The new fairphone 5 came out, it looks cool but the price is really, really high…
If it’s a phone that can really last 10 years it could be good, but is that true? Is it worth it? I could get the one with /e/os from Murena because i want a degoogled phone with a bootloader locked, but is it usable on a daily basis?
Hopefully I’m not too late to say this: I would strongly caution against buying a Fairphone. My mum got a new Fairphone 3 in early 2021. Earlier this year, just after the phone went out of warranty, the USB-C port stopped working. The replacement bottom module was out of stock, it’s been out of stock for months, and the forums are full of people complaining that it’s been mostly out of stock since 2021. Fairphone claimed that they would have stock back by the end of August, and as of today, that is not true. This phone was supposed to have spare parts available through to 2025.
does the fact that they promise 8 years support now change your mind at all?
Did you read the comment you replied to? Fairphone may be well-intentioned but their promises don’t mean much when they can’t even fully support the phones they have out now
I bought the FP3, then upgraded it to an FP3+ when the camera broke. Never had as much fun with a phone before or since. It has been my daily driver for years and it did everything well enough, if a bit slow. My friends either get new phones or use them despite visible damage because they can’t fix them. Now I ordered the FP5 to have the 3+ as a backup and test setup and I am confident I will use the FP5 for 3-6 years again :)
Fairphones are like an odd car: There are sleeker, faster, cheaper and maybe just better alternatives around. However you still like it and just learn where to hit it with a hammer when it starts making funny noises. If you can afford it and like odd devices, it’s for you.
Don’t hit your phone with a hammer please . 🤓
You can’t tell me what to do!!!
…but it kinda makes sense, so I won’t hit it with a hammer 😐
I’ve had a Fairphone 4 for just under a year running CalyxOS, and I am very happy with it. Not sure when / if CalyxOS will be available for FP5, but unless they have locked down anything, I don’t see why that shouldn’t happen. If I understand your post correctly, it is already available with e/OS/?
Maybe the specs are underwhelming, but with the FP4, it does not affect me the slightest based on my use case. Phones are more than good enough already. I do not play any games on my phone. Camera could be better - maybe it is on FP5? Is it the perfect phone? Nope, but at the moment, I think our choices are too limited if you want privacy and repairability. Supporting a company that pushes these kinds of phone is also a reason I went with this phone.
Swapable batteries are nice - I’ve not made use of it yet, but I am planning on getting one or two spare batteries for travel to keep in a printed case. In the EU, this will be mandatory in the future, but first form 2027. Other than that, I am happy with the ability to buy spare parts if something breaks. I can’t see myself ever buying something that is deliberately unrepairable again when there is no reason it should be. I don’t mind the lack of 3.5mm-port, which I know irritates a lot of people. If you swear to this, I can understand that this is disappointing. There exists an adapter, but my experience with these kind of adapters is that they quickly wear out. That was my experience with the iPhone and Apple’s own adapters at least. I burned through four in 1-2 years.
Running a Fairphone 4 with IodéOS (another de-Googled privacy focused Android) for close to two years now and I agree that it’s a capable phone which doesn’t limit myself in any way.
As you mentioned the biggest downside is the camera, which apparently has something to do with the firmware.
Edit: regarding the headphone situation: I’m using Austrian Audio (=former AKG engineering team) Hi-X25BT headphones, which are noticeably better than pods or cheap headphones and have been running well over a year now. They come with both (mini-)jack to USB-C and USB-C to USB-C cables, but I haven’t tried the latter yet.
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Actually, when you buy a Fairphone directly from them, they offer you to send them your old phone to be refurbished and reused, I believe in 3rd world countries.
Edit: Here’s the direct link: https://shop.fairphone.com/recycle
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It’s interesting that they include phone brands like MobiWire and Blackberry, but not Google.
From a privacy perspective: no
From a fairness and repairability perspective: yes
Why is it bad from a privacy perspective?
It’s not bad, it’s just that it’s an Android phone like any other. It doesn’t claim to be more “private”. It would be approximately the same amount of work to degoogle as any other Android phone.
Probably easier if they dont actively try to prevent you from unlocking & rooting
Though that does not equal to interest by the devs who create ROMs and other such content.
Maybe less of a concern since Treble but a concern nonetheless.
Every Fairphone to date (perhaps not the original) has had support for custom operating systems, on behalf of both the Fairphone developers and community developers at large. The Fairphone 4 is one of the most widely supported modern devices and there is no reason to think this will suddenly change with the 5.
Fairphone always had a lot of interest from the open source community, I don’t see why that would change…
They literally launched a /e/OS version the same day…
The default Fairphone OS has Google and a bunch of other trackers.
For a good privacy friendly Fairphone, you should get the Murena Fairphone (they preinstalled DeGoogled /e/OS)
So not really worse than any other Android phones
No worse, and with the benefits of a re-lockable bootloader and widespread custom OS support.
If you’re not a power user, then it’ll probably work fine for several years. And it will be cheap and easy to replace the battery in 3-5 years when it starts to degrade, or replace the screen if you drop it. Not sure if a full 10 year lifespan is realistic, though.
