Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, and enhanced modularity with 12 swappable parts
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I love the idea but the price is too high for the chip given that this is designed to be a longevity phone. A chip like the 7s Gen 3 would make the phone sluggish after a couple of years with how unoptimised todays apps are.
The Gorilla Glass 7i and IP55 water resistance are also concerning given that budget Samsung, Xiaomi, etc phones beat this.
However having components of the phone being easily replacable is a great thing.
I think it's important to remember that the price is higher because they pay their factory workers a living wage and use a combination of recycled and fair materials.
It looks expensive because other phones are cheap, and other phones are cheap because they are exploiting people to make them.
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Interesting that they seem to be using a consumer grade Snapdragon chip this time, typically they used weird chips ment for industry applications if I'm not mistaken. Wonder what sparked the change, did Qualcomm start supporting their chips for longer?
They only did that once for the FP5. It was a terrible choice, leading to high battery usage and compatibility issues. They only did that because when it came out, 5 years of software support wasn't something crazy any more. Samsung already provided the same on their mainstream flagship phones. So to top that they chose that embedded chip with 10 years of support from Qualcomm. But 10 years is practically speaking really hard overkill, especially considering the very impractical downsides of that chip.
By now, most major phone brands have support times rivalling what Fairphone is bringing to the table, and for that to work, Qualcomm has to support their mainstream phone chips for longer.
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I posted this elsewhere but the tech specs for the Fairphone 6 say the following:
USB-C 2.0 (OTG capable) can be used to connect USB Sticks/SD-Cards/Audio Amplifier/Network-adapters directly
I was really looking forward to use this with a pair of display glasses, like the XREAL One Pro, but this seems like the Fairphone 6 might not support display output? That's sad. Especially since the Fairphone 5 had this in their tech specs:
USB-C 3.0 (OTG capable) can be used to connect USB Sticks/SD-Cards/display (also Android
desktop mode)/Camera/Audio Amplifier/Network-adapters directlyBut maybe it was not used enough?
Yeah that is a shame honestly...
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Fairphone is probably going to be my new phone when I upgrade.
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FP would be a good choice for Graphene.
Unfortunately Graphene have said they will only use pixels (or potentially their own phone in the future) because no other phones have the Titan M2 security chip.
It's a shame though, because I'd love to have Graphene on it.
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They have adapters. But yeah, would be nice to have a slot directly integrated.
Or two USB C ports, I don't really mind using a USB to audio jack converter but it would be nice to be able to easily charge and listen to wired headphones at the same time
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postmarketos has builds for the 4/5, and Fairphone has already submitted devicetree files for the 6 to the mainline Linux kernel:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pm/[email protected]/Okay that's actually really cool
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I dont understand Fairphone, flashy hardware with poor software security and awful sustainability (they stop selling parts quickly).
they stop selling parts quickly
That's weird. If they stopped making parts how did I get a replacement battery for my fairphone 3?
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Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
I've looked through their report and I can't find this info. The only thing I've found is a ~€2 bonus per phone to their factory workers, which is only a small fraction of a phones supply chain. Can you provide a more detailed reference supporting your claim?
Read through the whole report, sum up all the money they mention. It comes out to $16 000. Double that for the stuff where they don't mention money (because they surely would mention anything that costs more than the things they do mention). Double it again, for a safety margin. Double it again, because we are really generous. Now we are at €128 000. Divide that by the number of devices sold in 2024 and you get $1.24. Now add the $1.20 (Page 29) they pay as a living wage bonus and you arrive at $2.44 per device.
And now let's be super generous and double that guess again, and you end up with the <€5 per device that I quoted above.
The picture becomes clearer when you look at what they say about their fair material usage.
Take for example the FP5 (page 42 & 67). Their top claim here is "Fair materials: 76%", which they then put a disclaimer next to it, that they only mean that 76% of 14 specific focus materials is actually fair. On the detail page (page 67) they specify that actually only 44% of the total weight of the phone is fairly mined, because they just excluded a ton of material from the list of "focus materials" to push up the number.
