Technology

If you can't buy parts a decade after something is purchased, the repairability is a gimmick, a sales trick.

I'm not making a joke, that's the truth of it, imo.

That's how old the fairphone is.

My lgg3 is a year younger, and it's a pain in the ass to find a real battery, but LG didn't sell the thing with the idea of users being able to repair and upgrade. You expect an LG phone to have poor parts availability after a decade.

Like you said, a phone under normal use should last a decade plus. Barring failure of the main board, which is kinda where replacing that part means it's a new phone rather than a repaired phone, if you're still left with a device that you can't get parts for, it's landfill waste. Kinda puts a damper on sustainability as a factor.

Fairphone is a gimmick, and it always has been. A good gimmick to be sure, but a gimmick.

That's interesting. Can parts be found on other resellers or sites or is Fair phone the only suppliers for these parts?

This kinda defeats the purpose of buying one.

My understanding is that they alone can't give driver updates, which is why they choose a chip for FP5 which will get supported longer. (That doesn't explain regular software not getting updates)

I assume you looked elsewhere for Fairphone 1 parts?

They have literally an explanation for this on their website. You might disagree, but saying "it makes no sense"...makes no sense.

Also, they discontinued the earbuds and still no jack on FP5, so the idea that "they wanted to sell their own buds" doesn't seem to be likely.

It makes perfect sense. They wanted to sell their own branded ear buds.

I have the 4 and haven't missed it once 🤷

Don't forget the fact they manufacture it in an oppressive authoritarian regime, where the sales tax goes to fund over 1 million Uighurs being held in literal concentration camps.

Imagine if 80 years ago there were products labeled "Ethically Made in Nazi Germany", and the marketing team said it's important to help the individual small businesses there so that the good people can have a higher standard of living.

It's mind boggling to me that people are falling for this.

Google sure is creating a lot of Pixel-fanboys by instilling this myth that if you dont get daddy google's precious over-the-air updates delivered to your phone in 30 seconds after their release your phone might be at great risk®™ (exactly like if you dont let google play store scan the apps on your device to look for malicious software, like F-Droid, a common known attack vector).

Because surely Fairphone users are all government officials with nuclear codes and Kim Jong-un's nudes saved in their notes and teams of indian hackers are 24/7 waiting for a security update to release, so they can unpack the zero-day-vulnerabilities before fairphone gets their release-cycle

Can you please elaborate further on this "component lifespan" thing? Because I think they were quite clear on the processor life cycle.

I still don't get this level of rage. I just have a USB C adapter on the end of my ear buds, problem solved, one less physical port to have to replace as I keep my phones until they're dead dead.

I guess you could argue you need an extra cable on you to plug direct into a HiFi system, but I cant even remember the last time that was something I'd want to do.

Aldo in the case of a repairable phone and having replaced the USB on this fp4, I struggle to see where they would have fit an extra daughterboard for a 3.5mm jack to make it repairable

I'm writing this comment on a Fairphone 5 right now and it doesn't feel sluggish at all.

It doesn't seem to me like the increased performance of phones has had much effect on the actual experience for a while if gaming or content creation is not done on the phone. As a daily driver I think this phone will last me a while.

i think you mean content, little bit different meaning than contempt ;)

It's because they try to ethically source as much of the phone as possible, and go out of their way to pay fair wages and ensure no forced labour is used in the supply chain.

Unfortunately that adds significant cost.

Yea that’s what happens if the company at least tries to make it repairable and not made by exploited people.