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Comment by root-z | Hacker News Reader

You are right that it's just sales language, but people, tech folks in particular, don't have to like it and it's nothing wrong to voice their complaints. In fact it would be quite freshing today if some company start talking down to earth languages, like "hey we are giving you basically the same phone as last year with slightly better camera etc. It's useful though."

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Fairphone did exactly this with the Fairphone 3+: they emphasised that they were just upgrading two components of the Fairphone 3 that had attracted criticism (the camera and speaker) and otherwise didn't want to change anything about their super-easy-to-repair phone with promises that replacement parts would be available for many years.

Fairphone's marketing is rather unusual in the marketplace in this respect.

What’s a fair phone though. You don’t make money with bland marketing. Nobody knows what that is.

Edit: lol @ people downvoting because I judged their phone. As if I cared about imaginary points on throwaway accounts.

It's interesting you mention that because I went to their website today and they are running a secret product campaign at the moment:

> The ...............* that can change a whole industry

> *Coming soon. Subscribe for updates and a chance to win big!

So it may be a laptop, a fairphone 4, a DIY geosync satellite. Or simply the old trick that tickles curiosity and get them subscribers to their newsletter. Not that unusual. And as a techie I say "fine, keep your secrets then" though.

> You are right that it's just sales language, but people, tech folks in particular, don't have to like it and it's nothing wrong to voice their complaints.

Except it gets old real fast. These comments read like "first".

No signal, all noise.

Same thing with the PHP, electron and Facebook topics for instance. First top comments have been saying the same thing for years.

Yeah, I don't think those statements would seen positive by the shareholders. I imagine shareholders would interpret them as lack of innovation and would probably trigger a sell on stocks.

yes, an underappreciated aspect, splashy advertising has mutliple audiences, not the least of which are (potential) shareholders. tim's (and many others') comp literally depends on it.

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