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> Finally here’s a seemingly good Android phone with 5 years of support - from the only phone vendor outside of Apple who appears to give a damn about that aspe
by Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> Finally here’s a seemingly good Android phone with 5 years of support - from the only phone vendor outside of Apple who appears to give a damn about that aspect.
FairPhone 4 not only promises 5 years of android software updates but also has 5 years of warranty, There are more reasons to trust their words than any of the other phone manufacturers.
• They are not profit focused but rather towards sustainability, They have been delivering their promises consistently for 8 years and so it's not an idealistic vaporware.
• They produce the most repairable smartphone using components sourced from conflict free areas. Parts for repair are available directly on their site, Parts for FairPhone 1 are still available.
• Their factory workers get living wage bonus, Of course do not employ child labor while preaching humanity.
• They have first class support for alternate operating systems i.e. We are the owners of what we buy; So support from alternate OS like Linux, Sailfish or even android ROMs like LineageOS could exceed even the official 5 years support.
FairPhone4 hardware is competent enough for average daily use, Only drawback I see is that the phone is available only in Europe. Then again Google Pixel phones have been notorious for being available in only couple of countries.
[1] https://shop.fairphone.com/en/ https://shop.fairphone.com/en/
- L_226 5y agoI bought a Fairphone 3+ 10 weeks ago, and just got a refund because they cannot build any units. I really wanted this, I guess I will continue to wait for the librem5
- guareber8 5y agoI was curious and just checked into the librem5. I am NOT spending $900 on a phone.
- fsflover 5y agoIt's not just a phone. It's a full desktop Linux computer with lifetime updates, which you can connect to a screen and keyboard and which runs a desktop OS.
- Gustomaximus 5y agoI wonder if that is because they are about to release the Fairphone 4 and sold out of the last. You'd think they'd shut off the orders though if that were the case. Edit: Checked their shop and now says Out of Stock: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-plus https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-plus You might have gotten unlucky on timing right at the end of orders.
- npteljes 5y agoThe website simply says "Temporarily out of stock"
- L_226 5y agoI ordered before v4 was released, and I also contacted them about a month ago to ask for a refund but was told I could not do so until the mandatory 8 week estimated delivery window had passed. I'm not mad, but it is obvious to me that they had no capability or intention to fulfil my order and were just hanging onto the €. They also sent me an email (before I cancelled) saying I could turn my current order into credit for a v4 preorder.
- MildlySerious 5y agoTangential, but the first thing I noticed is that this site itself greets me in my preferred language, and allows setting my region separately, at the top of the page. The Pixel site sets the language based on geography and does not allow changing it without changing the region, which comes with a warning about delivery and currency conversion. One of these makes me feel understood and accounted for as a potential customer, the other makes me want to CTRL+W and move on. I am aware that this doesn't affect the majority of people. That doesn't make it less frustrating that Google keeps doubling down on this with many of the things they do.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago> The Pixel site sets the language based on geography To be fair, Google likely knows what you had for lunch and so it decides which is the best region for you; Trying to change it is an edge case /S.
- throwawaybbqed 5y agoI pay for a bunch of google services (Google One, YouTube premium) and for the life of me, have not been able to get my country changed. After some time with tech support (was shocked I was able to get someone), the conclusion was to use the play store ON AN ANDROID DEVICE to try to change my country. Quite strange if you use google services without an android device. It doesn't matter if I'm an edge case. They need to support their customer.
- beojan 5y agoI could do it in Google Pay (you create a new payments profile for your new country).
- wffurr 5y agoYup, I love the concept of FairPhone but it lacks US availability and compatibility. The camera is also a big draw of the Pixel phones. I think it might be a long while for open source and commodity hardware to match top smartphone cameras.
- leephillips 5y agoLooks nice, but it has a notch → dealbreaker.
- DCKing 5y agoI love Fairphone’s promise, but execution is another thing. Fair warning here is that I’ve seen the experience with a Fairphone 3 up close, and it wasn’t up to my standards in terms of camera and software bugs (caller ID has not worked for months), let alone the barebones hardware they ship. I hope they get there, but the Fairphone 3 certainly wasn’t it for me. What I don’t understand about Fairphone is how they will deliver these updates. Fairphone, like others, uses Qualcomm chips. Qualcomm supports their chips only for three years (four years for recent ones, but not the ones FP is using). This is what held Google back to ship reasonable security updates on Pixel devices so far. How can a small company like Fairphone convince Qualcomm to make more updates if Google couldn’t? Or will they just end up shipping incomplete security updates, like a community project?
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoGoogle had announced that all phones shipping with Android 11 with snapdragon chipset will be eligible for up to 4 Android OS versions (launch release + 3 OS updates) and 4 years of security updates as the result of project treble and getting Qualcomm on line. Which is more or less is inline with 5 years software support guarantee of FP.
- DCKing 5y agoThat’s a lot of handwaving you need to do to get a tiny company to support phones beyond their suppliers intents - especially the SD660 equipped Fairphone 3. This is stuff given as the reason that Google moved away from Qualcomm for. Given the rest of their software, I don’t really trust them to deliver. I’ll happily be convinced otherwise though.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoFairphone has nothing to do with the latest announcement, It's Google's project treble and it smacking Qualcomm.
- a_imho 5y agoMaybe I'm missing something but it looks like 4x more expensive than some equally specced Chinese phone?
- nightowl_games 5y agoHis whole post was about the ethical nature of the company. Of course it's more expensive than an equally specced Chinese phone.