5 ms·

If they'd just provide a physical switch (not software-based but actually cutting off the respective chips and antennae from electricity) to go full offline (no

If they'd just provide a physical switch (not software-based but actually cutting off the respective chips and antennae from electricity) to go full offline (no GPS, no Wifi, no mobile connection, ...) they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential.

lynx97 1y ago
Genuinely interested, why is that? IOW, why do I want a (mobile) phone without connectivity?
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  Not a phone without connectivity. A phone with truly optional connectivity.
  - lynx97 1y ago
    OK, but why?
    - ChrisRR 1y ago
      Drug dealers wanting to go off the grid?
    - _Algernon_ 1y ago
      There are legitimate situations where you may want to have a phone easily accessible, but not zapping your location to a base station every millisecond. For example protests.
      - lynx97 1y ago
        If you are worried about getting noticed at a protest, stay at home. If you plan on doing things at that protest which might make it necessary to track you, please stay at home.
        _Algernon_ 1y ago
        Do you think similarly about encrypted communication or locks in bathroom doors? At least in the US geofencing warrants are a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofence_warrant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofence_warrant It is prudent to protect oneself against that.
        jeroenhd 1y ago
        While there are plenty of valid reasons not to tell the government where you are 24/7 (including reasons like "I don't feel like it"), I agree that protests shouldn't be a reason. Functioning democracies don't arrest people for peaceful protests, and the governments that do won't be fooled by just not bringing your phone with you in the age of surveillance planes regularly sweeping areas to track movements, facial recognition, and simply finding you because they've arrested other protestors you know already. For protests, the physical switch is an attempt to find a technical solution to a societal problem, which rarely works out. You may as well keep your (Android) phone in your pocket (but turned off, though that won't help with iOS' Find My network).
        spankibalt 1y ago
        > "Functioning democracies don't arrest people for peaceful protests [...]" That might be true on planet Ogo, but not on planet Earth. > "For protests, the physical switch is an attempt to find a technical solution to a societal problem, which rarely works out." Another utterly absurd statement. Killswitches are, amongst other places and situations, useful on the battlefield (and therefore urban "battlefield", e. g. protests). And turning a practical solution to tactical and operational problems into a discussion about the inapplicability of such solutions to cure the "ills of society" at large is just... bizarre.
        craftkiller 1y ago
        1. The government doesn't have any way to only track the phones of people torching cars. Everyone in the vicinity with an active cellphone is going to get caught up in that dragnet. 2. That advice sounds more reasonable if you assume a reasonable government that is only interested in tracking people who are torching cars. Governments have retaliated against political dissidents in the past who have committed no crimes.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      Same reason I encrypt my messages and web traffic: my ISP/carrier and government don't need to know everything I do, even if they're not malicious and even if I'm not a criminal. Governments and carriers retaining months of location history data is a risk. If the Russians invade and get a hold of that data, a lot of people suddenly become at risk, for no good reason other than it being around "just in case". We've seen it happen here in the Netherlands when the nazis came in and happily browsed through the city archives, which contained a details count of how many people of what religion lived in each neighbourhood. I have nothing to fear from the current government, but with the rise in ultraconservative, anti-intellectual, extreme right wing politicians across the globe, a lot of people may not want to be recorded having been to things that are perfectly safe today. All of that said, as long as you don't have an iPhone, you can just turn your phone off. It'll power down the CPU. If you don't believe the manufacturer, then you'll have to measure the voltage on the PCB traces yourself, but so should you when you buy phones with a physical off switch.
DocTomoe 1y ago
I made the switch to iPhone because they had a physical mute slider. A physical 'airplane mode' would be even better. Now Apple has removed that ... and I am not happy. Yes, the functionality is theoretically available by configuring the 'smart button'. But I don't physically see the state of the device without picking it up.
twiss 1y ago
I'd be happiest if they'd provide a physical switch for the microphone and cameras. That way, you could have a private conversation and be sure you're not being recorded. Turning off connectivity doesn't help as much to guarantee your privacy as the phone could theoretically be recording and then upload the recording later, when you turn it back on (if it was thoroughly compromised, which admittedly seems unlikely, but nevertheless it would be nice to have some guarantee that it's impossible).
- mkayokay 1y ago
  The easiest solution to such strict privacy needs is to not carry the phones. But then again you also need to worry about other means of espionage.
  - twiss 1y ago
    I don't think it's easy to not carry a phone, nowadays. Let's say I'm meeting up with someone: I'll need to use navigation, potentially message them if I'm running late, and so on. Then once I'm there, what do I do with the phone? Ask to put it in a separate room and hope that the microphone isn't powerful enough to pick up our conversation? I could turn it off entirely, but what if someone needs to call me for an emergency? For me, as a user, the easiest solution would be to have a killswitch. I understand that building it would be more work, of course :)