The largest part of these materials are actually recycled materials (37% of the 44% "fair" materials). The materials they are recycling are plastics, metals and rare earth elements. That's all materials that are cheaper to recycle than to mine. You'll likely find almost identical amounts of recycled materials in any other phone, because it makes economical sense. It's just cheaper. Since these materials cost nothing extra to Fairphone, we can exclude them from the list, which leaves 1% of actually fair mined material (specifically gold), and 6% of materials that they bought fairwashing credits for.
Also, the raw materials of phones are dirt cheap compared to the end price. The costly part is not mining the materials, but manufacturing all the components.
With only 1% of the materials being fairly mined and only 6% being compensated with credits, you can start to see why in total they spend next to nothing on fair mining/fair credits.
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I love the idea but the price is too high for the chip given that this is designed to be a longevity phone. A chip like the 7s Gen 3 would make the phone sluggish after a couple of years with how unoptimised todays apps are.
The Gorilla Glass 7i and IP55 water resistance are also concerning given that budget Samsung, Xiaomi, etc phones beat this.
However having components of the phone being easily replacable is a great thing.
Yeah wow, the problem with the phone that tries to compete with unethical big business is that unethical big entity is cheaper. Who would have thought
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People don’t want to pay for privacy. That’s the real problem with end users. Imagine if more people did so. What a world we could have. Nah. Let’s be cheap AF!
Like Kagi for web searching.
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I don't follow? If you mean simplicity in terms of ease of use you might as well use BT headphones as you don't have to worry about any wire management. Ease of use is the main reason BT headphones are the go to for most people. No carefully packing the wires so it won't break, no accidental wiring mess or anything wire related. You just turn them on (which for most in-ear ones just means taking them out of the case), stick them to your ear and you're good to go.
If you meant anything else by simplicity you need to expand that idea.
In addition to @[email protected]: I don't need pairing, I don't have to deal with bad reception, it's harder to loose wired ones and even if I loose them, new ones cost a fraction of bt ones.
Also I still have some wired ones.
The simplicity of simply plugging them in and it just works is something really abstract to alternatives. -
What features would that include that the phone doesn't already have?
I'm currently an iPhone user, but I'm looking to move to a more open source alternative.Wireless charging
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In addition to @[email protected]: I don't need pairing, I don't have to deal with bad reception, it's harder to loose wired ones and even if I loose them, new ones cost a fraction of bt ones.
Also I still have some wired ones.
The simplicity of simply plugging them in and it just works is something really abstract to alternatives.Okay? Literally nothing you said applies to USB-C headphones. Except for this part:
The simplicity of simply plugging them in and it just works is something really abstract to alternatives.
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Okay? Literally nothing you said applies to USB-C headphones. Except for this part:
The simplicity of simply plugging them in and it just works is something really abstract to alternatives.
What about the price is simultaneous charging?
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Doesn't seem to have one.
But to be honest, most headphone jacks on these slim phones suck and even a cheap USB-c to audio jack dongle is better than the average phone headphone jack.
The devices from Fiio show that it is still possibile to create a good quality Android device with a good headphone jack, but we might need thicker phones.
I just use dongles or audio playerswrote last edited by [email protected]A thicker phone would be great. All these manufacturers forgot at some point we actually need to hold these things with a human hand.
Having said that my fp4 is actually a pretty good thickness. They just screwed that up by rounding the the edge so much seemingly to reduce contact grip.
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A thicker phone would be great. All these manufacturers forgot at some point we actually need to hold these things with a human hand.
Having said that my fp4 is actually a pretty good thickness. They just screwed that up by rounding the the edge so much seemingly to reduce contact grip.
To me a thicker phone doesn't help, but if it does for you then okey, that should exist.
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Are you aware why it is called "Fair Phone"?
Maybe look into that, before complaining about the price, it makes you look stupid.
Why "removed by mod"?
It does make them look stupid. statement of fact. -
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I'd jump immediately if it had a stylus.
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What about the price is simultaneous charging?
How often do you charge your phone and listen to music at the same time? And is that really something you cannot compromise on?
