(Heck, I'd buy it even as an add on, that one could stick to the back of the phone ...)
There's so much design innovation that's been pushed off the table in an effort to make everything look the same.
What bugs me is there's so many Android phones but so few differences
I can't even imagine why they decided to keep the fingerprint sensor on the front but add a whole separate sensor on the back.
Apple’s declining software quality and walled garden incline me more and more towards ditching iPhone for GrapheneOS or a dumb phone like the Punkt MP; I find far more joy reading on an eReader, taking photos with a camera, or taking notes in my notebook than I do using the phone for any of those.
Especially for notes, keeping journals for the last few years, I find such peace and even connection with myself and my thoughts in my journals; I write down passages from books that are meaningful to me, and seeing my own handwriting, the ink I wrote it in, even the shading in the ink – it all adds up to a deeply meaningful, physical experience.
The answer is not more phone, it’s less!
It fits perfectly on my dwarf hands, fingerprint for security and just the apps to get things done.
Credit where it’s due to Apple for still supporting the phone with SW updates.
I hate iOS but in terms of hardware quality and software updates its unmatched.
They still haven't fixed it.
I don't use emails enough on my iPhone to make the effort to try another client, but the unread bubble is still stuck at 2, no matter how much unread emails I actually have. The app randomly shows or hides some emails...
That makes phones like the Punkt an ideal more than something practical. But I still want one. It appeals to the minimalist in me, big time.
Also, my current phone phone has it on the back and I can only configure one fingerprint, so if for some reason I am holding it in my left hand I am out of luck.
Fwiw, it I'm at my desk it'd usually be on its face for flip to silent. Then I pick up and it's natural. Or I'd be using scrcpy because if I'm in front of a computer why are my hands moving from the keyboard? I guess I'll compromise with the mouse lol
Single fingerprint registration is weird. Iirc I could do 2 on my pixel 2
Let's also stick an extra USB-C port on the side of the phone so that you can charge from whichever port is more convenient at the time. Or use an accessory like wired headphones and charge at the same time without carrying around a USB hub. Or if one breaks (charging ports are one of the most common things to fail on the phone) you can continue using the other one (either temporarily until the other is repaired or indefinitely).
Not every phone needs to be "opinionated" ...
Who came up with that idea?
(That said, I get similarly cranky about various gestures that just don't reliably work in some cases. I despair of the eventual day they (google in my case) no longer offer the 3 button home row on android phones)
I last tried the iPhone 16. It's a huge downgrade from the last iPhone SE.
Apple best product is marketing by far; this is just one of the results.
I have been using Face ID since the iPhone X and agree that it sucks. It doesn't even really solve the "problems" I thought it would solve (unlock while cooking or other activities where your hands are dirty) because you need to look at the thing in a particular way and you need clean hands to interact with the phone anyway.
It is especially annoying because the design of the notch/dynamic island is just terrible/stupid.
There are days where I get so many misses that I feel like disabling the thing entirely since I have to use the passcode so much anyway. I was already very skeptical of Touch ID but Face ID is just worse and more expensive for not much benefits.
This is the issue with technology nowadays, most of the real "problems" have been solved so tech companies come up with all kinds of nonsense to sell newer and shinier stuff. At some point a screwdriver is a screwdriver and a smartphone is a smartphone, we just need it to be of good quality and last long, that's it. But this does not make for "infinite" growth so here we are...
Ay wat? That sounds completely backwards, like if an incorrect password for account login would automatically reset the account password to the incorrect one, how would that make sense?!
I got braces recently and I had to go through the FaceID process again because it didn't recognized me anymore.
Obviously my teeth are quite different with my mouth open, but apparently, it modified my face enough when mouth closed that FaceID thaught I was not myself anymore.
Was it right away from getting the braces put on (from a little extra bulk on the teeth), or after they’ve been on for several months, where the movement of the teeth could change the structure of the face around the mouth?
Based on what I can see in the mirror and the fact that some people asked me if I had lost weight (I didn't), it appears that the braces on the upper teeth are pushing my upper lip away, which in turns is pulling my face skin, resulting in more hollow cheeks and more visible cheekbones.
I rarely saw my lockscreen
But when I switched to the pixel 8 with a front reader I always saw it
Now on my iPhone I see it frequently and it doesn't land when wearing a mask, when I'm talking, when I'm not looking (I could blind navigate my phone), or when it's just dark. So it just feels painfully slow in comparison...
Nothing has beaten the magical experience of a back fingerprint reader and I think this is why so many of us miss it. But I'm sure it's one of those things you'd have had to use to really feel the magic
It doesn't have to be for everyone but there's enough phones that the option should be available...
It's nice that is works for you, but it really sucks when it fails as there's no other biometric alternative. And changing their whole ecosystem just to get working biometrics is a high bar for many.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Makeup/comments/wfjy5x/apple_id_doe...
1) I frequently unlock my phone while it's laying flat on the desk a good distance from my face. The camera can't see me, and certainly not well enough to identify me.
2) I don't believe that you can add a second FaceID. Currently I have a few fingers added to my TouchID, including my wifes index finger, allowing her to unlock my phone.
Besides, fingerprint is even faster. You can unlock the device right as you grab it out of your pocket. You don't even have to look at it.
-Exhausted Apple user also wanting easier authentication
And if you are not in one of those countries just politely ask for a blank white sheet of paper to sign and let them fill the rest. You will save everyone some time.
But when one has technology that works for the attacker by conveniently elimininating the mentioned problems almost completely, than your set of security features is just a pathetic lie... as well as a self-delusion.
Which, to be honest, a lot of safety and security measures and technology are to most people. ;)
You can also do this with under-screen fingerprint readers which are excellent these days.
I'd love to use the old phone for so many reasons, but the lack of updates has rendered it useless. No Lineage or Graphene for that one either.
Plus, as others are pointing out, there's additional benefits
I loved the rear fingerprint reader on my old Nexus 5X.
Seconded, vehemently.-
My humble, tiny, circa-2014 Elephone E1 (RIP) was unsurpassed.-
Me wonders if the "onscreen reader" is not an integration-cost cutting measure, as it saves one part?
This isn't quite what you said, you asked a question
> why does it have to specifically be the back?
and then got an answer to the question
> Where does your index finger sit?
This answer was presumably meant to imply that your index finger naturally sits at the perfect spot for unlocking the phone if the sensor is on the back. At least for me (and I always assumed everyone else, but you are showing to be an exception), my index finger is on the back of the phone both when taking it out of the pocket and when holding it, so it's the perfect spot for a sensor.
Your assumption of using the thumb to unlock the phone is apparently so strong that maybe you didn't realize others in this thread are assuming index finger is the most natural to unlock, and I guess that is where the confusion comes from. Since I have a sensor on the back of my phone and unlock it with my index finger while taking it out of my pocket, this statement is very odd to me:
> The original topic was about unlocking your phone while taking it out of your pocket, which is done with the thumb.
First, it's not true for me, since I use my index finger, and second, I'm not even sure how I would have to contort my hand to have the fingers and thumbs on the side of the phone while taking it out of my pocket such that the thumb could unlock via a side sensor. Even putting my hand in at a 90 degree angle is tough because pockets are usually too tight for that. But I suppose if you have always unlocked your phone with your thumb while taking it out of your pocket, I can see why you might think they're pulling your leg.