    - mkayokay 1y ago
      > Ask to put it in a separate room... Yes, that's what I had to do for meetings that the organizer thought were important enough. Also, in very sensitive areas special rooms with anti-eavesdropping gear are common [1]. > I could turn it off entirely, but what if someone needs to call me for an emergency? But you would also not be reachable if the killswitch is active ;) Don't get me wrong, I think a killswitch can make a lot of sense for highly sensitive areas (R&D, politics, military, ...), but I don't think Fairphone 6 are the devices that target this demographic and thus should not include one. Furthermore, current "offline" measure seem to mitigate the problem okay enough to not need such a killswitch - else we would already have phones with such features. And lastly, killswitches can only mitigate parts of the features modern spyware [2] implements and does not protect from simple human-based errors like the United States government group chat leaks [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_information_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group_chat_leaks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group...
mkayokay 1y ago
I've never heard this request from anyone before, so I guess that implementing such a switch wouldn't "effortlessly at least double their market potential". What a lot of people talk about is a headphone jack. But even that niche has been filled by USB-C adapters for people that really want them and not only talk nostalgic about it.
- onli 1y ago
  It hasn't been filled by those adapters. Usb-C adapters suck as you have to carry them with you, they can be lost, quality is often bad and they block the one charging port of the device. The demand for a headphone jack is fueled by functionality and sustainability concerns, not nostalgia - can't, too recent a change and current devices do have the port.
  - brookst 1y ago
    Plenty of phones with headphone jacks had terrible DACs. If you care about audio quality, external is the way to go. It’s also more sustainable as you can spend $100 once for fantastic quality and keep it forever rather than insisting that each phone have an audiophile quality DAC that will eventually be disposed of. The one upside is convenience of not having a separate dongle, which is pretty well offset by the significant increase in phone size needed to accommodate the jack.
    - onli 1y ago
      Given the current phone sizes compared to the phones from before, that all had the headphone jack, the idea that you would need even bigger phones as otherwise it just would not fit is ridiculous. For the external DAC, you have to balance the "you could buy that once" against all the consumers that are pushed by the omission of the headphone jack to buy throwaway head- and earphones with glued in batteries. There is no chance in hell that the waste produced of both paths is in favour of the jackless phones.
      - brookst 1y ago
IlikeKitties 1y ago
> they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential. I doubt they'd even get the RND cost for that change back, this is a feature no one cares about except a very very small minority within a small minority. I'm a hardcare FOSS only user and only use grapheneos/fedora linux on my devices for privacy and security reasons and even I am not remotely concerned about hardware switches when i can just powerdown the wifi/Gps/wwan connection.
- fergie 1y ago
  I'm not sure if thats true. I would love the ability to be able to save battery by turning off my mobile. At the moment iPhones seem to drain power even when they are "off" which makes me suspect that they aren't, in fact, actually fully powered off. There have been a few occasions when I have been without a charger for one reason or another, and would like to be able to fully power off my phone in order to save battery.
ChrisRR 1y ago
> they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential I think you overestimate the appeal of such a feature
- mavhc 1y ago
  Or you overestimate the appeal of the device as it is, how many do they sell?
  - jstummbillig 1y ago
    Enough to keep going for 6 generations and 16 years. I fail to see any connection to this particular feature request though.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
GuB-42 1y ago
This would appeal the privacy/security crowd, but it is not really Fairphone's market. There are better options if that's what you are looking for, such as the Librem phones. They probably don't want to position themselves against security-focused phones as they would likely be compared unfavorably with them. That is unless they also do whatever it takes to enter that market, for example by supporting a security-focused OS like GrapheneOS. They could have kept the headphone jack though, but I guess they wanted to sell their earbuds (with replaceable batteries! which is at least a good point).
gessha 1y ago
Unless you assume the market for smartphone hardware with physical switches is the same as the one for sustainable smartphones, I don’t think they’re going to gain much from adding the switches. The only phones with switches that I know are the PinePhones and the librem phone that has a very questionable customer service. [1]. Adding them to the phone design will mean expensive constraints, making the overall cost even more in which case you’re either shedding money to increase market share or you’re narrowing your target market to the librem-phone size. At that point, what’s the meaning of this exercise? [1] https://consumerrights.wiki/Purism https://consumerrights.wiki/Purism

lynx97 1y ago

Genuinely interested, why is that? IOW, why do I want a (mobile) phone without connectivity?