And you’re right, the price is high, but it’s not supposed to be an affordable phone. The stated goal of the Fairphone is to be better for the environment and better for people than most other electronics. So, they have to do things like use sustainable materials and source parts from places that treat their workers well. All of that means that Fairphones will NEVER be as cheap as other brands. Because doing things right costs more.
We’ll probably never be allowed Fairphone in USA, which I’ve been eying since before launch. Curiosity got the better of me anyway; it’s still cheaper than iPhone https://eu.mobgsm.com/mobile/apple-iphone-14-pro-max-price-in-europe
Do you not count the Murena partnership? I’ve been considering a Fairphone since I saw this.
It’s too expensive for me. Not worth it when a used Pixel is way cheaper, has way better hardware and has support for GrapheneOS.
It might be expensive when you compare it to the lifetime of a regular phone, but compare it to what you’d spend instead on regular phones within the potential lifetime of 7-8 years of the FP5 (minus 1-2 minor repairs).
Also no one is talking about that fact that it’s fair as in equitable. Like everyone who worked to make it got paid, which is not something you can say about any of the big phone makes AFAIK.
This does not only depend on the hardware’s lifespan but the software itself too. If there is no longtime support the average user might be better of using a more recent phone where all apps will work and there are not that much security issues.
Official software support for the FF5 is 8 years, I believe
Fairphone offers 8 years of software updates and aims to reach even 10.
Well they can promise updates yes. But they are limited on the android version to the manufacturer of the chips. The company shift which has a similar concept as Fairphone currently suffers from that problem: they cannot upgrade their shift5me to a higher version than android 8 and a lot of apps recently dropped their support to older android versions (e.g. banking apps)
They worked closely with Qualcomm on selecting a chip for this exact reason.
Fairphone have been dealing with this problem of unsupported chips for quite some years now (the hardest lesson learned was probably selecting Mediatek for the FP1) and they’ve become better and better at it - up to the point, that they chose not a mobile, but an IoT SoC for the FP5 for which they got Qualcomm to commit to much longer support than ever before. I don’t see why reason, why they shouldn’t manage to stick to this commitment in this case. On top of that, they’re even working with Qualcomm to allow for replacable SoCs for future upgrades without having to replace the whole mainboard incl. storage etc.
Got me a refurb pixel 5a last year for $100. It’s been great and way better then my moto g power I had previously.
I second this. Got an open box pixel 6 pro this year for $400, still blows most non-flagship current year phones out of the water.
Nice, I got a renewed one from Amazon this year for $330. It was as good as new, no scratches whatsoever, battery health was at 99% and still had 3 months of warranty left.
Ten years is an extremely long time in tech and we might not even be using phones as we currently know them by then.
To me it doesn’t look like that long a time for another revolutionary piece of tech to make its way, but what do you think would be the next big thing?
Hmm, I’m very doubtful that could be reasonably priced so soon, but we’ll see I guess
It might not be. Consider that moore’s law is coming to an end. I fully expect more and more products to be cloud based and ai based. I don’t think ai can run on our phone even in the near future. Battery is another issue, you can’t afford to run too much stuff on it.
We as consumers now need to adjust to the ending moore’s law.
God I hope so. I’m sick of consumer tech constantly being in a marketing cycle
A second-hand phone is always worthier
Still using my 6 yo Pixel 2 XL with a custom rom. Not planning to change and I easily see how I can get to 10 years. For instance, the repairability allowed me to change a cracked screen, as it would be possible with the Fairphone.
Downscale your needs and you can easily do 10 years in my opinion!
I don’t know dude, you can downscale your needs all you want but if you drop your phone on the ground and break the screen you can only hope there are third party manufacturer that still produces it or you can toss it away.
Most decent phones still have replacement parts available, though obviously they are not always identical in quality to the original.
In theory,yes.
I won’t buy it as my whole charging environment is wireless these days and the FP5 has no wireless charging.
Rolling back of course would be possible but annoying, especially for phone I would use for 5 years possibly.
It won’t be as good as native hardware support, but you can buy a device to add wireless charging. It plugs into the phone USB-C and has a short flexible cable leading into a thin (1 mm maybe) wireless charger receiver that can fit inside a phone case
Yeah, had one of these for previous phones,but most don’t fit properly with cases and if you need to properly charge the phone you are always fiddling around. Was not really satisfied with them.
Ive been wondering what stops people to mod their phone for wireless charging
From the tear downs I’ve seen with wireless charging it’s actually a pretty sizable and complicated addition to just slap into a phone that’s already had it’s space optimized. I’m sure there’s work arounds, but with so many various models and configurations I doubt you could create a one-size-fits all mod that would be popular/easy to implement.
Fair, but with how moduler the fairphone’s are, i kinda expected somebody to have made it possible :p
I believe that the price is reasonable overall: it has good specs and now that FP is an established brand you know it won’t go out of business and support will last. /e/OS has become good enough lately to be reliable to daily drive (it requires some initial adjustment, but nothing to be worried about).