> Hold your phone. ***Where does your index finger sit?***
Side button sensors work OK, too but I have much more misses on my supposedly more "modern" side button sensor phone than I ever had on old Pixels or any old iPhone with a home button sensor. I assume this is due to the size and general shape of a side button in comparison to an iPhone-style home button or old-Pixel-style back sensor which are bigger, indented and finger-guiding.
I much prefer having it on a physical home button. You can still feel a dent, but it takes even less effort to reach for it with your thumb.
(Well, I think the Pixel never had a home button, and by now it's unfortunately disappeared from other phones too...)
In that case, I'm grabbing it with my thumb, index finger and middle finger, and since the phone is seated upside down, my thumb reaches the home button before I'm even holding it in my palm.
On phones with a fingerprint sensor on the back, I first have to get a full grip, and then I can reach for the sensor.
(But it's probably somewhat hand/pocket-specific...)
I think, even having a stable physical design would help tremendously: imagine each new Pixel with the same standard screen size and casing attachment. Google could still change the overall outer feel as long as it fits the inner latching mechanism.
Then building a third party back panel with a fingerprint reader becomes somewhat realistic. And we don't need Google to build an ecosystem, just stop doing their minuscule size tweaks every year and stabilize the attachment mechanism. Just that.
Ultrasonic ftw.
Big +1. Face ID fails way more than Touch ID ever did. I know you couldn't your finger with wet hands or gloves, but that didn't come up all that much.
Face ID fails multiple times per day, every day. I can't unlock my phone well in bed, while brushing teeth, while it's sitting on a table not directly in front of me, if I'm in direct sunlight, in a car mount, etc. The only time it's more useful is when I'm already using the phone and need to auth for an app (bank, 1Password, etc). Then it's seamless. It just doesn't make sense as an unlock mechanism, IMO. iPad has the same problem - I can't unlock it if it's on the couch next to me without picking it up and holding it in front of my face.
Face ID would make a lot of sense on a laptop, which is always used in basically ideal conditions for unlocking: straight on view, probably inside, always centered on my face.
I'd love Touch ID on a phone's lock button, but that's not an option. And I'm worried that if it was an option, it would be relegated to the budget phones (like it is on ipads).
Because it works for authentication too. My password manager just... automatically authenticates me without me having to tap a thing. It recognizes the login form on the validated domain, it scans my face, it fills in my info. Same as paying with Wallet, I just slide up the credit card I want to use and it scans my face as I hold it against the reader.
And I'm not always pulling the phone out of my pocket, I'm picking it up off the table. I grab it by the edges, I'm not putting my finger on its back.
> Because it works for authentication too.
The fingerprint sensor requires me to put my finger on it.
FaceID just works without me doing anything. I don't even realize I have to authenticate, and then have to do something in response -- it just does it.
If you haven't had a phone like this before it's hard to explain. But I can tell you from personal experience that it is less effort than FaceID, which is my current daily driver
I've had my old iPhone 7+ turn into a charged brick multiple times in the rain. Never happened with the faceID phones.
It's terrible for people who put their phone on their desk, in a stand, or on a wireless charger while they are working.
Edit: oooof I missed the point entirely. Sorry.
Because good luck using that fingerprint sensor while wearing gloves, e.g. during garden work, while on a motorcycle ride, or in winter.
I do hope we have a mutual understanding that we're talking about something subjective. Something that isn't the best option for everyone. FaceID, fingerprint, or whatever. There's no one size fits all...
If they can be used like that, why couldn't they be used... as phones?
Changing phone every two years is not sustainable, even if the old phone is used as an IoT wall terminal: it's still "consuming" one phone every two years. In a sense, an old phone in a drawer uses less energy than an old phone staying powered to control a lightbulb.
> planned obsolescence
Nitpick: I like to call it "premature obsolescence". Planned obsolescence is the idea of engineering the product to not last more than some time. I think nowadays it's often not the case; rather we engineer the product to last for the time of the warranty (1-2 years) and not more. And a product dying after 1 year is "premature", even though it was not actively engineered for that.
(Applies to newly released devices, not to devices which were already on the market as of June 20).
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules...
To facilitate planned obsolescence, manufacturers stop providing OS updates after a relatively short time. And then they cease providing security patches after a... still relatively short time.
If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot, which is a problem for the security model of how many people use phones -- and many apps simply refuse to work with this setup (whereas the obsolete OS with no security patches is considered fine, apparently).
I don't think it works like that. Manufacturers stop providing OS updates as soon as they can because providing any kind of support has a cost. Planned obsolescence means "they care about making it obsolete" (active). But the reality is that they just "don't care about keeping the product alive" (passive). And the only way to make them provide updates is to force them by law.
> If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot
You can relock the bootloader with the FairPhone. You will still have a message saying it's a custom OS, but I don't think it compromises the secure boot, does it?
> many apps simply refuse to work with this setup
I heard that there are apps that refuse to work with an unlocked bootloader, but I haven't heard of apps refusing to work with a relocked bootloader. Is that a thing?
But hypothetically, if we were to want to survive, such regulations would be some of the very easy steps to take (and by far not enough, of course).
And again, I think you're right: it's far more likely that we as a society will just collapse, so maybe it's not even worth wondering what we would do if we didn't want it.
IMO we should put in the law that manufacturers have to mainstream their device and provide a way to flash an updated firmware. There is no way they do it without being forced, because it's a pure source of cost for them.
That's how it works: companies optimise in the legal framework we give them. Regulations set that framework.
There's a reason Pine64's devices (which are made out of parts with available public datasheets as much as possible - they don't do the software side of things) are mostly made with parts from a few generations ago, whose manufacturer doesn't care much any more.
This isn't hard. And it saves a ton of money.
If you upgrade a phone to get a new one with a better camera, well, the processor on the old one is probably decent still, it could be a mini PC where the camera quality doesn't matter.
Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.
You can choose not to upgrade.
Obtaining status symbols is a choice (and a pretty vain one too). Even if your lifestyle requires these empty displays of status, that's a choice of lifestyle that you've made.
You can be perfectly successful in life with a 5 years old phone.
My feeling is that phones are not evolving that quickly anymore, though.
> If you upgrade a phone to get a new one with a better camera, well, the processor on the old one is probably decent still, it could be a mini PC where the camera quality doesn't matter.
Sure, but if you didn't need the mini PC in the first place, then it's not more sustainable than throwing it away. It's actually less sustainable, because now you consume energy for a mini PC you didn't need.
Not saying people should not get their new toy. Just that they should not pretend it's sustainable :-).
> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.
Around me it's become more and more of a status symbol to not upgrade. It's sometimes almost a competition of "who has the oldest phone", and nobody is impressed by someone buying the latest iPhone. So... it's not the same everywhere :-).
This is a huge part of the change we need. I felt proud in a way to show off that I was still using an iPhone 8 until a couple of years ago, and I admire some (techy) people I know still using a phone from that time.
Is pride a healthy, wholesome motivator? May be not, but we're human.
On that note, please, someone make a phone with more than 2 active SIMs. At this point, I have four SIMs, and they're more likely to increase than to reduce...
The problem is how locked-down most phones are, and how hard it is to modify their software. Even for the Fairphone, you have to fill out a form on their site to get a bootloader unlock code, and they could close that form if they wished (see Asus). That all means starting an "ecosystem" of accessories and new non-phone software is costly and has an uncertain future.
Personally I think the biggest issue is the theft-prevention functionality that means a phone picked out of e-waste is basically bricked (without some exploit). There's companies making new motherboards out of salvaged Intel chipsets, I'm sure it would be possible to build a business around the reuse of phones, but right now there are just too many obstacles.
