There’s been a lot of buzz here about the Fairphone here lately, especially with it coming to the US.
On paper, it seems rather nice. Ethically sourced, privacy friendly stock ROM.
But the skeptic in me does say, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.”
What are the drawbacks of Fairphone that seem to be shunned away, or less discussed both by the company and community at large? Why shouldn’t I just buy a Pixel 7a and put GrapheneOS on it instead?
i wrote this comment on another post recently, i think you might find some value. the thread has some good discussion. note that i regret using a fairphone, but i dont regret supporting the company. in a ‘lesser than two evils’ sense, fairphone is MUCH less evil.
the fairphone company makes grand promises of 7 years support, despite historically really doing 2-4 years of support very badly. to the point where when the fairphone 4 released, it was going to take so long for it to make an android upgrade that a FOSS group CalyxOS ended up making the port for them. being this late for security and feature releases is insane, especially when they make claims outside of SoC OEM support periods despite knowing that they can’t provide those updates. the fairphone 3 even launched on the same day as android 10 but instead of quickly porting over, they instead ported over their next line of phone (fairphone 3+)
the phone
removed expandable storagedand a headphone jack, with obscene pricing for storage upgrades and at the same time as they released their unrepairable line of wireless products. this is just begging for e-waste.the claims of being ethically sourced are not universal to the whole phone, the fair trade gold standard is limited to some parts that they source.
they have hardware for an extra SIM slot on the fairphone 4, but made it unusable to the user. clearly just an anti-consumer move.
there are other reeasons, and you’ll also notice im not providing sources here. a lot of this is readily available info online and frankly im tired, i hope you can search these things up yourself if you want to confirm. i’m saying these things in good faith if that makes you feel more comfortable. there are reasons to consider the fairphone, but know that if you’re doing this for a ‘long-lasting’ phone, then you’re only getting that on the hardware side and even then you’re vastly overpaying for the value of what you receive.
i still support fairphone in their journey to making mainstream fully modular phones with readily available replacement parts and open schematics. as a big ‘fuck you’ to smartphone producing companies, the fairphone does its’ job magnificently and provides an excellent example of why samsung, apple, google etc are lying scum when they say these things aren’t possible. if a small company like fairphone have been doing it since their infancy, we shouldn’t believe that big tech can’t.
EDIT: i was wrong about the expandable storage, please read replies to get see some further discussion.
to answer your other questions, i do have a used pixel with grapheneOS now. much better phone, much better experience and much better piece of mind. i use a good all-covering case so nobody asks what phone i use, because i’d hate to be a billboard for google.
the biggest selling point of the fairphone for me was its’ unique form factor. i was asked what phone i had A LOT. when i took the back off, people’s mind broke. this created a segway for me to talk about right-to-repair with people who otherwise would have never cared. it’s a great tool to open discussion into ethical hardware and software. i miss having those conversations as regularly as i was.