More than a decade after launching in Europe, the Netherlands company is now selling its repairable phones in the US, starting with the Fairphone (Gen 6+).
  • 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    4 hours ago

    Surprised to see that the 6+ with its 12gb of ram has lower price per gig of ram than the regular old 6. Guess I’ll upgrade my pixel 7 to the 6+

  • zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    267·
    6 hours ago

    I’ll be that guy. No headphone jack, no sale. As others have said, I’d love GrapheneOS as well, but I know why that isn’t in the cards.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      They have a great team, sadly they continuously aimed for a broad target audience in lack of support for degoogled OSes (only doing the bare minimum) and the headphone jack indeed. Also, sadly, the long life thingie is a joke when you are a cautious user and you don’t break your phone. 5-7 years after purchase, spare parts are no longer available :/

    • lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
      233·
      5 hours ago

      Yeah, no jack no thanks …

      Not a deal breaker for others but it is for me. Their rationale saying that the USB-C is more resilient than the jack is weird because I’ve never had the jack fail and even if it does that why you’re selling a repairable phone to me …

      Anyways, I see they’re selling earbuds so I’m going to assume that that’s their main motivator.

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        141·
        5 hours ago

        I’ve had several 3.5mm jacks fail. I’ve yet to have a USBC port fail, but I’ve also had fewer USBC ports and for fewer years.

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          12·
          5 hours ago

          I’ve had them both be problematic. Nothing deoxit can’t fix.

          Headphone jacks have a hell of a lot of leverage on that port. An IP68 headphone jack is honestly pretty bulky.

          I’d rather have one. I also also like us to go back to phones that are 1cm+ thick and just fill it out with battery.

    • GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      4 hours ago

      I’ve had GrapheneOS for a little bit now, and while it’s great that ‘Google’ has been stripped from it, but the giant warning that you can’t avoid when restarting the phone, so many services simply breaking, it feels a lot like the old days of custom ROMs. Maybe for certain people it can be a daily driver, but goodness it’s difficult to diagnose and fix bugs when it all comes back to Google permissions and services that you really can’t get around.

      • kaidenshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        /e/OS is that middle ground between GrapheneOS and stock Android, and it has most of the benefits of the former while stripping away most of the deficiencies of the latter. You also don’t have to use Murena’s cloud suite, but it’s pretty good for what it is if you do want or need that part of it.

        And a bonus is that /e/OS runs on every device that can run GrapheneOS in addition to other devices, and the Fairphone 6+ is one of them.

      • OpenPassageways@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        I’ve been using it for almost a month and I’m a big fan. I was planning to wait for the Motorola phone but my screen on my old phone was rapidly becoming unusable.

        I’m using it to divorce Big Tech. I created two secondary profiles, one for work and one for Big Tech. The Big Tech profile is where I’ll enable Google services and permissions. I don’t let it run in the background so once I switch back its like I turned off Big Tech. I can still use all the apps and services I’m used to, but I added enough friction that it’s causing me to explore alternatives every day.

        My owner profile has Play and Play Services totally disabled. I get push notifications for Signal using Sunup for UnifiedPush. I get apps mostly through Accressent, Obtainium, and Aurora. If apps complain about missing Google services too much, they get relegated to the Big Tech profile while I find an alternative. Most of the apps that complain about it (like Ring) still work fine. Most of the “apps” I use are just PWAs that run in Vanadium and have icons on the home screen.

        The biggest issues I’ve had were around RCS messaging. I was able to get it to work in the Owner profile, but it’s a known issue that it doesn’t work in secondary profiles. I’m just not getting group texts from iPhone users anymore. Oh well, everyone who matters will contact me on Signal or SMS directly. I was never able to get E2EE working over RCS with iPhone users anyways, even though my carrier supposedly supports it and the iPhones were updated.

        It’s also exposing just how much I depend on Big Tech. I’ll probably be switching to Proton for mail, calendar, and VPN. My one gripe is they don’t have a way to sync contacts to my phone. Still, Ill happily pay $10 a month for storage and services that don’t spy on me for advertising instead of paying $3 a month for a service where I can’t expect any privacy.

        I’m still using Big Tech while driving unfortunately, haven’t explored alternatives to Maps and Spotify yet.

        • kaidenshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 hour ago

          You really should consider dropping Ring for something that doesn’t automatically and enthusiastically give your recordings to cops without a warrant or even a subpoena. I wish I could recommend something cloud based but they all suck; right now I’m planning to install PoE IPTV cameras around the outside of the house so the feeds stay within my network, with a remote access tunnel for myself and family members when we’re not home.

