Looks like a new model for the Fairphone has been announced! What do you think about it?
Personally I love the fairphone project but after having tried GrapheneOS on my Pixel 6a it would be hard to move to a different OS
The Fairphone is always just such an odd decision for me. On one hand, I would love to have a phone with long support and swappable parts. On the other hand, I hear so many complaints about the software and wait for major version updates that I am not enterily sure if it really is a good buy.
The price is pretty okay, a bit less than 100€ per expected usable year. This is in line with other manufacturers. Also, the biggest bull of the expenses probably comes from the way the manufacturing and materials are checked.
Is there any sense in installing a custom ROM on the phone to get rid of the software issues?
Or maybe there will be less issues this time? From what I heard some of the problems where caused by Qualcomms support windows being closed and the company actually updating everything themself. Which might be solved by using a SoC with somewhat decent support now.
the biggest bull of the expenses probably comes from the way the manufacturing and materials are checked.
Could you expand on this? I am unfamiliar with Fairphone’s methods for determining and checking sources for materials and manufacturing. Is it flawed?
As far as I know, Fairphone uses “conflict free” materials. This is more expensive and harder to get than just searching for the cheapest seller of any material (e.g. lithium) and just going with them. In theory this should help against child or prison labor.
Additionally, they aim to pay everyone in the chain a living wage. Which is also more expensive than just using foxxcon to produce as cheap as possible and telling them to “just add more suicide prevention nets”.
This is a good thing, but makes cost go up quite a bit I would assume. Additionally, the SoC is probably more expensive than the Snapdragon equivalent, as it is build “for industrial uses”, which normally commands a premium.
Is there any sense in installing a custom ROM on the phone to get rid of the software issues?
Custom ROM will help with some issues, but not all. If the issue is in a proprietary blob, like the random screen dimming issue that’s plagued FP4 for months now, you’d still be stuck with the issue.