I think this could be solved with new legislation. At least here, doing anything with e-waste is already highly regulated. Giving registered e-waste processors the ability to unlock the bootloader of any device would reduce waste, and make unlocked phones something you could reliably buy in bulk. Then I think we could see the kind of aftermarket support for phones.
You also need to sign up with Google to even get past the setup screen, and the phone needs to reach Google's servers and ask for permission to be used. Even if Fairphone would like to keep phones usable, Google can decide otherwise at any time.
I started a thread on this topic on their forums, and they seem to have no interest in fixing this. I wouldn't consider hardware sustainable if it needs to talk to Google's servers to be used and remains completely locked down otherwise. If you find one of these devices in a drawer in 15 years, and Google has changed their server's API, then the phone is as usable as any other brand
(nitpick: you have to "enter a contractual agreement" with Google, and not create an account. Folks on the forums seemed to be obsessed with the choice of word around this, although practically, it makes no difference).
IIRC they offer a version with a de-googled custom rom preinstalled, does this apply to this option as well?
I've been forming a theory about companies that want to do good. Something like, they need a C-suite executive who is a true-believer, and, figuratively, a pissed-off street fighter, who can see threats to the mission coming from a block away.
For a familiar example of when this isn't happening: most of, say, privacy efforts I see can be classified into one of: (1) well-meaning, but don't really know what they're doing, and hopelessly out of their league against the supposed threat; or (2) it's really just a product marketing angle, for individual pursuit of career or riches.
If you go with the Googled-Fairphone, then it is Googled indeed.
I bought a Fairphone 3 a few years ago with /e/OS, so I don't have that problem. Also in all fairness, the "you have to log into Google before booting" is making it harder to steal and resell phones. I read somewhere that the number of stolen phones got lower since they (Google, Apple, I guess Samsung and the likes) introduced that "protection".
This said, I have a Fairphone 3 and it is still usable.
For such phones, using any kind of peripherals, including external monitors, network interfaces or docking stations becomes possible.
There are relatively cheap smartphones with such USB ports, e.g. around $400 from Motorola, but the majority of the smartphones, including many of the most expensive, for which such limitations are inexcusable, are limited to a USB 2.0 interface, which is almost useless today.
While this Fairphone seems to have good specifications otherwise, there is no word about its USB Type C connector.
I am no longer willing to ever spend money on a smartphone that does not support at least USB 3.0 and DisplayPort.
EDIT:
Looking now on Gsmarena at Fairphone 5, I see that it had an adequate USB 3.0/DisplayPort. I have not noticed this before, because when searching for possible upgrades I was not looking to smartphones with CPUs as ancient as those of Fairphone 5.
Hopefully Fairphone 6 will retain the USB interface of its predecessor. This, coupled with a relatively up-to-date mid-range Qualcomm SoC and with a reasonable price for what it offers, can make it an interesting choice.
Heck, even reusing furniture in Western economies can be difficult, because the cost of handling it can easily exceed its value. It sort of survives in charity and antique shops, but only for the nicer items.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nintendo-Switch-Pro-kit-transf...
What a horrible state of things that "not gluing the battery in place but screwing it in" is considered an improvement. IMHO smartphones have been on a horrible decline ever since ~2016. Before then, most Androids had [1] easily replaceable battery, no tools required at all; [2] microSD slot; [3] headphone jack; [4] (many) dual SIM; [5] (many cheaper models) easily rooted or unlocked by default. Now all we get are faster CPUs, more (non-expandable) storage, and far too many cameras.
There was also this memorable ad from Samsung: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hIoyb9L5g0
I'd rather my phone be more robust than worry about unscrewing a couple more screws when I need to replace the battery (hopefully a rare occurrence anyway). I don't know anyone that carried around spare batteries like in that ad, so although a good ad it doesn't really speak to customer usage.
I'd also like my phone to be as-waterproof-as-possible, and am willing to sacrifice a back that comes open without any screws or similar.
Your comment feel needlessly provocative with no information other than your negative opinion. You've implied Fairphone have turned crap, whilst mentioning a bunch of good stuff they've done, and then how you won't be buying their phones anymore.
Seriously, what was the point of this comment, what were you trying to achieve or communicate? Is that fairphone are rubbish? If so, you haven't said how or why, other than cryptic hints that promises might not have been kept.
This feels like an engagement bait comment, and I can't help but engage to say that.
I am a bit familiar, have been looking at the FP5 as a next phone, so will probably buy an FP6 assuming first batch of reviews aren't catastrophic.
Personally the appeal to me is the modular hardware support, but also the expected long term official software support (and inevitable community support when that ends). Also the principal that it's a company that is trying really hard to do things differently in a way that benefits everyone just seems sensible, innovative and something I want to support compared to other phone companies.
If your biggest issues with FP are removing the headphone jack, and requiring a small screwdriver to replace the batteries, then I'm genuinely interested to know who/what you're considering after as an improvement?
I love FairPhone's vision, and I think they do a pretty good job executing it. There's certainly room for improvement, but I've been really happy with my purchase. I also think removing the headphone jack was a direct betrayal of their ideals.
I've bought the FP3+ camera, and I'm on my third battery pack, degoogled with murena /e/-OS. Works perfectly, except the screen is a little too large for me. I wish it was a Sony Xperia ZX1 compact size, but one can't have it all.
https://www.gizchina.com/2013/06/25/6-top-quad-core-mt6589-p...
There were tons of these little-known companies making very similar phones at the time. Unfortunately most of them disappeared within the next few years. Hence 2016 as the year I mentioned of when things started going downhill noticeably.
Screws keep them repairable and sturdy. It'll no longer be as easy to bring a spare battery to replace on the go, unfortunately, but unfortunately, it's a trade-off, and with most people already not doing that, it makes sense where they ended up.
So I'd consider screws to be an improvement actually.
It's sad what kind of things are considered "features" these days.
The old use case of wanting to easily swap batteries to keep the phone going isn’t something people care about anymore since we got a billion options for battery banks that works for all the USB-C devices we have.
Nobody cares about headphone jack anymore. It’s dead. Get over it. Why stick a crappy DAC and a bad and single-purpose bulky port in a device where space is critical, when 99% of users are not going to use it? Just stick a USB-C adapter on your headphones. Then you have a choice in DAC. I would much rather have two USB-C ports than a headphone jack.
Dual SIM is also rapidly becoming obsolete.
Micro SD would be nice still, I’ll give you that.
Batteries must be glued or screwed, otherwise sudden movements can turn the phone off.
About the only thing I'd ding Fairphone on is not communicating earlier that they were having trouble getting Android 14 out to the FP4s, but the security patches have been consistent.
(Okay I'm also dinging them on getting rid of the headphone jack, yes I know it's a lost cause... )
Wired headphones still have better sound quality. Don't need charging. Don't break with software update. But because of that it means less consumption.
Think about how insane it is that companies can remove the phone jack and glue in the battery with the very obvious goal of planned obsolescence. And this is legal.
Not delivering updates, that’s planned obsolescence.
I do agree however, that a jack is nice. Wired USB-C headphone do exist though, if you insist on wired.I am not an audiophile, wouldn’t that provide an even better sound quality potentially (digital to analog conversion happens later, not distortions due to cables for example)?
In comparison, Moto G84 has LineageOS/Calyx support, headphone jack, 2 SIM (or 1 SIM + SD-card), 12G RAM, and 7/10 repairability score in France (although I lack the details - I hope at least it's relatively easy to replace the battery and USB-C slot) + it weight 160g => even though I'd like to support Fairphone, I won't buy again a phone without jack port !