_Algernon_ 1y ago
Not a phone without connectivity. A phone with truly optional connectivity.
- lynx97 1y ago
  OK, but why?
  - ChrisRR 1y ago
    Drug dealers wanting to go off the grid?
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    There are legitimate situations where you may want to have a phone easily accessible, but not zapping your location to a base station every millisecond. For example protests.
    - lynx97 1y ago
      If you are worried about getting noticed at a protest, stay at home. If you plan on doing things at that protest which might make it necessary to track you, please stay at home.
      - _Algernon_ 1y ago
        Do you think similarly about encrypted communication or locks in bathroom doors? At least in the US geofencing warrants are a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofence_warrant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofence_warrant It is prudent to protect oneself against that.
        jeroenhd 1y ago
        While there are plenty of valid reasons not to tell the government where you are 24/7 (including reasons like "I don't feel like it"), I agree that protests shouldn't be a reason. Functioning democracies don't arrest people for peaceful protests, and the governments that do won't be fooled by just not bringing your phone with you in the age of surveillance planes regularly sweeping areas to track movements, facial recognition, and simply finding you because they've arrested other protestors you know already. For protests, the physical switch is an attempt to find a technical solution to a societal problem, which rarely works out. You may as well keep your (Android) phone in your pocket (but turned off, though that won't help with iOS' Find My network).
        spankibalt 1y ago
        > "Functioning democracies don't arrest people for peaceful protests [...]" That might be true on planet Ogo, but not on planet Earth. > "For protests, the physical switch is an attempt to find a technical solution to a societal problem, which rarely works out." Another utterly absurd statement. Killswitches are, amongst other places and situations, useful on the battlefield (and therefore urban "battlefield", e. g. protests). And turning a practical solution to tactical and operational problems into a discussion about the inapplicability of such solutions to cure the "ills of society" at large is just... bizarre.
      - craftkiller 1y ago
        1. The government doesn't have any way to only track the phones of people torching cars. Everyone in the vicinity with an active cellphone is going to get caught up in that dragnet. 2. That advice sounds more reasonable if you assume a reasonable government that is only interested in tracking people who are torching cars. Governments have retaliated against political dissidents in the past who have committed no crimes.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    Same reason I encrypt my messages and web traffic: my ISP/carrier and government don't need to know everything I do, even if they're not malicious and even if I'm not a criminal. Governments and carriers retaining months of location history data is a risk. If the Russians invade and get a hold of that data, a lot of people suddenly become at risk, for no good reason other than it being around "just in case". We've seen it happen here in the Netherlands when the nazis came in and happily browsed through the city archives, which contained a details count of how many people of what religion lived in each neighbourhood. I have nothing to fear from the current government, but with the rise in ultraconservative, anti-intellectual, extreme right wing politicians across the globe, a lot of people may not want to be recorded having been to things that are perfectly safe today. All of that said, as long as you don't have an iPhone, you can just turn your phone off. It'll power down the CPU. If you don't believe the manufacturer, then you'll have to measure the voltage on the PCB traces yourself, but so should you when you buy phones with a physical off switch.

DocTomoe 1y ago

I made the switch to iPhone because they had a physical mute slider. A physical 'airplane mode' would be even better. Now Apple has removed that ... and I am not happy. Yes, the functionality is theoretically available by configuring the 'smart button'. But I don't physically see the state of the device without picking it up.

twiss 1y ago

I'd be happiest if they'd provide a physical switch for the microphone and cameras. That way, you could have a private conversation and be sure you're not being recorded. Turning off connectivity doesn't help as much to guarantee your privacy as the phone could theoretically be recording and then upload the recording later, when you turn it back on (if it was thoroughly compromised, which admittedly seems unlikely, but nevertheless it would be nice to have some guarantee that it's impossible).