Also, they are phones that withhold their value in the secondary market: a used FP3+ on ebay costs more than 400€ and it had a launch price of 439€, so you can easily sell them for a good price if you ever change your mind about owning one.
The only thing that makes me hesitant to buy one is the fact that now the EU is pushing a lot of consumer friendly laws, like mandatory USB-C, replaceable batteries, extended software support and so on… So in two or three years the smartphone market might offer more high-end products that are long lasting and have a more accessible price tag. It only depends on how much time can you wait.Edit: added links to sources
10 years ago the Samsung Galaxz S4 released, let’s compare its specs with the current phone
Samsung Galaxzy S4 <> Galaxy S23
Display size: 5" <> 6.1"
Resolutuion: Full HD <> 120hz 2k AMOLED
CPU: 4x1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 & 4x1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 <> 1x3.36 GHz Cortex-X3 & 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 & 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A710 & 3x2.0 GHz Cortex-A510
RAM: 2GB <> 8GB
Storage: 16-64GB <;> 128-512GB
The question is, do you want to run 10 year old hardware even if its software is supported?
Most of that progression was made in the first 5 years, the last 5 years for new phone tech have been a lot slower. I don’t know if any spec in the next 5 will really make me want to upgrade, stuff just works atm
I feel like we reached the stage where any improvements are really just incremental and small, you used to get a massively different experience when upgrading your phone even just a year later in the early days, nowadays you can barely tell the difference between new and 5 year old models.
When we get in that state of a technology, we should definitely be looking at how to make our devices last longer instead of renewing yearly / bi-yearly.
When we get in that state of a technology, we should definitely be looking at how to make our devices last longer instead of renewing yearly / bi-yearly.
Won’t somebody please think of the
childrenprofits?
That’s not the question. There is no singular reason to buy the Fairphone 5 and a purchase is not necessarily a commitment to a full 8 - 10 years of use. Focusing solely on one aspect of the device, like its modular components or the long-term software support, is missing the bigger picture.
But it is the question.
OP wants to know if fairphone will last 10 years. The retort is that even if you can have a phone that is supported for 10 years, you won’t want to use it that long.
Even if they use it for 5 years and then move to something else, it still offers benefits that very few modern phones have. And it’s still the most ethical by an absolute mile. You don’t need to use a Fairphone for the entire support period for it to become a worthwhile purchase.
I don’t need more for calls and text messages, right? Even browser works.
The newer hardware tends to usually have a longer lifespan. A 10-year old computer today is a 3rd or 4th gen Core i7, still decently powerful. A 10-year old computer 10 years ago was a Pentium 4, pretty much useless.
Same will apply to phones. I had an S5 that I bought in 2014 which by 2019 actually was getting too old, hobbled by it’s paltry 2GB of RAM. Bought an S8 in 2019 which already was 2 years old and it’s already outlived the S5 by almost 2 years. It’s starting to show signs of age but will probably last at least another couple years. I’m expecting the S22/S23 Ultra to last into the 2030s.
So
- 22% more screen
- twice the pixels
- the same number of cores, though undoubtedly faster
- four times the ram
- 2 to 32 times the storage
Not that impressive for ten years of development to be honest. In addition to that there are limits to what is required for everyday usage. Not to make a “640k should be enough for everybody”, but browser and messaging only requires a few GB of RAM and will do so for the foreseeable future. 8GB is future proof enough for the vast majority of use cases.
I have 2TB of storage in my PC. The actually important part (documents and programs) take up minuscule amounts of space. The remainder is for AI models, movies and games, all of which I could delete and download again.
Since we are in a privacy subreddit, I will say that Fairphone is second only to the Google Pixel in terms of support for privacy focused versions of Android. For privacy specifically, they are a great choice.
Subreddit? You high man? Do you need some water? Have you eaten well?
But the price is just too much, jesus. I can’t spend 600 euros on a phone
Kids are very cheap labour. If you want them to build a phone for you, just buy any other brand.
Bruh so sorry if for me a purchase of 600 euros is just too much, i don’t work and i don’t expect to receive money from anybody right now, so i guess if you are the one who wants to give me the opportunity of not putting kids to build my next phone then now’s your big chance
Just ignore the downvotes, people are garbage and that doubles online!
Yes indeed, reddit taught me this already
Why are you complaining about the price of a smartphone when you don’t even have an income?
Oh what, i can’t? If i had an income i could magically have the right to rant about it? Even without income, every now and then i manage to make substantial purchases, but we’re talking about 600€ then it’s just too much for me to handle
You can complain about whatever you want, I just don’t understand the logic behind this particular complaint. According to you, not only do you not have an income but you don’t work at all. The problem here is quite clearly your situation in life and not the price of the phone. Complaining about the price of luxury items is just completely asinine when you have no reliable source of income and are doing nothing to change that.
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Just buy a secondhand Pixel.
Yes i was already considering that. Particularly i was looking to buy one on this website , seems like the cheapest option i’ve found so far
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