I totally agree with previous comments which highlight that we used to have removable jack + batteries + SD + root easily 10 years ago (and we also had more options for tiny phones, such as Galaxy S4 Mini).
But “reusing the same port for multiple purposes” can’t mean “planned obsolescence”. Making that port unrepairable, that, yes.
Personally, I am just not a fan of something that requires both a software connection that usually isn't always the smoothest thing rather than a direct hardware connection. And having yet another battery to deal with and the down stream impact of that. Typically all on hardware with the battery sealed inside that will die long before the rest of the hardware will.
Nothing wrong with wireless as an option but mandating it, I do not like that one bit. It is now the first thing I check on a phone as it is an absolute deal breaker for me.
Not saying it’s a good situation, I also miss the jack connector. But you’ve got the option to keep your headphones :)
Also wired headphones are a very niche market. If you care so much there are wireless DACs that can feed your wired headphones better than any phone in history.
That's a lazy excuse. Every single IP68 rugged phone has a headphone jack. And the ones that are more waterproof even made for diving with them also have one.
What, when?
I hope you don't mean when the flagship phone has no headphone jack, and a mid tier phone does. It's not the choice between the headphone jack and 3% more battery making the decision in that situation.
Yeah… the budget Moto G3 from 2015 with IPX7 says hi. To the limited surprise of anyone who was familiar with the brand back then, the top model (16GB/2gb) sold out in less than a week.
You can’t tell me it’s harder to waterproof a headphone jack in 2025 than it was in 2015. And could you please tell me how a rubber gasket adds appreciable thickness to a phone? Because I find that a bit hard to believe.
Congrats, I guess?
So much this. I had an nVidia (Tegra?) based phone with USB, headphone jack, HDMI.
While I don't think a USB port would allow for FM radio using the headphone cord simply having more would be fantastic! But if laptop designers can barely fit two USB-C ports I'm not sure what chance we have against the phone designers...
This is the same thing as with small phones. A vocal minority cried far and wide that they wanted them. Apple made them.. and they did, not, sell.
You know a minority is a _minority_, even if everyone in that minority bought a iPhone Mini, the sales number is still not going to be high.
(Edit: just checked, in 2022, 3% of iPhones sold were 13 Minis. not high but surely someone out there can run a sustainable business out of that 3% of mobile phones)
I remember seeing something like this for over ear, you just stream tidal to them so there shouldn't be compression issues. Might be a delay idk.
Every single person wants smaller phones. What do we get? No small phones.
Apple doesn't count… they are priced at 3x 4x what an android would cost.
People want small phones but don't want to spend their whole salary on a phone.
By and large, the only people who want small phones are those that still do most of their computing and media consumption on a PC or laptop. And that's becoming much, much rarer (and gaming doesn't really count here - lots of gamers have a separate stream or something on their phones while playing).
It's difficult to do that when the available phones are just getting bigger. Ten years ago you could still find sub 6" phones easily. These days, not so much.
Consider how small the overlap is between devices in a product lineup in the first place and an audience that can buy them -- whether that's through carrier availability to put them on plans if in the US, or the resources to spend on them up-front.
That trend also is based on touch as the primary method of interaction -- but given the tethered AR devices we're starting to see trickle out, and Android's desktop mode finally hitting prime time, that assumption might not hold long-term. I'm not saying this will be the timeline we live on, but considering some of the experiments with dedicated, external devices for powering them, it's not hard to envision the pendulum swinging back toward smaller phones that focus more on things like the compute and sensors and less around a screen you look at all day.
Think of the (modern) Moto Razr. You could, hypothetically, have a compute device that more so resembles the folded-down version of this -- aimed more toward external displays, and less toward being regularly looked at.
Similarly, I don't know a single person that likes to eat dodo eggs.
They were also priced like it -- and worse, many of them weren't available through US carriers, which is prohibitive to a market that often won't spend Kaz Hirai money all at once on a phone.
You're otherwise restating my point, though. Many of the niche hardware features don't have to be built into the device if you just offer more baseline extensibility.
Don't they all have 50-300ms of latency?
If you have a quality non-bluetooth suggestion, or I'm wrong about the latency of bluetooth, I'd be excited to hear it.
And I want it to work with calls were any extra latency is bad. And I want it to work with my desktop where I play games and extra latency ruins things.
With standard Bluetooth codecs you get nowhere close to that and there is a significant noticeable delay for video content. Headphone jack is easy to make IP68. All rugged phones have it and all non-rugged ones have a USB port which is bigger and more irregular than a frigging circle.
High-grade studio quality wired headphones have better quality than wireless ones. But anywhere lower than the highest tiers, they're both in the same ballpark.
For the devices used by 999‰ of the people, the difference is unnoticeable.
> Don't break with software update.
Why would headphones break when you upgrade your phone? It sounds to me like your phone broke. And an audio jack can also stop working with a botched software update.
I've been using cellular phones since 2004. I've never used a headphone jack. Most people haven't either. Sure, some people would use it, and some people would use a DisplayPort connector if present (I would), but it's hard to justify putting one in every single phone when an adapter is so cheap.
Shipping a 3.5mm audio jack on every single phone in the world is more wasteful than just manufacturing an adapter for people who actually need it.
The biggest downside is worrying about the battery level. But they last so long on a single charge that it isn't even an issue if you forget to plug them in many days in a row and the battery charges fast even on a slow charger.
Bonus: Sony's AOSP program also releases images, and even oddballs like Sailfish release images spec. for Sony devices.
* headphone jack
* usbc port
* removable, large battery
* under 5 inch screen (with phone body size to match)
* dual sim
* sd card slot
* cameras just good enough to take pictures of license plates on illegally parked cars
* 5g antenna
I don't care if it needs to be hella thick to accomplish this, I don't care if the screen is OLED or has a >60hz refresh rate, I don't care about telescopic cameras or faceid or anything like that. I just want a small fat phone that I can plug my IEMs into and use as a wifi tether for my laptop without the battery dying in a couple hours.
Olympia Neo Mini
Slightly larger:
Samsung Galaxy Xcover 5
Cyrus CM17 XA
None with 5G though.
Exactly. I should have added "up to date security patches, and functioning google and banking apps" to my list as well to cover my bases on why I can't just use an old phone with a custom ROM. Otherwise I'd just use the Galaxy S3 for the rest of my life.
During early COVID, USB audio worked perfectly, but an Android update disabled, supposedly for "security" reasons.
I'll keep repeating it; I worked in a hardware company (and one with very toxic upper management) and really, I don't buy the "planned obsolescence" for most products.
Employees are usually not villains (I know, it happens, as proven by Meta recently where engineers essentially built a malware into Meta's apps, and as proven by printers - if that's still the case, I don't own one). Most of the time they are not.
What happens most of the time is more likely "premature obsolescence": the product could have been engineered to last for 10 years, but it would have taken more development time and it would have cost more, so the company chose not to invest there. Regulations enforce a warranty period, so the company optimises around that. But it's not the same as planned obsolescence.
The result is the same: we need regulations that set the framework into which companies optimise. But the intention is different.
Also specifically for the jack, the reality is that nobody cares. You want a phone with a jack? Congrats, you're part of a small minority (don't worry, I am, too). How does it feel? :-)
Expensive yes, but planned obsolescence? Meh.. I also got an (Apple branded even) USB-C to headphone jack plug which also work flawlessly, so I really don't see the issue here.
