Thoughts?
I bought my Fairphone 3 at the start of 2020. I love it. I love the fact I can dissamble it with the provided screwdriver in two minutes.
I love that I can buy replacement parts for it if anything breaks without having to get some kind of expensive repair from Apple or Samsung. Ive replaced the charging port on this phone and I’ll be replacing the battery soon too. Giving people the ability to fix and maintain their own devices is fantastic.
I am hoping to get a decade out of this device and I’m nearing 4 years with no complaints so far. I’m a little bit dissapointed they got rid of the headphone jack on the Fairphone 4. While you can get adapters etc, it shouldn’t be necessary imo. That alone is my biggest gripe with that device. Aside from that though, they make great devices and I highly reccomend them
The removal of the headphone jack is what made me call complete bullshit on their whole “repairability and sustainability” schtick. At the same time of the removal, they began selling their own wireless earbuds. So now you can’t use wired headphones with their phones, and instead have to buy a pair of wireless ones (which they conveniently sell to you) which will eventually have their internal batteries die and need to go to a landfill because none of it is repairable. I initially thought they were a pretty good company with decent values, but ever since they did that I no longer care about them.
Well, when I ordered my FP4 last year the wireless earbuds were included for free. Still bought an adapter for aux that i keep in my car. I think this is fairly acceptable. Now my only problem is that they didn’t offer an adapter with both aux and USB for charging.
I disagree with this choice, but I don’t think they are bullshiting, I think they are walking a difficult line of trying to be sustainable, up to date with the technology (adding 5G this early is also very questionable IMO), attractive for consumers and not completely unaffordable, which leads to difficult compromises.
None of those points demand the removal of the headphone jack as a compromise.