Fairphone 4 with /e/OS by Murena now available at fairphone.com
shop.fairphone.com
shop.fairphone.com
The experience has been mostly good, with a few irritating issues. I still consider it good though, because I had a flagship Pixel previously and had my share of irritating issues also. I don't really miss Google at all.
* Occasionally the keyboard just disappears. Crashes or something. Killing the AOSP (Android keyboard) service restores it. Hopefully this gets fixed. * The App Store it comes with only shows open source products, or lets you add in Play Store apps without an account. * Searching in the app store sometimes stops showing results when I search and I have to clear its data to get them to show again. I think it's related to the Play Store interface. * Moving off Google Maps is a bit of a learning curve (although you could install it probably). OsmAnd~ or Organic Maps are good enough 85% of the time. * I find if I hold the phone in my right hand when talking that my ear is not naturally on the speaker and I can't hear people. I've never had an issue like this with a phone. Easy to move, but the beginning of most conversations are still a lot of "are you there's?"
AT&T network works great. Verizon doesn't. You might try it like a fool like me and think it does for awhile, but I promise you it doesn't. The phone doesn't support 1 or 2 of the bands Verizon uses, so sometimes you simply won't be able to receive or make calls or texts. Mint Mobile (T-Mobile) gave me some trouble too but I think those ones could have been resolved but I didn't get network coverage at my house despite the maps, so I gave up. Boost Mobile claims you can use the AT&T or T-Mobile network, but they don't give you a choice, seem to have stopped pushing AT&T, and will refuse to give you the other SIM when you ask for it. RedPocket actually gives you a choice when you sign up.
The issue that's bugged me is occasionally when I'm using Bluetooth audio, the volume "locks". For whatever reason it decides whatever the current volume is, that's the max or min, and I can only adjust in one direction from there.
Are you using the stock keyboard? I allways install Simple Keyboard from F-Droid, Zero problems for years.
I would have greatly preferred a small phone but the FP was the one that met my other criteria the best. I don't notice the weight much, but it fits large in my hand and pocket. When holding left handed and trying to tap a button on the bottom right (browser tabs) my palm frequently hits the side of the screen.
Comparing to the old Pixel 4 I still have laying around, you would think it's a power bank until you saw the screen.
This impacts more than just the default browser as it also provides the WebView Widget used by apps.
The WebView also cannot be replaced by a user as it is directly loaded into the process space of all apps using the widget.
See my https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt table that compares all the other systems update history.
After a drop in water, the faulty part was completely broken so I tried to order one from their shop.
This part has been "out-of-stock" for more than two years now. I’ve a repairable smartphone that I can’t repair. Meanwhile, the FP4 and the FP5 replaced the FP3.
So much for trying to "not consume".
I hate Apple but my wife manage to keep her iphones 3/4 years each.
My iPhone mini 13 is a tank possibly even more than the Nokias that I've had.
That said:
- fingerprint reader in on power button and triggers on touch (instead of on press), which means I often unlock the phone unintentionally when moving it. Annoying as hell.
- no audio jack
- a bit too big for my taste
- I miss a led indicator of missed messages
- push notifications or privacy (from Google), pick one
Still, if I lost this one, I would pick FP4 (or FP5 now, I guess?) again, no question about it.
I have the Fairphone 3 and I know that if I take care of it properly I wouldn't need to upgrade the display, but I would like perhaps a new camera if a module with a better sensor came along. If their software support is limited by the SoC they are using, perhaps I would be interested in upgrading the main board, but I could keep everything else after the 7-8 years.
Instead, they are expecting me to hold out for this phone as long as possible and then upgrade to whatever they are selling 5 years from now. Not only this will not happen (as I do not want a phone that does not have a headphone jack), this will basically condemn this phone to the same pile of obsolete-phones-with-perfectly-serviceable-displays-and-cameras that I have on my desk drawer.
> The Fairphone 3+ is the upgraded version of the Fairphone 3. It comes with two new camera modules and audio improvements to boost technical performance, enhance the user experience, and improve sustainability. The new camera modules are also sold separately. This way, you can upgrade your Fairphone 3 by replacing the modules.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047776791...
Upgraded to Android 13, and it's gotten really slow, so I'm thinking of moving to /e/
But there is nothing stopping them from standardizing their own and building out support from other players in the industry.
My point is, during the Fairphone 3/3+ years they seem to be going in this direction. This is why that I bought in the first place. With the FP4, they went from "company with potential to disrupt the market and do good things" to "company that just follow practices from shitty Big Tech and does good marketing".
> Fairphone existed before Framework did, btw.
And? Just because they came before they can't change?
The smaller the device, the more difficult this is. Especially with modularity taken into account. A Framework has modules which are basically USB-C to X where X can be anything (TB, USB-A, USB-C, microSD, etc etc). Easy, if you have the space. On 5-6 inch smartphone? You don't have such space. Furthermore, the SoC is mostly an all in one package on smartphones, in contrast to laptops.
> My point is, during the Fairphone 3/3+ years they seem to be going in this direction. This is why that I bought in the first place.
I rather have them iterate form factor and on long term settle.