- It disconnects easily
- It's much more uncomfortable to keep in the pocket with it plugged on, since it's longer
- I feel like I'm stressing the usbc port much more
- I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)
- If I don't have the adapter on me, I can't plug my phone in some music system that doesn't have bt. This has bit me in the ass twice already in four months.
- The adapter already seems to be breaking down (I didn't get the cheapest one available) and sending weird inputs to the phone which pauses the music or causes the assistant to tell me the time
So yeah, nothing's stopping me, but my experience is worse now for the sole reason that Apple decided they wanted to sell Bluetooth headphones
Well, that's better than things used to be...
I had a Zen Stone that I used to play music in the car by plugging a cassette tape adapter into the audio jack.
For convenience, I bought a cigarette lighter adapter to power it, so that I wouldn't have to take it out of my car when it needed charging.
Except it turned out not to be able to play audio while charging. Not because it charged through the audio jack. It charged through a USB port. You just weren't allowed to do both at once.
All the phones that I have had with a audio jack would charge and play audio without any issues, ranging from a lot of different Samsung Galaxy to Wiko phones.
No, that's not what I meant. I said Zen Stone. Turns out, I meant Zen Stone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Zen#ZEN_Stone/Stone_P...
I don't know about that, I still get analog noise all the time. Maybe it's just due to using a cheap DAC?
They also sell wireless earbuds and headphones with replaceable batteries.
I think the solution is to ship wireless earphones with a usb-c capability, and ship smartphones with multiple usb ports.
However much money you are willing to spend on headphones, with a tiny bit of research, you will find a wired option with dramatically better quality.
But also, the very low end of wired headphones are truly, truly abysmal, but getting wireless at those price-points is just literally impossible.
$20 is enough to get pretty decent sound quality (better than my ~$100 Samsung Galaxy Buds)
I could probably use it for a few more years but I may upgrade to the 6 if the speakers/microphone are better (and to support the company).
I don't get this. Isn't the whole concept of the company modular parts? Shouldn't you be able to put the better speakers in your existing phone?
IMO we are far past the point when we should have decided smartphone hardware is good enough, and stop having people upgrade over and over. But I guess capitalism needs to be fed and everything is made to make sure that never happens (including making sure everyone thinks we do need better hardware)
Well, I was going to observe that I broke my phone recently for the first time out of more than 10 years of having a smartphone.
But I remembered that while I didn't break it, my Nexus 5 spontaneously broke and couldn't be fixed, causing me to lose about a year of chat history that I would like to have back.
That said, if the parts are replaceable, there is no good reason to prevent you from replacing them with upgrades. That is by far the highest-value use of the ability to replace parts.
I often see people with broken screens. USB ports can get damaged by too many plug cycles etc. None of these reason should justify buying a new phone, but in practice if replacing the part is not relatively cheap and straightforward, this is what happens.
And yes upgrade can be cool too but much harder and probably unrealistic for a small company like this one. Look at how well it works for PC, after 10 years you have to still change everything to upgrade anything (your new CPU socket forces you to change the mother board, and the CPU fan, then your old ram is not compatible, etc and at the end you keep the case and maybe the PSU. And this is on a relatively open ecosystem compared to the mobile world with their SoC/SoM, high space constraints and a single supported kernel etc...)
The reason that is what happens is that you can't upgrade the old phone. But you have to upgrade the phone anyway, so you take advantage of the only way to do that, buying a new phone.
I wasn't upset when I smashed my phone screen recently, because that phone already needed to be replaced for other reasons.
Either I will have to buy Xperias or stock up on old Pixel 4 phones.
These things are not as difficult as tech writers make them out to be.
A shame really.
I regret buying FP4 too. Unfortunately the hardware is very sturdy and does not break justifying buying a different one. But the software feels half ready in a few critical parts (GPS and phone/sms in my case) and the support is non existent (very bad) for my two issues I had (still have).
Any Fairphone/GrapheneOS developer reading this? Just do it, document if something is not secure enough for you, but do it. Nothing to think about, you fit together like hand and a glove and any seconds thoughts are depriving the planet of THE PHONE!
Pick the cash we will throw at you and make second generation with the cpu GrapheneOS wants, that will make the /r/GrapheneOS members eyes shine, drooling and crying of joy at the same time. +throw them in a few hardware switches for camera, mic, connectivity,... disabling. No need to wait to be perfect in first iteration (and due to that craziness and perfectionism will never happen), to gain the possibility to be perfect in second or third.
I would love so much to stop buying Google Pixel phones just to install Graphene OS and protect myself from Google and its ecosystem, it seems so counterproductive.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Unless Fairphone becomes significantly better in their security and update policy and integrate a whole lot of new features it's not gonna happen.
I expect it's not just a matter of feature support: Fairphone in general seems rather horrible on security, doing things like using test keys for production signatures [1].
[1]: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro...
GrapheneOS has bunch of requirements that are expensive while Fairphone has zero chance to figure out, if investing would make any economical sense, while their normal users dont really care about that security but might regarding privacy. This is a stale-mate position.
Found info about GrapheneOS installations, 250k users(1). Lets say 25% are on old pixels. This is 60k sold pixels.
All Fairphones sold by 2022 were 400k(2).
1. 2024, https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12281-how-many-grapheneos-u...
This feels super entitled to me. GrapheneOS Devs have a mission and they get to make that. You get it for free and if you like it you can give them money. If they don't support the hardware you like you are free to fork it and get it to run yourself.
And if security isn't something you care about but privacy is and you feel like there's a difference here you can still install /e/os or lineageos and similar on the fairphone.
At the end all profit. While in current state, the culprit, Google profits.
And please keep fallacies like "do it yourself" for yourself, I am talking about collaboration, feel free to open another thread on top level about forks.
Same goes for /e/ ... they just dont compare.
GrapheneOS has two use-cases that are they excelling with, security and privacy.
While security is not really my threat model (some rubber-hose cryptography aka large wrench, solves this issue for any attacker), privacy violations are everyones issue. Even if they dont care.
>Please consider the level of retardation this comment requires, it's impressive.
Yes, thats why I have stopped discussing with you and I dont know why I even started - futileness discussing with GrapheneOS evangelists is well known over the internet.
This is not how we have civilized discussions. To say this just because you disagree with someone about the security of an OS...
Hope the mods see this.
Corporation made phones as opposed to organically grown phones?
Again, no one is locking down GrapheneOS you can literally download the source and try to get it to run on any device you like. You just want someone else to do the work for you because you lack the skills and it's not available for the particular phone you want.
Okay, maybe you are not a native speaker, so you might mean a different thing with fallacy.
Here's the dictionary definition of fallacy
> an idea that a lot of people think is true but is in fact false [0] > a false belief [0]
My comment was
> Again, no one is locking down GrapheneOS you can literally download the source and try to get it to run on any device you like. You just want someone else to do the work for you because you lack the skills and it's not available for the particular phone you want.
Here is the link to the GrapheneOS Source: https://grapheneos.org/source
Here's the GrapheneOS FAQ regarding other Devices [1]
> Many other devices are supported by GrapheneOS at a source level, and it can be built for them without modifications to the existing GrapheneOS source tree. Device support repositories for the Android Open Source Project can simply be dropped into the source tree, with at most minor modifications within them to support GrapheneOS. In most cases, substantial work beyond that will be needed to bring the support up to the same standards. For most devices, the hardware and firmware will prevent providing a reasonably secure device, regardless of the work put into device support.
