for me, though.
That’s fair. We all have our needs, and I find mine in Fairphone + e/OS, which is nice. And when I upgrade, I get to give my parents an almost new, still supported phone, which is nice.
No, the Fairphone hardware platform doesn’t meet minimal security features of the GOS project. You could say they chose not to compromise on security rather.
Which is alright. It’s their project after all. I find myself very happy from my Murena Fairphone (except the launcher, which I hate), so I’ll probably be a good Fairphone/Murena client for the years to come.
You could switch the launcher, right?
I did, I use Lawnchair.
Oh ok, cool 👍
GrapheneOS developers are quite dickish about what they are willing to implement and how they treat their users. They work under the assumption that GrapheneOS is for people afraid of being hacked (like actively targeted by state level actors) and refuse to add anything that in their view compromises security. So for example they refuse to add pattern unlock because they think it’s less secure than PIN which is silly because I can just use ‘0000’ PIN which is as insecure as any pattern. It’s the same with supporting other phones. Personally I’m not worried about police trying to hack my phone, I just want deGoogled system with tracker protection. GrapheneOS devs don’t care. It’s all or nothing with them. I would recommend iode over Graphene to anyone not as paranoid as the devs.
They can be dickish about several things, but they will implement whatever they want, it’s their project LOL! They actually develop a mobile operating system for people afraid of being hacked, and with the utmost security in mind.
The thing with pattern unlock is that it is inherently less secure than the other options, despite the fact that you can use one of the other options in bad ways (like the ‘0000’ PIN). Expecting them to change this is using the lowest common denominator possible, which is against their philosophy.
You do have other options if you want to deGoogle, like LineageOS, that supports a much wider range of devices (altough the extent of deGoogling can be limited). It’s good we have one ROM (among others) with paranoid devs - we have more options
That’s exactly what I said. GrapheneOS devs target very specific group of users and most privacy focused users will be served better by other ROMs. They can do whatever they want but they clearly don’t care about wider community and I think wider community shouldn’t care about them as much as it does.
Yes but also no, the fairphone doesn’t meet the extensive list of requirements required to maintain the goal of GrapheneOS - List of requirements for devices
Some of those requirements are really hard to get for non-Google devices. EOM don’t get updates as early as Google engineers gets. It takes time to validate everything, especially since their don’t control their own hardware.
Those requirements are more a way to not appear like dicks by telling that they’ll only supports Pixels.
every post about fairphone, there’s always one comment like this
I’m running e/os on my FP6 and it’s a great de googled alternative!
I’m using GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7a which I bought just to flash it. Google Android just ran on it for the obligatory update before the flashing. It’s just very secure and that’s what I like about it. I’m not so sure about /e/ even though it’s being supported by semi prominent people here in DACH.
For me any concerns about e/os are overshadowed by buying one of the most sustainable and “ethical” phones there are currently available, and not supporting google.
Buying a Pixel isn’t automatically supporting Google. You can get them secondhand.
Yeah unfortunate that it doesn’t, I imagine the market overlap for those two things is high
The situation won’t improve until some big company goes full “IBM PC” thing with open AT, ISA, VESA, etc tier standards for phones.
This phone is better just because you can open the case. Spare parts are still provided by a single company. Not a big step ahead.
Better than nothing though…
the wheels of justice turn slowly 🐌
Better than Nothing though.
Nothing phone has a pretty average repairability score, so I’d assume so.
With all respect, I still think an iPhone is a better chance at having spare parts many years ahead. I am confident I can find some spare parts of iPhone 4S. Would that hold for FairPhone or a similar phone? If not, the benefit is an illusion. Unless, I think, you can produce that part yourself.
But an iPhone 4S nowadays is completely unusable, it’s impossibile to run a browser that doesn’t use a ten years old engine. For reference, a galaxy Nexus from the same age could run android 6 (custom ROM, otherwise android 4.3) and can still run most modern apps.
If you can find parts for the iphone 4s it’s because some warehouse is still full of them, not because Apple is still manufacturing them if needed
Yes, I do agree. If only Apple allowed compete and true removal of some apps (not hiding them, but completely removing some system apps), and allowed Safari upgrades, that would be quite decent phone for an average light use. I’d use it, I think.
Also, since we dream here, if the system was open source and drivers too, and all that… theoretically, we could run a slimmed down OS that would allow some apps to run.
My point is, in some sibling comment, that software is more of a problem than hardware. I have a usable (hardware wise) iPhone 4S, but it’s useless software-wise.
Doesn’t matter how many spare parts you can get if the device simply refuses to function after replacing them.
First party spare parts or third party sketchy spare parts?
Spare part availability comes partly from the popularity of a phone, and iPhones were pretty popular.
Fairphone is just starting to get some steam, so third party spare part may start appearing in the future. same for used parts.Fairphones got a lot better lately. I got both the 4, 5, and now gen 6, and the latest one feels like a good phone, unless the FP4 which is a brick in comparison. Still lacks several Flagship feature (wireless charging, amongs other), but as a mid-range phone it is quite good.
And the repeatability is great. I repaired my FP4 once (usb-c port), and it was easy as heck.
It’s great to hear, thanks for the feedback!
I meant any spare parts, so in your terms they are sketchy spare parts, I guess. Yet, it’s better than nothing though.
My primary concern is the software part though. I have plenty of phones that never broke, but all of them hit the software wall and it was just easier to buy a newer model.
With unofficial parts you can get anything, from very good parts to outright dangerous ones (especially batteries).
The problem with IPhone is their association system (which is illegal in the EU BTW). Understandable with those dangerous part on the market, but far too overcharging. They could just warn you during boot or something like that.
As for the software wall, it is where Fairphones shines. Even when the official support ends, the custom ROMs keeps updating for a while. IPhones are great on that aspect too, Samsungs are OK, but can’t say for other brands.