All they need is to come up with a design where they can set:
- a standard dimension for the board. - a standard dimension for the camera module. - a standard dimension for the battery. - a standard location for I/O and power: display connector, audio, sd card, digitizer, camera, usb port, 2 sim slots, vcc/ground. - a standard location for battery.
That's all, really. They don't need to optimize for thinness, they don't need to optimize for performance. They don't need to optimize for heat dissipation. They don't need to optimize for screen size or to ensure that their phone has a stupid notch. I don't care if the phone ends up being 1 cm thick or if it ends up with a 3 mm bezel. First, the people who care about silly things like that are the people who buy whatever "innovation" is being pushed by Apple or Samsung. Second, the phone will likely end up in a protective case anyway so all these details are just stupid vanity metrics.
All I know is that they had the chance of having a repeat customer in me, but they are throwing that away if they expect me to keep buying whole new phones from them.
So if they went for a standard dimension of everything you mention, it isn't possible on a small scale. Because every device upgrade is an iteration. One might for example have more cameras or more sensors, another time you get an upgrade from microUSB to USB-C, another time the SoC gets updated (they went to an industrial grade now, meant for 8 years of updates). If you look at Project Ara or the project Dave Hakkens' Phoneblocks, these projects are exactly that, and they increase the size of the device massively.
> They don't need to optimize for thinness, they don't need to optimize for performance. They don't need to optimize for heat dissipation. They don't need to optimize for screen size or to ensure that their phone has a stupid notch. I don't care if the phone ends up being 1 cm thick or if it ends up with a 3 mm bezel.
Yeah, that is the gist of your message. You don't care about this, and that, and this, and that, while they need to take it into account. Not as extreme as a non-modular, non-repairable smartphone but still it has to be taken into account. The company is too small for various markets like one where they want the device to be upgradeable between different versions, one where they want a hardware keyboard, one where it is an e-ink screen, one where the form factor is small, etc etc.
For exameple: Look at the small form factor of iPhone Mini and <= 5 inch smartphones. They get axed because there isn't enough demand. And yet the flip seems to be a new rage, seemingly big enough market share.
I get what you described is what YOU want heck I've read it all on the Fairphone forums but the world isn't only about YOU. So that they lose you as customer, who cares? They get more customers in return.
There is no need to change your main board dimensions for that.
> small form factor (...) get axed because there isn't enough demand. And yet the flip seems to be a new rage, seemingly big enough market share.
Is it really? To me it looks like they push for the foldable phones while downplay the small display ones because they can ask for a higher price on the new gimmick and therefore have a higher profit margin
> So that they lose you as customer, who cares? They get more customers in return.
If they are favoring "get more customers" over "create a product that reduces global environmental impact / gets away from planned obsolescence", then they are no different than all the other companies and all their talk is just marketing. As with any bad ethical decision, it looks good in the beginning and it might even seem as something justifiable, but in the long run people end up noticing the fraud and move on to the next one that promises to do better.
Not sure if/when that will be available directly from the fairphone website though.
https://murena.com/america/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena...
I'm not in the US, so I assume that's why I get a 404 for the product, but maybe it's just not available.
Yep, looks like it's not available yet with no launch date announced.
Is it comparable, or is it a generation or two behind?
So it's cost per year is probably smaller than other devices if you manage to keep it this long. It being repairable probably helps.
(I don't have a Fairphone, but if I had to buy an (Android) smartphone, I would seriously consider the Fairphone)
I wouldn't run it with anything personal on it.
I very much doubt anyone is making kernel or vendor updates to upstream neglected components.
Unfortunately I don't think the team is big enough to support the device specific software at a high level, which is fine for a community project, but less so for a commercial one.
I can attest this is pretty accurate.
A lot of the Android apps you find in the F-Droid or Aurora store can be installed, but won't work since most require you to have Google Play services enabled which Graphene sandboxes by default:
https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play
A perfect example is when I was looking for a weather app and most of the popular weather apps were a no-go simply because they required Google Play services. I ended using Weawow Weather instead of several other options like Weather Underground, Accuweather or WeatherBug.
EDIT: I'm currently using Graphene OS on a Pixel 4XL
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Meteorological_Insti...
I might be understanding this wrong, but note that GrapheneOS providing Google Play services as regular sandboxed apps should not have anything to do with whether an app requires play services.
So, if you want to use an app that does require them, you would need to install the sandboxed-play-services from GrapheneOS's Apps store then install the (Weather) app you need. GrapheneOS doesn't preinstall any Google (stuff by default), so there is an extra step.
App compatibility should also be better with sanboxed-play-services compared to microG since almost all apps/features that don't require meeting certification requirements (e.g. Google Pay and certain banking apps) or privileged integration (Android Auto) should work just like on another Android family OS. Something you might run into is the hardened memory allocator exposing memory corruption issues in apps whereyou might not see the same crashing elsewhere.
Compared to any other mobile OS, there is no compromise software wise on GOS.
All the "weatherproofing" and "complexity" talk is just smoke.