[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/fall... [1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Where's the fallacy?
---
Now after editing he makes this argument instead:
> And while I am searching for a way for GrapheneOS to grow, you are searching for a way to keep it limited to corporation made phones. And it is corporations that have the most interest to make it insecure trough hardware, SOC is just one day to do it. So you are failing even on security perspective.
There are no not-corporation made phones on this planet. Every conceivable part of a phone is made by a corporations from parts extracted from this planet by corporations, shipped and assembled by corporations. Do you think that the Fairphone, made by the fairphone corporation is not made by a corporation? From There Wikipage [2]
> Fairphone B.V. > Company type Privately held company
> And it is corporations that have the most interest to make it insecure trough hardware, SOC is just one day to do it. So you are failing even on security perspective.
So google, spending literally billions [3] on cybersecurity with a direct interest and industry leading track record in keeping pixel devices secure has an interest to make it insecure?
I stand by judgment: The required retardation for this kind of argument is amazing.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairphone [3] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/why-were-comm...
---
So, i'm dealing with a first grade tech student that learned some cybersecurity words. Here's how you can prove me wrong, answer the following simple questions:
1. Why should the GrapheneOS Developers do the work you want them to do? They seem uninterested and I don't see you paying them the 100s of thousands of dollars to hire someone to do the work for them.
2. Name a Phone that's not made by a corporation.
---
> 1. Why should the GrapheneOS Developers do the work you want them to do? They seem uninterested and I don't see you paying them the 100s of thousands of dollars to hire someone to do the work for them.
They dont do any work regarding security that would matter. As hardly anyone is using GrapheneOS. Most people use it for privacy, I don't know a one single person that would use it for security, I have bootloader unlocked as I don't care, its not something that would be a reasonable threat to me, while government actors are not something, I can defend against as they will break my legs and I will beg them to allow me to enter pin.
> 2. Name a Phone that's not made by a corporation.
So they can immediately stop doing it. It is futile, insecure and worthless even from perspective of privacy unless they give people a chance to use it. And currently they dont with excuse of security.
---
Something about gay fish.
It'd be nice if you blatantly didn't break HN rules.
The GrapheneOS folks replied in disagreement, insisting that this is a terrible idea because security would be less than perfect. They then started making up stories about me and throwing around unfounded accusations. I don't trust them in the slightest, and strongly recommend staying away from them.
For most use cases, like mine, I agree. But I understand GrapheneOS disagreeing with that statement. "average security" is not their goal, nor the use case they are working for. GrapheneOS' focus is security. They just happened to make the best AOSP version there is out there. So lots of us wish they better support our use cases disregarding the use case they work for. But they obviously don't want to spend resources on it, and I'd assume they wouldn't even accept extra resources to do those things, as it would dilute their "most secure mobile OS" brand by having less secure versions of it.
For those of us who don't need the best security, another fork of AOSP that incorporates many of the features GOS has, like sandboxed Google Play and contact and storage scopes would do. But we can't expect GOS to be the one doing that.
People involved with the project you're working on have a history of making attacks on GrapheneOS, but what I mostly want to focus on is your suggestion because my goal here isn't to get in a back-and-forth with you or convince you, but rather provide context for others reading this.
Our hardware requirements are not arbitrary. They are what we need in order to be able to provide usable security to people who depend on it. There's no "average security" for devices that are missing patches for known vulnerabilities for months. That's a non-starter, not something imperfect that an OEM can work on improving. Multiple OEMs have reached out to us and actually want to do the work of improving their devices so that we can use them to provide security for people. It's very weird for people to be fixated on this idea that GrapheneOS should instead be supporting devices which can't actually provide what the OS is known for.
Without a secure element, a 6 digit PIN is no longer secure and can be bruteforced. What average person is using a long diceware passphrase to unlock their phone? Our device requirements are reasonable, and can be found at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. Every time people ask us to support another device, we have to point to that explain that we cannot, because to date, no other devices meet them, and those who do purposefully go out of their way to cripple third-party OS support (Samsung chief among them). Then, we ask people which of our requirements we should drop in order to support that other device, and why people think that requirement is unreasonable. To date, we have received no convincing reply to that.
You think we're chasing "perfection" but Pixels are just the best that exists right now and is extremely far from perfect. Our requirements aren't a wishlist, they're based on what is possible and reasonable today, not in the future.
That sounds oddly similar with Louis Rossmann's video when in disagreement with some (the?) project owner.
Our perspective is that Louis was upset with Daniel because we wouldn't do content with him, which resulted in a lot of jabs in his videos preceding that one, along with him expressing support for a video and a creator who has created what is essentially a hitpiece video on the project and its founder.
The main context that seems to be missing is that a supporter of the creator of that hitpiece was raiding our community rooms not longer before Louis' video happened, which culminated in the GrapheneOS founder being swatted by that person 3 times in the span of a few days. Louis Rossmann expressing support (with his large following) for that creator lends credence to their claims and leads more people to attack us. That should hopefully explain why Daniel was upset at Louis (in private, which Louis decided to livestream and leak). If Louis really thinks Daniel is some mentally ill person, is broadcasting him like that really the compassionate thing to do? Even in his version of events, this seems cruel.
Louis is a kiwifarms user, a website dedicated to harassing people (including Daniel). Daniel's thread what started by a self-admitted fan of Louis, shortly after his video, so it has directly led to a bunch more hatred. You can find all of that out yourself.
So for you, and those reading this comment after the fact, I'd encourage you to do your own research, and also to not take what a YouTuber says at face value just because they said it.
GrapheneOS is aiming at the best possible security, so they won't compromise. CalyxOS and /e/OS run on FairPhones (though it seems like /e/OS is more into privacy and less into security).
Security is one thing, the privacy they(GrapheneOS) provide is another. You can have privacy without every detail of security they require. While they refuse to provide privacy without security.
Thats why I buy Pixels and feel more and more dirty each time I do it.
Had sailfish in between but that is another set of problems, Jolla failing to realize, they need to have strong compatibility Android layer (to use everyday stuff like bluetooth - in my case for paying public transport) until there is enough software for Sailfish. In any case, Sailfish is my FAR prefered option, over GrapheneOS. But unfortunately the spin of the world and my wishes are not aligned.
Can you elaborate on that? Say I install LineageOS without Google Services and without microG, would you say it's bad in terms of privacy?
Or are you saying that microG is the issue?
I dont use Android because I like it. I use it because I am forced to use it, without it I cant connect to corporate VPN, cant even take public transport (actually I can use NFC card and take a lot of care never to lose money on it, to drive to first place where I can charge it). Banking software. Update firmware for my headset.
Then there come the fishy practices of applications, full of advertising kits stealing information, where HelloWorld app is 90MB apk, as it has Facebook SDK included. You can partially protect yourself with https://netguard.me/, but even I can avoid it (wont explain how, typical android developer doesnt know much beyond java and I dont want to shoot myself in a foot helping them).
What is it that makes GrapheneOS "good enough" (Would you say "perfect"? You seem to want "perfect") in terms of privacy, and /e/OS / CalyxOS / LineageOS unbearable?
Surely that's better than "nothing", isn't it?
GrapheneOS is more secure, but you're talking privacy here. With GrapheneOS I could run the Play Store or Google Maps in a sandbox, but it would probably not be better than not running them at all, would it?
Then I got my first banking app and was decompiling it on each new version, removing checks for root, "compatibility" and security checks, and compiling it back. Then another app came, this time for public transport, and I was reversing two apps, once every 2-3 months. Became quite efficient with it.