mkayokay 1y ago
The easiest solution to such strict privacy needs is to not carry the phones. But then again you also need to worry about other means of espionage.
- twiss 1y ago
  I don't think it's easy to not carry a phone, nowadays. Let's say I'm meeting up with someone: I'll need to use navigation, potentially message them if I'm running late, and so on. Then once I'm there, what do I do with the phone? Ask to put it in a separate room and hope that the microphone isn't powerful enough to pick up our conversation? I could turn it off entirely, but what if someone needs to call me for an emergency? For me, as a user, the easiest solution would be to have a killswitch. I understand that building it would be more work, of course :)
  - mkayokay 1y ago
    > Ask to put it in a separate room... Yes, that's what I had to do for meetings that the organizer thought were important enough. Also, in very sensitive areas special rooms with anti-eavesdropping gear are common [1]. > I could turn it off entirely, but what if someone needs to call me for an emergency? But you would also not be reachable if the killswitch is active ;) Don't get me wrong, I think a killswitch can make a lot of sense for highly sensitive areas (R&D, politics, military, ...), but I don't think Fairphone 6 are the devices that target this demographic and thus should not include one. Furthermore, current "offline" measure seem to mitigate the problem okay enough to not need such a killswitch - else we would already have phones with such features. And lastly, killswitches can only mitigate parts of the features modern spyware [2] implements and does not protect from simple human-based errors like the United States government group chat leaks [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_information_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group_chat_leaks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group...

mkayokay 1y ago

I've never heard this request from anyone before, so I guess that implementing such a switch wouldn't "effortlessly at least double their market potential". What a lot of people talk about is a headphone jack. But even that niche has been filled by USB-C adapters for people that really want them and not only talk nostalgic about it.

onli 1y ago
It hasn't been filled by those adapters. Usb-C adapters suck as you have to carry them with you, they can be lost, quality is often bad and they block the one charging port of the device. The demand for a headphone jack is fueled by functionality and sustainability concerns, not nostalgia - can't, too recent a change and current devices do have the port.
- brookst 1y ago
  Plenty of phones with headphone jacks had terrible DACs. If you care about audio quality, external is the way to go. It’s also more sustainable as you can spend $100 once for fantastic quality and keep it forever rather than insisting that each phone have an audiophile quality DAC that will eventually be disposed of. The one upside is convenience of not having a separate dongle, which is pretty well offset by the significant increase in phone size needed to accommodate the jack.
  - onli 1y ago
    Given the current phone sizes compared to the phones from before, that all had the headphone jack, the idea that you would need even bigger phones as otherwise it just would not fit is ridiculous. For the external DAC, you have to balance the "you could buy that once" against all the consumers that are pushed by the omission of the headphone jack to buy throwaway head- and earphones with glued in batteries. There is no chance in hell that the waste produced of both paths is in favour of the jackless phones.
    - brookst 1y ago

IlikeKitties 1y ago

> they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential. I doubt they'd even get the RND cost for that change back, this is a feature no one cares about except a very very small minority within a small minority. I'm a hardcare FOSS only user and only use grapheneos/fedora linux on my devices for privacy and security reasons and even I am not remotely concerned about hardware switches when i can just powerdown the wifi/Gps/wwan connection.

fergie 1y ago
I'm not sure if thats true. I would love the ability to be able to save battery by turning off my mobile. At the moment iPhones seem to drain power even when they are "off" which makes me suspect that they aren't, in fact, actually fully powered off. There have been a few occasions when I have been without a charger for one reason or another, and would like to be able to fully power off my phone in order to save battery.

ChrisRR 1y ago

> they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential I think you overestimate the appeal of such a feature

mavhc 1y ago
Or you overestimate the appeal of the device as it is, how many do they sell?
- jstummbillig 1y ago
  Enough to keep going for 6 generations and 16 years. I fail to see any connection to this particular feature request though.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

GuB-42 1y ago

This would appeal the privacy/security crowd, but it is not really Fairphone's market. There are better options if that's what you are looking for, such as the Librem phones. They probably don't want to position themselves against security-focused phones as they would likely be compared unfavorably with them. That is unless they also do whatever it takes to enter that market, for example by supporting a security-focused OS like GrapheneOS. They could have kept the headphone jack though, but I guess they wanted to sell their earbuds (with replaceable batteries! which is at least a good point).

gessha 1y ago

Unless you assume the market for smartphone hardware with physical switches is the same as the one for sustainable smartphones, I don’t think they’re going to gain much from adding the switches. The only phones with switches that I know are the PinePhones and the librem phone that has a very questionable customer service. [1]. Adding them to the phone design will mean expensive constraints, making the overall cost even more in which case you’re either shedding money to increase market share or you’re narrowing your target market to the librem-phone size. At that point, what’s the meaning of this exercise? [1] https://consumerrights.wiki/Purism https://consumerrights.wiki/Purism