We are not sustainable And neither is any other device maker. This industry is full of “feel good” messaging, but generates 50 million metric tons of e-waste each year. We believe the best way to reduce environmental impact is to create products that last longer, meaning fewer new ones need to be made. Instead of operating on feels, we operate on data and actions. With funding from Intel, we commissioned Fraunhofer IZM to do a detailed life cycle analysis (LCA) on Framework Laptop 13 to help us understand where we are today and where we can continue to improve. Check out our thoughts on reducing environmental impact and download the LCA report here…
Overall, they seem to be doing the right things for long-term ownership and repairability. As new hardware manufacturers, they’re going to have a couple issues, just like their rechargeable bios battery design, but they’ve handled them well.
I would like them to open source their schematics, but they have contractual obligations preventing them from doing so, so making the schematics open after signing an NDA is a fair middle ground, and more than any other company will do. So kudos for that
I personally own a framework, and worked with them to fix a charging issue, and they did all the right things, professional, no issues at all.
One small issue that people seem to have, is their unwillingness to talk about core boot or libre boot, but that’s a small thing.
They are a startup, so you always have to question what revenue streams they’re envisioning long-term.
They’re my kind of crazy: I hope they succeed, at least I hope they start industry trend for repairability and long-term ownership.
It would be amazing if they succeeded. Would be nice to be able to grab the motherboard of your old laptop and recycle it into a home server type device, sell your display to someone that can easily use it for personal projects, etc.
If they do it right their old boards could be used for the kind of stuff people buy raspberry pi’s for as well.
100% agreed. If they could come up with some GPL3 framework foundation, that open source to schematic designs, after I don’t know 5 years. So the designs are older, but it’s open, so that people can fashion all of their devices into completely reusable modules. I’d love that.
They’re doing a reasonable job by open sourcing their interfaces, which is good.
That is already being done right now.
You can fashion your old Mainboard into a home server. For example by using their case made in collaboration with I think CooperMaster but you can also 3D print it yourself.
The displays are just standard eDP connectors. So anyone could use that as well with a cheap board.
Yeah, I saw hobbyists are doing it already, but it you could use mass produced cases to fit them in any form factor it opens up the possibility for long term use of motherboards that would end up scrapped otherwise.
I should add, no matter how much I agree with the company, I won’t do pre-orders. I know framework is my kind of crazy, I can’t encourage anybody to do a pre-order either.
I bought my framework from in stock series 13s.
There’s too much risk tying up capital for months, plus you lose your credit card protections, when it’s been over 30 days. If I buy an in stock unit, have it delivered, and it’s terrible, worst case scenario I do a credit card charge back. I’d lose that capability if I do a pre-order 345 months out.
One small issue that people seem to have, is their unwillingness to talk about core boot or libre boot, but that’s a small thing.
It’s a major issue for me - currently I’m keeping my old x230 alive, but eventually that’ll have to be replaced.
I’m running it with heads, which allows me to do secure boot under my control. I don’t really want to have my main notebook without that nowadays.
I don’t like any of the current notebook keyboards, so it’ll be a “build yourself” project anyway - and the framework mainboard would be nice as they keep the dimensions stable, even though I’m not a fan of some other hardware choices.
My impression of the GitHub discussion on core boot, was that it’s on their backlog. But one of the bug submitters was very vocal, would a commitments, and basically got the developers to close the issue kind of emotionally.
I think it’s something they want to do, long-term, but they’re not actively working on it.
Out of curiosity what are the other hardware issues?
Out of curiosity what are the other hardware issues?
I’m generally not a friend of their USB-C expansion modules - which is mainly due to lots of experience trying to expand older notebooks with USB stuff. USB is not designed for devices to keep a state over suspends, so depending on what kind of hardware you plug in you get interesting results. This may be better with current spec (at least I hope they fixed some of that stuff when they worked on USB-C docking), but given how much I’ve seen fail I don’t feel comfortable to fully rely on that.
I’d have preferred to have a few more mPCIe-slots (I think they just have one for the WLan module), and more storage slots (which I think they finally fixed with the latest mainboard version with two NVME slots). Also what they’ve done about the connection for the separate graphics card might solve my complaints about lack of mPCIe-slots.
If we not only look at the mainboard, but the complete notebook - I don’t like the keyboard, the screen, the case in general, and the fixed battery - but unfortunately all those are bad on pretty much any notebook younger than 10 years.
My only concern is that they might turn into the next Unfairphone. But for now, I’ll remain cautiously optimistic about them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM&t=0&fairphonesucks=true
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Looks like that same person made a followup video? It was suggested to me under the first one:
Why I was wrong about fairphone
I haven’t watched either yet, planning to do that tomorrow
I recall the fairphone 2 being touted as an open platform with support for ubuntu touch, phosh and more. There’s not a word of that with the current lineup.
Mainline being worked on for FP4: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_4_(fairphone-fp4) along with a UT port https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/fp4
They still have a SD card reader up to fucking 2TB but got rid of the headphone jack in favor of a little more water proofing, not my favorite decition but certainly not a reason to call the only even remotely fair phone with some actual fair trade and recycled materials and unfair…
I contacted them about putting the Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V SoM in… but they seemed unenthusiastic…
Not everyone is riding the hyperbole in tech.
Are components replacable, repairable and upgradable because that is a pretty major thing in extending the lifetime of a device
The entire laptop is user serviceable, including replacing the Motherboard/CPU with a newer model, or even switching between Intel and AMD now. New 16in model will have upgradable discrete GPU.
(Almost) Everything is greenwashing because ultimately that’s what consumers want. They don’t really care about making something more environmentally friendly, they simply want to feel better with false claims and splashy marketing.
The whole environmental angle that FW are taking seems OK, but if they are too expensive or don’t make a good product or fall behind the competition, then it simply won’t work. I just found out my old laptop shit the bed, so I would absolutely take a serious look at what FW offers.
One of the things I absolutely hate about their marketing material is this idea that you can buy a module that adds a X port or Y connector to the laptop. Just build those ports into the goddamn laptop from the get go. Every extra module you add, every extra seam on the chassis, every extra cable there is, is an extra failure point in thw product and for something that is mobile, that’s not a great thing. I like the repairability angle they are pushing, but if all the extra modules introduce more failures then you won’t have happy customers.
Having used the expansion modules on my framework. I’m kind of in love with them. They remove all cable stress from the motherboard. Because of the modularity, I can just plug in an external disk to boot off of, if I want to run Windows, or a special operating system, and pull the disc out seamlessly through the expansion port.
I didn’t think I’d like them, but I really do. The modularity is undersold, day-to-day driving it’s great. No complaints about them whatsoever.
I’ll tell you what Framework’s IO modules truly are: Dongles.
They plug into USB-C ports on the mainboard, just like the bundle of IO dongles a Mac user has to lug around. But in Framework’s case, they’re “inboard.” They snap into the chassis of the Laptop to present the form factor of a built-in port. So unlike pigtail form factor dongles that stick out of the machine, you can leave them plugged in while the laptop is in your bag.
And because the module is supported by the chassis, that relieves the strain on the USB-C port itself, so if you drop the laptop with something plugged into a module, it might break the module but not the mainboard. Modules are cheaper and easier to replace than the mainboard.