Then I deliberately bought pixel for GrapheneOS, installed it and never looked back.
As I have already mentioned: I am not using Android because I like it or I would want it. Sailfish has everything, I will ever need. For myself.
But not for living in this world.
I am not interested in your complaints, really. I was interested in your take about the privacy issues on other custom ROMs, but it really feels like you don't know. And that's okay.
Looks good. Another alternative would be TrackerControl.
Make it small and I would buy 3.
It looks like they really won't though: [0]
It's such a shame, vision-wise the GrapheneOS crew must be much closer to the FairPhone team than they are to Google and Samsung, one would guess... But the GrapheneOS people find security tech (such as secure enclaves) and update cycle very important. After the bad Pixel news, they find Samsung to be the best fit: [1]
I would (as many here) also hope that they could somehow make the FairPhone crew step up in their security practices, help them do it. They would be the golden combo, except perhaps for things like camera quality and raw speed/AI chips. And possible the niche is just to small to be profitable.
But a man can dream... I'd pay 1.5 to 2x normal price for a FairPhone/GrapheneOS combi, it would align with my values in almost all dimensions. And then I'd buy a Pebble and just be happy.
I really don't know what to do when my iPhone 12 mini dies. I do like the iPhone, but I also liked my OnePlus3 with LineageOS. I was originally planning on a Pixel/GrapheneOS after this phone, but that dream has shatter I think...
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114721751616786103
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114721967328643999
I seriously doubt that given fairphones track record in regards to updates and security. GrapheneOS Devs value timely updates and integration of security tech. Fairphone does neither.
But if another party would help with the security aspects, that might change the equation for them.
FairPhone may not be the most attractive partner security-wise but I think that the FairPhone team is much, much less likely to rug pull them like Google did (and Samsung may). Which has got to be worth something.
If you want a small phone, the best thing are flip-phones, there is tons of them now.
I would be small (lightweight) phones. I cannot bare these 180–220g devices. If I want something heavy I buy a tablet.
How can one buy what is not being manufactured?
The few small-ish phones that have existed have mostly been cheap and underpowered.
I would say that for last years it was quite the opposite… Asus Zenfone was a bit smaller, and few others… all of them being on the more pricey range. I do not remember anything <€500 worth buying…
I remember having few years ago phone from "Note" series… and yet - it was smaller than "normal" nowadays.
My Samsung A40 is less than 8mm thick. It has a FullHD display, 440dpi sharpness, weighs only 140g and is less than 145mm in length. The cameras support 16Mpx back and 25MPx front (not that it’s needed much). The quality is not the best, but very suitable.
It has support for fingerprint, microsd, 3.5mm jack – everything necessary. (Only thing missing is esim, but that can be added by an adapter.)
So it IS possible. The manufacturers just don’t WANT.
Phones that were biggest size/weight only six or seven years ago are now not even available anymore. Why? I cannot imagine that all(!) people want phones that now weigh at least 180g (most even 200+g) and have huge displays.
Do people need to play games all the time? I don’t. I just want a phone to support me with some helpful apps like train/bus timetables, play music, do a quick internet search, make a picture, do alarms and notify about things. Nothing fancy, and nothing where a really need a 7" display nor a 5Ah battery.
When my current phone (Samsung A40) will die someday, I will be very sad as there is nothing today even remotely comparable to the compactness and usefulness of this device.
The latter, because AFAIK iPhone 12/13 minis sold rather poorly, and apple discontinued them.
>Framework-like upgradability / repairability / modularity
>Support for GrapheneOS
>Sold in USA
On a more positive note, due to the AOSP/Pixel drama there now is a real possibility a different major OEM will be supported: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114711328082841462
[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
[2] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114733211017800480
[4] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114235396540176085
I really do not know which other major OEM other than exynos-based samsung that comes near GOS' checklist, but here I am hoping if he is talking about Nothing phone.
That is if they can sort out their availability gaps.
https://murena.com/products/smartphones/
It also supports a lot of linux distributions, including UBPorts and postmarketOS.
I wish that they would just stick with one form factor and do the "framework computer" approach though.
Or maybe I'm out in public with others and want them to listen to something but my dongle is at home so I now need to play audio over the speakers in a public setting.
It comes down to having choice and not being funnelled into overpriced wireless earbuds. Which Fairphone began selling with the release of the Fairphone 4, their first phone without the jack.
My Macbook, my work laptop, my e-piano, my Note9, my BTR7, ...
Don't get me wrong, I understand far too well why no new flagship offers the jack anymore and wireless/USB-C is truly amazingly convenient for the vast majority of users, even audio quality wise, but sadly we are still very far from either being universal, either because the standard is still 1/8 or 1/4 inch or latency is key (in the case of instruments both). Also, USB-C ports are finite so using the small 3.5mm port is often preferable. So just keeping the dongle plugged in, sadly not an option. Apple Dongle DACs are easily lost too, ask me how I know.
Am very far removed from the mainstream customer and accept that in any case, my dream phone would likely bankrupt whoever was dumb enough to bankroll it, so I'll just deal with the compromise.
Turns out, when you have to use the same port for all music streaming as well as charging, you end up using that port (in my case) something like 1000% more often, and it absolutely demolishes the phone.
- user-replaceable battery
- 7+ years of security updates
- iPhone 13 mini size
- iPhone 13 mini camera quality
- plastic exterior
- headphone jack
- fairphone-style sustainability, repairability and part availability
- GrapheneOS compatibility
- fingerprint reader either on the back or on the power button
My only guess is - some kind of bespoke/niche phone maker with a good profit margin might make it "on demand". Of course not "one order from customer, one order to their factory" kinda setup - you get the drift. Some kind of blocking/reserving fee for priority shipping etc.
I had kind of hoped Nothing could be that OEM. But naah! Why would they! They literally are "yet another smaller OEM" in the crowd of other smaller OEMs with that gimmicky backlight as the only differentiator.
Unihertz makes some very small android phones. I've never purchased one so I can't vouch for their quality.
The one gigantic downside is that the software gets updated never. They launch with the bugs they launch with and those are the bugs you get forever. They have no interest in allowing any sort of custom rom support, so you get what you get.
How about both: do it like the LG G6 and put the power button on the back and make it the fingerprint reader :)
(unironically though it was probably my favorite fingerprint reader I've had so far)
Many mainline supported SOCs are unavailable to a company like Fairphone, which only produces a tiny amount of phones (less than 50k for the latest and greatest model). CPU manufacturers aren't going to waste time sending their top-end chips to some small company when Samsung can pay more per CPU and can take shipping containers full of them. That's also why F(x)tec phones come out with such outdated processors. Small companies will have to make do with whatever niche products are for sale in low quantities.
Starting 20th of June this year (so 3 days ago) every new phone released in European Union will need to have software updates for at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market. This might be the first one released under new regulations. Also looking at Fairphone's history it looks like they really support their phones for a long time.
This is why using SOCs with poor support and closed drivers like this is a terrible idea.
This is software, not hardware. It is ridiculous to pretend it is ok for a phone to artificially stop being useful after just 5 years simply because the vendor won't give software support or even provide the necessary documentation, source code and keys for the community to do.
At least this is 5 years from "the end of placement on the market". So more realistically it should be around 7 years from release.
[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-linux-6-1-android-15-...
