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Fairphone 5 - The Ars Technica Review
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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I had to scroll way too long (on fairphone.com's FP5 page) to find the data sheet. It feels like they're trying to distract from something. Maybe no easy LineageOS support - maybe shitty battery life. My FP1 is still in perfect working order, lasting 2 weeks in standby on the original battery, but obviously doesn't support LTE or get SW updates - but the FP2 is dead within 24-48 hours on standby :/ And battery drains within 20 minutes watching youtube
Most manufacture dont seem to put datasheet in a very visible localtion on the website.
The major talking point right under the promotional video clearly states 5 year warrenty and software update until 2031, and explained that is 8 years of security update in the caption.
Also it is unlikely fairphone would want to sabotage lineageos or any custom OS support, they dont make money from software. Why would they want to spend the engineering hours to deny free community effort to attract more users?
I think we have a misunderstanding - I know a good portion of the Fairphone team personally, I am very convinced of their altruistic motivations and good work ethics - and they wouldn't sabotage LineageOS. However, they have not been prioritizing FOSS chips, because the fair trade is the core design criterion. But I am a bit frustrated that they also didn't prioritize maintainability for the FP1 (no more SW updates after < 5 years I think) and FP2 (spare parts were no longer available by the time my USB module started to fall apart). And unfortunately, they are also not focusing on having a proper Linux (postmarketOS) with a docking station on the Fairphones.
So I just meant they might be hiding the lack of support as of the release date for alternative OSes. The company and the people are decent :) And they have at least one who used to work in the postmarketOS community that they hired specifically for alternate OS support, if I am not mistaken.
That sounds really impressive. I agree that it is slightly hard to accept that they are not doing all the good, but good enough is still way better than bad, like most other manufacture.
I love that they have people working on postmarketOS on their teams. I hope they will be the change we need to see in the linux phone space.
They are definitely a good company with a very nice work environment & a cool headquarters in Amsterdam :) The people working there, from boss to interns are all the kind of people you'd enjoy having a beer with. However, for the time being, they are too small to have more than one model of a phone in parallel, so they go with a single product line, and upgrade it in each generation. If you are interested in their plans for the future w.r.t. linux phones, I would recommend registering on their community forums and asking - there's a bunch of volunteers there (the Fairphone angels) who will be happy to give you a good summary of whatever previous statements the company has made :) Also, as part of the community, you might get a chance to visit the HQ, if you ever manage to come to Amsterdam in summer - they used to have an annual FP community meet-up (this is how I got to meet a bunch of people there), which was mainly postponed due to the pandemic. Not sure what the status is now.
That 8 years of security updates is very misleading, 8 years of android OS security updates. only 5 years of hardware security updates
(reference https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/fairphone-5-sets-a-new-standard-with-8-10-years-of-android-support/ 2028)
The FP2 battery dying quickly might be explained by Snapdragon's non ideal SOCs around that time period, it was also a problem on the Galaxy S5 that I put up with firsthand.
The SOCs had the performance, but they ran hot and drank the battery as if there was an electricity drought.
I don't think Android 9(?) is going to be particularly kind to that device either...
Indeed, this seems to be the issue - everytime I use the browser, I can feel the phone running hot as the battery drains. Anyways, my FP2 is beyond end of life, even the file transfer over USB stopped working recently, I can barely wiggle the charger cable to the point where it's still charging.
I'd buy a new one, but sadly they keep getting bigger, and I hate huge phones that ruin my pant pockets, plus are uncomfortable to carry in them.