Comment by Grombobulous
2 days ago
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 manufacturer compared to previous models.
You want years of software updates? Yeah, an iPhone has you covered there, too.
And of course, fairphone’s hardware and OS are nothing to write home about. For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
Who is the Fairphone for exactly? Who is buying it and why?
I think the fairbuds are their best product, but I also imagine AirPods Pro 3 are on a whole different level of sound quality, noise cancelation, voice quality/voice isolation, and firmware/software polish.
And let’s be honest about repairability with tiny earbuds: being able to replace the battery is has such a tiny impact on their footprint. If I have to throw out my AirPods Pro 3 every 5 years due to battery degradation, that’s such an insignificant quantity of material being wasted, so it’s probably worth it to get a better product. I could offset my environmental impact by eating a little less beef or riding my bike instead of driving a few times. You drive 30 miles and that’s an entire gallon of refined petroleum product, how much material and energy is used to make one pair of AirPods? I can’t imagine it’s a lot.
I don’t say any of this to be a big corporate or Apple shill. I am rooting for the little guys. But the little guys need to be realistic. You look at products like the Framework 13 Pro and you can actually say, okay, here’s a product with really legitimate benefits over its incumbent competition. There is a reason to buy this product for a certain buyer. I just don’t see that with Fairphone. I can’t think of a customer profile where that person is getting a better ownership experience with Fairphone products.
I'm not big on this general line on argument, but one point in particular:
> And of course, fairphone’s hardware and OS are nothing to write home about. For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
For the "freedom nerds", FP is one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems, seamless OTA updates and everything included. The Murena e/OS offering in particular is simple enough that the non-nerds that (perhaps less outspokenly) care about freedom can just pick it up with little change in habits.
> For the "freedom nerds", FP is one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems, seamless OTA updates and everything included.
I am not sure what you are trying to say here. I have never had an Android system that did not have OTA updates. Everything included... I usually like to install the apps I want?
As for microG, I think it's debatable. Is it better to have microG contacting the Google servers or sandboxed Play Services going through a Graphene-powered proxy? And say you have microG going through a Murena proxy (do they do that?), is that significantly better than sandboxed Play Services? At the end of the day, your system is made mostly of code written by Google (AOSP).
> The Murena e/OS offering in particular is simple enough that the non-nerds
Yes, I think it's what makes Murena successful. It's surprisingly simple to install GrapheneOS on a Pixel (you follow a wizard on a Chromium browser and click "next" a bunch of times), but many people are scare just by the idea.
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Devices are sold with GrapheneOS installed. Installing it with the web installer is very easy and safe so that's the recommendation for nearly everyone.
isn't the main point of Fairphone to not use conflict minerals?
by using FOSS only myself and hating monopolies like Apple etc., i still pretty much convinced that being "green" or "ethical" is more about participating/volunteering/doing-something towards a better world than off-loading your duty to other companies... one could easily make a point that Apple products despite locked down, are still green (Apple has a bunch of zero-emission and whatever policies) and much more if one uses their devices for a long while. i had a 2° hand iPhone SE 1° gen. till 2021? if stuff breaks despite your not being able to fix it's not like you can't hop into a specialized shop to change batteries or even pay the expensive service Apple offers... sure that allows exploitation and it's always nice to get rid of it, that's why somehow these emerging companies are important and/or policies like the right of repair will make them obsolete
I have been wondering and I first got a Fairphone 3+ because I thought, among others, it was "greener".
Then I realised that:
- Fairphone 3 was already "slow" when it was released in 2019
- Fairphone 3+ was pretty much exactly the same hardware, but I bought it 2.5 years later
- My Fairphone 3+ was annoyingly slow from the moment I bought it (I was using it less than a normal phone because of that, and I just completely gave up on using the camera and asked other people to take photos instead).
- My Fairphone 3+ became painfully after 1.5 - 2 years.
I did not change phone because the hardware was not running anymore. I changed because I just couldn't use the few apps I needed because they were unusable (lagging and crashing). I don't mean games: banking apps, weather forecasts, public transports. Pretty much only Signal/WhatsApp were fine (slow, but fine).
So I painfully kept my Fairphone 3+ for a little more than 4 years.
Then I realised that people who buy an iPhone routinely keep it 6-8 years, without it being painful at all. Is it "greener" if I buy one iPhone/Pixel, or 2 Fairphones? I'm not so sure anymore. What I know is that the iPhone/Pixel are not painful to use.
I think your story also points to the idea that business ethics or other tertiary benefits will only sell a product to a limited extent. They help, but the product being fit for its core purpose is still most important.
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
According to FixIt Fairbuds are the best ones for repairability, not just battery: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Fairphone_Fairbuds
Do you know how the Sennheiser's compare? I'm looking for some for using at the gym, but wanted something I can easily fix if needed.
The Fairbuds are also quite a bit cheaper
And of course, wired headphones still exist as an alternative for those who really don’t like the battery aspect, and it’s not even terribly inconvenient for phones without a headphone jack.
I suspect that the venn diagram of the kind of person who takes issue with Bluetooth audio batteries and the kind of person willing to use wired headphones or prefers them outright has a lot of overlap.
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> However, GOS's threat model very specifically treats the user as a thing to defend against
Can you elaborate?
GOS mostly honours the Android security model, which many alternatives don't do (many times they don't have a choice because the device doesn't allow them to relock the bootloader, so they just defeat the whole security model from the moment you install).
There is absolutely nothing that can be done on a Stock Android and that I cannot do on GrapheneOS. Or at least I haven't found it.
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