AFAIK outside the Pinephone and Liberem 5 no hardware manufacturers explicitly target this and only 10 year+ old Qualcomm (other vendors such as Freescale tend to behave much better) SOCs have open source graphics drivers because the SOC vendors themselves often refuse to support their own hardware.
Google is able to do this because they build their own SOCs (probably because they got tired of being jerked around by Qualcomm) but still don't merge their stuff upstream (or at least they don't last I checked.)
Fingers are still crossed that the upcoming announcement mentions other countries.
I can't blame them, I just wish it were different.
I do wish they would sell them in the US and had more US band support. I got mine on a trip to Europe and it works here, but not always consistently. :) That's probably the one thing that'd get me to upgrade and repurpose this one with PostmarketOS.
Would be very interested to see how much of an improvement it is over the FP5. Fairphones seem to get negative reviews but I think that is due to people not really being able to look past the price-to-quality ratio compared to phones that don't care about ethics.
It' rarely gets talked about here as this is a mostly tech audience who focus on features, which are important, but Fairphone is more focused on the impact of the manufacture.
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/08/30/is-the-fairphone-5-t...
"Fair materials" means nothing.
"100% e-waste neutral" is the same as claiming that you are "100% carbon neutral" because you buy carbon "offsets". It's dubious.
There are real positives, though: "100% recycled tin solder paste, 80% recycled steel, 75% post-consumer recycled plastics in the battery frame"
It does not seem like they are buying offsets. Also why would Fair materials mean nothing?
"Fair materials" means nothing in itself and certainly nothing in relation to sustainability.
And they're claiming to recycle e-waste proportionally to the weight of each sold phone, what more specifics would you want?
I have many friends who never repair their phone: as soon as something is broken they buy a new one, because the repair price is often very high. With FairPhone, you get 5 years of warranty and after that you can repair it yourself at a low price.
If some people can repair their FairPhone instead of throwing their mainstream phone away, then that's a win.
Of course, warranty won't cover aged battery or damage (which probably are 99% of repairs) in any case.
What about changing the screen? Or USB port? Or camera? Or speaker?
> "Fairphone 5 battery" it comes at about the same price (£45 - £65) just to get the part.
45 is still cheaper than 69, and you don't need more than "getting the part" because it's trivial to change it yourself, right?
GPU: Adreno 810
- 895-1050
- 256 shaders
CPU cores: 8
- 1x2500 (Cortex-A720)
- 3x2400 (Cortex-A720)
- 4x1800 (Cortex-A520)
“It's not possible for GrapheneOS to support @Fairphone devices because they're far from meeting even the most basic security requirements. They haven't come close and it doesn't appear to be a priority for them.“
I also would love a Fairphone-like device running GrapheneOS, but I don’t think Fairphone is going to be the company to deliver to GrapheneOS’s high standards.
> It's not feasible for Fairphone to make a device meeting our requirements any time soon.
Do you know of a simple modern 4G/5G modem, USB? Only IPv4/IPv6 bridge, I guess you need USB CDC or something for that (NDIS is deprecated)?
Any tip?
It's pretty easy to dial the PPP (IP) connection with network manager + modem manager, doing it from scratch with expect scripts is awful, I got that to work once but haven't been able to do it again.
https://www.amazon.com/EXVIST-Dongle-EG25-G-M2M-optimized-Mo...
In theory you can actually make phone calls with it, I've enabled the usb AC device on mine and dialed out with it but haven't actually gotten the loopback set up to work. It's hard to tell if the issue is with Pulseaudio or something in the modem firmware or a regulatory issue or what.
SMS works OOTB with modem manager. MMS works if you're willing to hunt down the MMSD source and build it yourself.
I think there are a few USB standards for IPv4/IPv6 bridges (CDC and more), namely, it should not require a specific driver.
Is everything documented and public for this modem?
LMAO I've found typos in the manufacturers documentation. It's actually terrible. It's one of those situations where so many people use it though you can usually find what you need on a wiki.
>I wonder if the 4G/5G PPP commands are well "standard".
Absolutely not but modem manager and network manager is pretty good at figuring a lot of it out these days.
Sad.
I hope they have improved since and wish them the best, but as sick of Apple I am, I am also too afraid to try FP again...
(I would like the answer to be yes, and I would like the answer to be yes for many more phones and OS combos. I don't think it is.)
This comparison is pretty damning: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Calyx is _not_ a hardened OS, and runs on devices with insecure hardware and firmware (like a Fairphone). Additionally, app compatibility suffers because they use microG instead of proper sandboxed Gapps, and also lacks many QoL features that guard against hostile apps (storage scopes, contact scopes, ...).
microG is not a drawback, it's a proper FOSS implementation, which I vastly prefer to running Gapps in a sandbox. App compatibility has been perfect for me.
The main criteria for it to be strictly better is that you do not give root to a dev that hallucinates enemies and then send their goons to attack them. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4To-F6W1NT0. It's nice that Graphene has a hardened kernel, that helps nothing if you can't trust the developer - different attack scenarios.
I think the main issue with FairPhones was lacking a secure element and not receiving (anywhere near) timely firmware updates.
I am always a bit sorry when I have to bring this up, that is why I only mentioned it when prompted. Mental health is a sensitive topic and hammering the problem won't help him, but it is just so relevant when users rely on the security of their system, even pick Graphene because of heightened security needs.
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12565-is-gos-development-sl...
[2] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21819-impact-of-ongoing-war...
Promising 8 years of upgrades is only useful if your hardware is not sub-par. The Fairphone 3+ I bought was already "meh" when I bought it, after 3 years it felt sluggish. I wanted to upgrade parts of it, not a whole new device.
In case of modular phones, i'd be very interested in stats of how many people buy a new replacement battery after a year or two (especially if it can be replaced with just using your nails or maybe a screwdriver, without heating stuff and losing waterproofness) compared to every other replacable component.
I wish them good luck, their phones are the kind of device i'd like to buy but i'll do that after they have proven that they can actually deliver what they promise.
funny that we've come full circle
Or Force Google to not track things out of certain apps and giving customers choice to not use those apps at all e.g Gmail, Google Maps etc (or use w/o logging in like you can do on iOS. A good way would be to letting OEMs decide the "Android Account" in Android OS instead of the mandatory Google Account.
Not only opening up of the play store (I am not sure how helpful that would be) but another crucial criminal hurdle here is Play Integrity API [0] and apps using it. By this Google made it apps choose between the notions of "be secured" or "actively decide to remain unsecured".
[0]: Call the Integrity API at important moments in your app to check that user actions and requests are coming from your unmodified app binary, installed by Google Play, running on a genuine Android device
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Yes, Apple does it too but they have proven to not yet started tracking and god as much as I hate Apple and it's walled garden they are still far less distracting and cluttered. Besides they don't just log me into everything and anything like mail etc.
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And the size. Naah, if you are making yet another phablet then I am not even looking to switch. Good luck thank you bye-bye.
If you don't care about phone manufacturing being basically completely in China, then all power to you, but as I live in country that has been illegally trade embargo-ed by China just five years ago, I do care about this a lot.
I am willing to make many of them, but the least requirement for me is at least a good effort of moving off China for manufacturing (Ideally EU, of course, but we all know that's unrealistic).
I already have picked up standalone music player to deal with missing 3.5mm jack, I also have picked up a small camera with a pancake lens that I carry daily to account for not having great camera in phone, but I'm not willing to spend high mid-tier phone money on an entry level hardware if it is fully manufactured in China, sorry.
I used to run Xperia's, despite horrid software, but now I'm on Google Pixel for the lack of better options.