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?

  • Square Singer
    7•1 year ago

    I’ve been using a FP4 since ~2 months after release.

    I cannot straight-up recommend that phone.

    The ups:

    • Repairability is nice. It’s actually really easy to take apart.
    • Battery is replaceable without tools
    • They let you root/flash custom ROMs without losing your hardware warranty
    • Guaranteed updates until end of 2026
    • Spare parts available until 2027
    • 5 year warranty

    The downs:

    • The phone is getting late in it’s cycle.
      • The hardware is from 2020
      • There are only 3 years of software updates left. This is still good, but there are other manufacturers that offer the same
      • Parts are only guaranteed to be available for 3-4 years. That is ok, but you can also get spare parts for much older phones too.
    • Stock software is really buggy, and everyone gets a different set of bugs.
    • Support is really slow and most of the time unhelpful. “Thanks, we have added the bug to the backlog”. A year later, the bug is still there, even for major bugs.
    • Every release adds new bugs, the software overall is not getting better.
    • Android OS updates have so far been very late. Android 12 was just released earlier this year.
    • They outsource their OS development, and the devs don’t use FP as daily drivers, so they only fix what they are paid for, not what they find themselves.
    • The hardware isn’t great
      • I’ve had a few games that I couldn’t even play on lowest settings, because the game is too slow for it (e.g. Space Marshals 3)
      • The camera is really bad. The camera of my Moto Z Play was better, and that phone was a cheap phone released in 2016. The stock camera app is also super slow and laggy. ~50% of the time when you press the shutter, it will not even take a picture at all. Sideloading a version of Google Camera from the Fairphone forum does fix the lagging and the missed pictures, and it does improve the picture quality a bit, but don’t expect anything remotely fitting into 2023.
    • The phone is really expensive for what you are getting, and the price hasn’t come down a bit, considering that the phone is out since almost 2 years now.
    • Many people seem to expect a FP5 to be released soon-ish

    All in all:

    It’s a decent, though overpriced phone if you really like to hack and tinker. There is an ethical aspect if you believe their marketing, but in the end it’s using mostly off-the-shelf components. If you are looking for a phone that “just works”, this is not the place.

    Also, regarding repairability: For the high price point you can easily afford multiple professional battery/screen replacements if you buy a cheaper mainstream phone instead.

    So this is not a straight-up buy or don’t buy. For some people this is the right phone, for many there might be better alternatives out there.