cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43965516
It is worth noting that both the hardware and software of Fairphone is heavily dependent on a Chinese company T2Mobile.
For those looking to avoid both US and Chinese companies, then the Jolla phone is the way to go.
It wasn’t a hardware preference, it was a privacy and control preference. Samsung is a data miner. I absolutely hate being locked out of my own shit. It doesn’t belong to you, but you’re renting their device and paying with data. I can see the calls home on my monitoring software, and now they have that MS linking SW that you can’t remove. I hate Samsung. Also, my S25 Ultra broke twice and I only got about 2 weeks use out of it total. Once, fell out of my pocket on carpet. Last, off coffee table and into floor. Those things are expensive and extremely fragile now.
Fairphone is honestly not a bad switch. It’s smaller than a flagship Samsung screen, but as ethically sourced as possible, modular so repairs are easy, open source software, privacy focused, has an ecosystem curated with care, and you can sideload all you want. I think I pay like $25 or $45 a month for unlimited everything with hotspot through the provider that supports it in the US. Also, there is no bloatware. It’s the absolute minimum needed for them to be a marketable solution in my opinion. My battery has never died in 4 months. Sometimes it uses less than 10% a day. Samsung was a nightmare constantly draining. I could go on and on.
Edit: Had S22 Ultra for 3 years before trying the dog shit S25. It took a beating, didn’t have MS link SW, but that is the device I used while developing better habits like deleting Facebook and beginning degoogling efforts. I never saw Samsung show fragility before 2025. Had several Samsungs before then too.
Well, i doubt there is much difference between the s22 and the s25 in terms of Samsung privacy
Also, you changed 3 phones in 4 years, not good on the environment.
The S22 busted, I got it fixed and still use it ocassionally for transactions. The S25 just stopped working after falling out of my pocket on the carpet, and it took hundreds of dollars to get the screen fixed. Even with a case and glass protector, it fell off a coffee table 3 days later and broke. Broke twice in about a week or two. I only bought it 6 months earlier because of tariffs in preparation for the S22 screen going out.
At this point I can fix the S25 and sell it, but have not done so yet. Now I have tools to fix phones and can try to make money from it when the economy gets worse, meaning that I’ll help repair so that people can decrease how often they buy. It’s a net good depending on what happens.