Should i buy a Fairphone?

[madd0ct0r]

https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone2-2/

€529 but powerful, upgradeable and im going to need a phone soon or to replace android with a slim line software.

[Jub]

Honestly, I'd stay away until you're sure that this company is going to stick around for a while. We've seen these kinds of phone ideas come and go before and it would suck to get stuck with a brick that can't be repaired should the worst happen and they go bust and your phone dies. Depending on your finances that might not be crippling but it's best to be safe.

[bilateralrope]

I don't see a water resistance rating mentioned anywhere on that site.

I've lost a phone to water damage before just from being out in the rain with a leaky raincoat. After that, I only buy phones with water resistance. Last I looked he options I had were no water resistance listed or IP68. Which is so common that it's usually only listed as a single line in the technical specifications.

[Elheru Aran]

Mind you, water resistance can be covered (heh) by buying a case. Likely any water resistant case will also have shock and impact resistance built in.

Alternatively, you can just buy a phone that's already hardened. I've had a Kyocera Torque for the past couple years or so. It's gotten dropped from as high as 15 feet without one crack (though from that high it did pop the battery case and needed restarting), and survived a few drops in the toilet and bath without blinking. Now the Torque is an older model, so you probably don't want that, but there are similar phones on the market out there. If durability is a concern, then just buy a phone made to be durable.

As for the Fair Phone itself: it seems (more or less) to be a pretty standard Android type, which means most phone repair shops should be able to tinker with it. Not for free, but if the company went under, your warranty would be useless anyway. If the ethical thing is a big deal for you, then by all means go for it while the company is still afloat.

[Mr Bean]

No until the company behind Fairphone has some history behind Android updates. Because being stuck on the old OS without any security updates is a bad idea even if the phone itself is nice. Nokia, Oneplus and the Essentials phone have some good history but Oneplus has dodgy polices in the past the Essentials is great now but will the company survive and Nokia is a really great phone maker in the Indian market and Europe and the US get like 1/3rd the phone they do.

[bilateralrope]

Mind you, water resistance can be covered (heh) by buying a case. Likely any water resistant case will also have shock and impact resistance built in.

True. But that does mean you'd need to research cases before you buy a phone to make sure that water resistant cases exist for that model. If we are talking about phones without IP68, we are probably talking about cheap phones. Plus a closed case can make the phone harder to hear when it's ringing.

Are water resistant cases available for this Fairphone ?

Alternatively, you can just buy a phone that's already hardened.

Probably the best move. Wouldn't a water resistant case need to be opened, compromising the water resistance, just to use the phone ?

[Elheru Aran]

Alternatively, you can just buy a phone that's already hardened.

Probably the best move. Wouldn't a water resistant case need to be opened, compromising the water resistance, just to use the phone ?

Depends on the case. I think some of them you can use them without cracking the case because the screen is exposed or behind a touch-sensitive material. Others are basically a box with a hinged front.

But in general, yeah, my rule of thumb is to just get a hardened phone. Accept that it'll probably be a generation behind because it takes time to come up with a good solution for each generation, and you'll probably still be able to use pretty much whatever apps you're used to. Sit back and laugh at fools who destroy their $800 I-whatever two weeks after they've bought it.

I do have to note that these phones don't last forever-- as I said, they're generally a generation or so behind the newest phones. I'm not talking *serious* differences, I'm talking like... Android 5 rather than 6, for example. But the phone's likely to last long enough that after enough time has passed, you will notice distinct differences in performance. That can be OK, that can suck sometimes. YMMV.

For example, my phone that I got about 2 years or so ago, it's like... android 4. So yeah, now that the latest generation of Android is like 8, it's pretty long in the tooth. It doesn't interface with computers other than to charge anymore, so I have to move photos to Google Drive to get them onto the computer. Starting to have problems with the keyboard and such. Doesn't connect to Netflix on my work's wi-fi, though Amazon Prime Video works just fine... go figure. Distinct delays loading pretty much any app. It's getting to be about that time.

[bilateralrope]

Sit back and laugh at fools who destroy their $800 I-whatever two weeks after they've bought it.

Some quick googling tells me that iPhone's have been IP68 since number 8. So that just leaves shock resistance to worry about.

[Mr Bean]

Sit back and laugh at fools who destroy their $800 I-whatever two weeks after they've bought it.

Some quick googling tells me that iPhone's have been IP68 since number 8. So that just leaves shock resistance to worry about.

Good thing it's back and sides are made of the most durable material known to man....

Glass!

Yeah you have to buy "cheap" economy phones if you want a solid metal back or ultra high end 1200$ phones

[Zixinus]

The idea was greatly attractive to me, except that the phone is not hardened (at the bare minimum, the display needs to be scratch-resistant and I prefer my phones both waterproof and shockproof). The price being two-three times for what I brought for my phone did not help either. What I see mostly is mostly a premium guilty-conscious reliever and not an actual solution to the problem behind these things. And really, a two-year warranty for a premium-category phone?

The fact that you can buy replacement parts is not that great if the hardware itself is not open enough to know what's in it. It almost feels to me like some marketing trick to make you do your own repairs rather than have actual support infrastructure.

Whether to buy one, it really depends on whether you can afford to and why. I somehow doubt that having one is going to be that great of a statement. Then there is the question of what is the actual quality of these things. If I had to buy a phone, I'd go with something that's hardened and has local warranty (an issue when you live in a second-world country), which probably means Samsung.

[madd0ct0r]

What I see mostly is mostly a premium guilty-conscious reliever and not an actual solution to the problem behind these things.

Well yeah. I shifted Bangladesh energy policy slightly and im close to getting living retaining walls adopted into the engineering standard. Only so much i can do, and consumer electronics are things id rather just buy. Voting with wallet.

[Zixinus]

Well, if you feel so strongly about it, I'd say go ahead. I'm not up to what is a good phone in terms of technical specs right now but it seems to be good. Maybe an undersized battery but that's a minor issue.

To be honest, if money were no issue, I would be tempted to buy one too. I do like the idea of fairtrade in general but it comes off as a luxury.

[Jub]

Well, if you feel so strongly about it, I'd say go ahead. I'm not up to what is a good phone in terms of technical specs right now but it seems to be good. Maybe an undersized battery but that's a minor issue.

To be honest, if money were no issue, I would be tempted to buy one too. I do like the idea of fairtrade in general but it comes off as a luxury.

Honestly fairtrade is at best a band-aid where people pay more for the illusion of making a difference. If people really wanted fair trade we'd petition to make all luxury goods fair trade and just let everybody pay a bit more for coffee and top end phones. It's like trying to stop climate change via a single low wattage bulb in a house of incandescent bulbs, it's still a good thing but don't fool yourself.