Honestly, how’s the camera on the 6? I’ve been pixel mostly because I want to take pictures of my son without regretting later.
I’m okay with the camera on the 6, but no it’s not as good as a Pixel, nor does it open and take pictures as quickly.
I’m not that much into photos, so I can’t really judge. In my book, it is OK.
If you want to get good pictures, nothing will ever beat a dedicated camera, even a mid-range one is way better than a smartphone, even an high-end one, due to the size limitations.
That’s not true. You can still get dedicated cameras that are much worse.
Low-range, yes. Mid-range, no. As soon as you get de decent quality camera, given you know how to use it, you’ll always get better result than smartphones.
Really glad to hear that. I’ve been using a Fairphone 5 for about 2 years now and while it’s certainly not on the level of a flagship I can’t say I miss anything. Sure, a better camera or faster processor would be nice to have, but both get the job done and are certainly not necessary for the average user. Samsung and Apple would have us believe that we all need a DLSR camera strapped to a supercomputer in our pocket in order to swipe on Instagram and take the occasional selfie. I’d gladly trade that in to make the world a tiny bit better by not supporting slavery and not wasting resources.
I bought an HMD Pulse Pro which is also made to be repairable. They have a partnership with ifixit.
hmd has an awful website. I want information, not random photos and hype
wtf are these!
Here you go. Both links from the page with “no information”.
Full Specs - https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-pulse-pro/specs?sku=286946224
Repairability - https://www.hmd.com/en_int/self-repair
that indeed is a clean page that gets to the point
Either this or a fairphone would be an instant buy from me if they were smaller. Modern phones dont fit into my pockets comfortably anymore
Sony is the only available manufacturer of phones that still makes something that feels smaller, albeit only on one plane since theyre just less wide. I really enjoy it, but something even smaller like the z3 compact would be great.
Yeah, i’d love a Fairphone but it’s 5 times the price of the HMD and I just don’t care that much for processing power or the camera. I just use my phone for messaging, playing music, banking and sudoku.
I bought the Pulse for £110 new.
It all boils down to drivers, if those are not open source (and they usually are not), then phone upgradability depends on them
Yes and no, Fairphone has actually managed to reverse engineer some of the drivers for its old phones to provide android upgrades years after the component manufacturers have dropped support. The Fairphone 2, for instance, received a little over 7 years of support and 4 major version upgrades, skipping one on the way. For the Fairphone 5, they’ve promised 10 years of software support, and judging by their track record, I believe them. They also open source as much as they can and even give instructions on how to build the OS yourself.
Of course, open source drivers would be better, but that doesn’t exist at the moment, unfortunately. At this point, Fairphone is one of the companies that comes closest (with Shiftphone being a close rival).
Fingers crossed
That said, I like FP very much, but it’ll eventually hit the software block.
That’s exactly the issue, and the bigger one. Theoretically, Google Pixel 1 could be upgraded software-wise with the newest Android, while the hardware can work longer. So, I’m not really interested in repairability (except the battery replacement, obviously) as much as in software longevity.
My iPhone 4s is still going strong, even despite numerous falls. The software though, it made it useless. I use one as a digital voice recorder sometimes, but that’s the only idea I had. It can shoot nice pictures too (in a bright daylight), and be a nice smartphone for a kid. (Because it’s very limited, and also small, and also cheap.) But the software made it useless.
Indeed, this is really infuriating. They are forcing use to throw away perfectly working hardware in name of profits.
I 100% agree with the fact that there needs to be more phones you can easily fix but every time I see a headline like “I need a phone I can fix” I can’t help but think that y’all are incredibly clumsy and keep breaking your phones far too often 😅
I have gone through 2 batteries and a usb port instead of three phones
No… You need a phone you can fix if you don’t break your phones all the time. That’s how you use the same phone for 6 years, like my pixel 4a. I haven’t upgraded to another pixel because the newer ones all have some deal breaker, no SD card slot, or a non removable battery, or no 3.5 mm headphone port.
But if you keep a phone for 6 years, they need maintenance. A speaker stops working, the battery life drops to nothing, the touch screen digitizer fails, etc. And then you need to be able to open it up.
Agreed on all counts. Also, I truly miss my 4a. I kept it for nearly 5 years until Google killed it’s utility with that update despite claiming that my IMEI was excluded by the battery issue/payout offer.
That is actually a very fair point!
Well they finally delivered a decent camera. That’s what made me buy one. It’s a step down from a Pixel 8 Pro but not a huge one.
I’ve been using a Fairphone 4 for a couple weeks, and I like it so far. This is the way phones should be made. I eventually found replacements for most of my Google stuff. It’s just sad that my government burned our bridges with trade, so any replacement parts I import will be expensive.
I want a Fairphone quite badly as my old s21 ultra is starting to reach the end of it’s useful life. But it not working on Verizon is an automatic dealbreaker because they are the only carrier that works in the rural areas I am always working in. Tmobile is next to useless, so looks like I am still stuck with stupid network lockin.
So long as it’s affordable. I’m not paying more than £250 for a mobile phone, even that’s on the high end of what I can justify for a phone.
I’m stuck using Chinese brands if I want a good, affordable phone, but they have so many intentional software issues.
Nothing’s perfect, but if I could get a better phone that doesn’t lock down stuff (it’s my phone after all, I’m in charge of my own life), and if it were at an affordable price point - unlike these crazies that think £1000 is a reasonable price for a phone (!!!), I’d jump on it <3
You’re more likely to get a price like that in CEX or Back market, with the added bonus that it’s ethical to reuse second hand.
The fairphone is always going to be more expensive than other phones because they ensure fair compensation of workers
yep, the “fair” isn’t exclusive to the customer.