          Proton is not the paragon of privacy they claim to be; they have been caught lying about log retention and have volunteered subscriber info to authorities with zero resistance. I use Fastmail for email/calendar/files, I know they don’t advertise themselves as “the one true privacy service” like Proton does, but they have a strong privacy policy and I’ve had almost 100% uptime from them over the past decade. They are also less expensive than Proton, though they don’t offer a VPN. They don’t sell your data or run any advertising in their apps and services, and they haven’t jumped on the “AI” bandwagon like Proton and other similar services have. Their mobile apps are top notch and their desktop app, while just an Electron-wrapped thing, is still pretty damned good and works great on Linux. The web app itself is 100% compatible with Firefox and its far superior forks like Librewolf and Waterfox; it’s my main working environment even in OpenBSD where I spend much of my day.

          A good alternative to Spotify is Tidal, a little less expensive and they pay artists much more than the other services, plus they offer independent artists an easy way to distribute their own music, similar to Bandcamp.

          Maps is a tough one, Google and Apple have cornered the market there. HERE Maps used to be great, especially a decade ago with Windows Phone devices, but I haven’t looked at them lately.

          It’s only going to get more difficult to get Big Tech out of our lives over the next few years, so there’s never a better time than right now to start. I wish you success and freedom on this journey, my friend.

    • QuandaleDingle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 hours ago

      Is it not worth repairablity and potential headphone jack upgrades? Their pr is really moving quick now… 🤔

          • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            9·
            5 hours ago

            That’s not the same thing. There’s also nothing worse than being on a long journey wanting to listen to music but needing to also charge your phone before you reach your destination.

              • Badabinski@kbin.earth
                1·
                4 hours ago

                I use one of those every night and they’re awful. I buy them 5 at a time because they’re not very durable, and you end up with this especially irritating tangle of cables.

              • Angry Fuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
                7·
                2 hours ago

                Listen man, if the phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack, IR Blaster, FM radio receiver, pop out rotating 6mp camera, micro SD slots, 2g compatibility, Native flash support and a physical keyboard that pops out like the fucking matrix, then it’s a complete piece of corporate shit and you’re a complete neo liberal bum bandit if you think otherwise…

                • kaidenshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 hour ago

                  Screw that microSD slot, give me the full fat SD slot like my Treo 650 had back in 2007! The spring loaded kind so I can lose yet another SD when I pull the phone out of my pocket and the card snags on my jeans and goes flying and I don’t realize it until I’m 30 minutes away from where it happened, and now some guy in the AutoZone parking lot has my dog photos and Space Trader save files.

                • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  2 hours ago

                  don’t forget the nipple blasters, bidet, shower squeegee, AM radio, FM radio, CB radio, xray, zray, and replicator.

    • AppleTea@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Magnetic ink screen, that’s my make or break. It’s so damn nice to just look at my phone in broad daylight, and it keeps me from wasting time on youtube.

      Headphone jack is a close second though. Shame, maybe we’ll see what the fairphone 7 looks like

        • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
          351·
          6 hours ago

          It wasn’t just the update cycle either, it’s that they don’t have the physical hardware chips to support Graphene’s minimum requirements for security, which would severely weaken any benefits you actually get from GrapheneOS.

            • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
              36·
              6 hours ago

              Entirely lacking disk encryption for typical users due to not having a secure element is a pretty major flaw.

              It’s also missing hardware accelerated virtualization which is necessary for much of GrapheneOS’s sandboxing, has weak security for other keys in the OS keystore, is missing hardware memory tagging which makes it much easier for apps to use overflow attacks, doesn’t have proper verified boot support once a custom alternative OS is flashed, and leaves exposed debugging APIs even when the phone is locked.

              This breaks:

              • Secure app spawning
              • Memory corruption protection
              • Integer overflow protection
              • Most of Graphene’s kernel hardening
              • Much of Graphene’s attack surface reduction abilities
              • Hardware-based attestation and security monitoring
              • Quick tile protection pre-unlock
              • Debugging access prevention
              • Verified Boot
              • The security of your PIN against any automated attack

              At that point, GrapheneOS can’t physically provide you essentially any security anymore.

              • devfuuu@lemmy.worldEnglish
                71·
                5 hours ago

                It really depends on what security level you want out of a phone. Most people are concerned with a pickpocket stealing and being able to access everything. Most of the world doesn’t need the security level required to pass through the united states border control. Which they will just force to put the pin anyways or put you in jail for even having a secure device.

                • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
                  4·
                  3 hours ago

                  It really depends on what security level you want out of a phone

                  It does, but that’s exactly my point. GrapheneOS will provide you essentially no more security than any other alternative Android operating system, should it have to operate on a Fairphone with all those features not supported by a Fairphone stripped away.

                  Unless Fairphone adds more hardware security features that are standard on most other phones, and highly supported on Pixels, installing a heavily crippled GrapheneOS on a Fairphone would get you essentially none of the benefits of GrapheneOS in the first place.

                • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
                  31·
                  5 hours ago

                  Well sans duress password being a good idea now, when you get to the border, you can either unlock it or they’ll just confiscate it. You don’t get to be on their list and go through with a phone because they can’t manage to decrypt it.

      • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        7 hours ago

        I haven’t heard of this. Looking into it there’s at least a year wait. I’d consider it - though my Edge 2022 battery may not make it until then. Damn thing was crap from day 1.

        • lokalhorst@feddit.orgEnglish
          5·
          6 hours ago

          I am pretty sure Motorola plans to sell flag ship devices with GrapheneOS preinstalled. They won’t support old devices. Also the manufacturer needs to still ship firmware updates for a specific duration for GrapheneOS to support it.

          • halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            4 hours ago

            GrapheneOS already announced a direct partnership with Motorola, so they clearly already figured that out officially.

            Motorola also promises 5 main Android version updates for their phones now.

          • anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            I thought the deal was they shipped with normal OS because of existing deals with Google over Android but that they would have unlocked bootloaders so that the end user can install it.

            Also it’s limited to their very high end so expect $1000+ USD.

          • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            I meant more like if I am forced to get another phone before it comes out. I should at least try to put a new battery into my edge and I’ve done it for several phones but there’s always that 10 percent chance you might bork your phone.

  • uuj8za@piefed.socialEnglish
    161·
    9 hours ago

    Cool! I bought mine through Clove several months ago. This is great news! The Fairphone 6 is a pretty good phone. I’m happy with it.

    The power button + volume buttons are in the perfect place… for accidentally taking screenshots!!! :( That’s the one thing I don’t like, but everything else is good.

    Oh, and I wish I could use either SailfishOS or at least Graphene. But, still. I don’t miss my old Pixel.

  • Schwim Dandy@piefed.zipEnglish
    14·
    10 hours ago

    This is incredibly exciting news. It will hopefully be quite some time before I need a new phone but I’ve always wanted the option of this brand when I finally do.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    9 hours ago

    That’s exciting. Does anyone know how /e/os compare to stock android or graphene? And should we be worried about Murena messing it up, or is it a solid company?

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      6·
      9 hours ago

      I’ve been using the Murena fairphone for about 8 months now. Has its ups and downs, it uses microG to simulate play services. Most things work except for my Samsung watch and the wallet. Feel free to send questions my way

      • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        9 hours ago

        Cool, any issues with annoying apps like banks requiring play protect or something? Is there an Android auto equivalent or an emulation to allow use in a car?

    • jumperalex@lemmy.worldEnglish
      46·
      8 hours ago

      There is Verizon service, you have to buy from the US store. But then it is Android and not /e/OS … it took me a while and a fair number of AI tokens to full figure that out.

      trl;dr it is a hardware cert problem why the EU version is T-Mobile and the US is VZW/ATT. I still couldn’t figure out why the US-VZW/ATT version can’t have /e/OS but it still smelled like obtaining certification is the problem and there doesn’t appear to be any public statements on a timeline for it.

      If you want privacy, buy a pixel and flash GrapheneOS.

      If you want modularity/repairability buy a Fairphone.

      • If you want modularity/repairability and privacy, buy an /e/OS Fairphone from the EU store but accept only T-Mobile
      • If you want modularity/repairability and ATT/VZW, buy a Fairphone from the US store but accept no extra privacy
      • If you want it all, guess we gotta wait.
      • thagoat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        According to the fairphone website, the reason it’s incompatible is because the hardware does not support the lte channel that us Verizon service operate on, leading to unreliable service. No Ai tokens necessary.

        • jumperalex@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          8 hours ago

          Yes you can put whatever COMPATIBLE OS you want on it. Sadly GrapheneOS isn’t one of them. But again, you’re not wrong. I was just highlighting what I found about the options and their trade-offs.

  • stenAanden@feddit.dkEnglish
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Ha. Most of the fairphone community is pretty meh about it.

    I have one though and my biggest complaing is lack of the national payment app.

    • HerbGrower@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Biggest problem with mine is it keeps smacking into walls and doors in my pockets when I walk around the house. It’s so big, often falls out my pockets too.

      Probably more of a problem with my pockets tbh, but its all my shorts.