I got quite some corrosion on the headphone jack of my Raspberry Pi 2B. Not sure why. But either way, these adapters can be bought anywhere, and they'll work on other devices as well. Like I said, I didn't use mine much. Usually Bluetooth with an adequate profile is good enough. I doubt people hear the difference between Bluetooth adequate profile and 3.5 mm in a double blind test.
If you're trying to differente yourself from Apple, it seems like a no brainer to include a jack especially since USB ports are needed for charging, battery case accessories, data transfer etc. all of which can't be done while listening to music.
On top of that, a "wobbly" USB port is like the top issue with phones outside of a cracked screen and an analog port is way more resilient to always being plugged in while in your pocket than any USB adapter ever will be.
My wired headset is going to outlive whatever bluetooth sealed-in battery garbage "works today until it doesn't" too so "environmentally friendly" needs an asterisk.
This is Fairphone playing copy apple. You can like Fairphone and their mission, but giving them a pass here is just playing into marketing bs.
Batteries in some Bluetooth headsets can be replaced. There are iFixit guides available.
Most customers use terrible quality SD cards, and then QQ about them breaking. A burden for CS.
The exterior case design of FP4 and FP5 copies Samsung rather than Apple.
Every major vendor's earbuds and most of their headsets aren't battery-replacable. This complexity moves outside the phone and onto the user when all of this was handled reliably by "lesser" hardware of yore. None of this makes Bluetooth headsets an impossibility.
SD Card upsells are so obviously upsells, come on. Yes using shoddy peripherals can lead to a bad experience and they're replaceable for a reason. You seem to be going out of your way to bias the corporate position. Using low quality batteries risks far more, should Fairphone epoxy their batteries in to save the customer from that too?
Killing of the aux port was an Apple signature move. Whether or not the case looks like Samsung is not the true legacy of this courageous stance.
This just seems very evasive.
Doubt it, there is no data to support this with regards to Fairphone 4 and 5. You'd think that if there was a negative data point on that, there'd be tons and tons of CS reports on it. On the contrary; Fairphone 4 has very little CS support requirement and returns. In contrast to other phones, as well as Fairphone 2 (which was, by Fairphone's own [paraphrased] words, a CS disaster).
Either way, the USB-C port on Fairphone 4 and 5 is easily replaced.
> SD Card upsells are so obviously upsells, come on. Yes using shoddy peripherals can lead to a bad experience and they're replaceable for a reason.
eMMC is more reliable. Practically everyone is using these consumer grade (micro)SD cards. You get what you pay for.
> Every major vendor's earbuds and most of their headsets aren't battery-replacable.
Oh that is weird cause this guide is marked as Easy and a major brand [1]
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Sony+WF-1000XM3+Battery+Replace...
It's not surprising that if you make using my old headset difficult, I and millions of others will move to buying a wireless alternative — they're counting on it. That's what happened and the sales numbers mirror that. People throw away way more audio equipment today than they ever have.
The fact that these Sony earbuds happen to be replaceable is quite a bit different than them being _designed_ as user-replicable. You found a community member that uploaded a video showing you how to do it, now show me the manufacturer's documentation explaining how it's done.
This exists for watches and cameras, but we have been lulled into throwing battery operated things away as a cultural migration pattern and Fairphone is aware and complicit in this indirectly and unnecessarily.
I get it, you either work for or just really dig Fairphone. Glad you found a company you like so much.
Hehe, well there's converters which add Bluetooth to devices like keyboards. Surely you can get one to work on your 3.5 mm device so you're up to par? /runs
Honestly, I've been a 3.5 mm user for a lot of years in my life, and I actually love listening to my little WF-1000XM3. In fact, they're more safe to wear before I fall asleep. Because I won't be able to suffocate due to wires. Also, back in those days where I often used 3.5 mm cables I often had cable breakage at the choke points (point of entry and near the speakers). I used to burn through a couple of headsets a year as kid! I'm not missing that at all. But cool enough, Fairphone actually had a 3.5 mm headphones where you could detach the cable to replace it. And a third example: with ambient sound I can do stuff like dishes, open front door, or make up my bed without using a wire and without being attached to anything.
Do you know about VR by chance? Do people like being connected with VR, or do they prefer to be not connected? The latter ehhh..? Cause it is more convenient, that is why.
> The fact that these Sony earbuds happen to be replaceable is quite a bit different than them being _designed_ as user-replicable. You found a community member that uploaded a video showing you how to do it, now show me the manufacturer's documentation explaining how it's done.
I don't give a shit what Sony's take on it is. iFixit guide is enough for me.
> This exists for watches and cameras
Both of which are type of device which is now redundant.
> I get it, you either work for or just really dig Fairphone. Glad you found a company you like so much.
shrug and you're on the of them 3.5 mm loudmouths? :)
Planned obsolescence is baked into the marketing strategy. Fairphone realizes this but capitulated to sell peripherals, toeing Apple's talking points.
Companies taking a principled stance on repair is how repairs actually get done not the random customer finding an out-of-band way to increase the longevity of their hardware by trawling iFix it.
Samsung was able to pull this off with the S5 A DECADE AGO:
- removable back
- removable battery
- headphone jack
- SD card slot
- IP67 water resistant
This is an anti-environment moneygrab plain and simple. They omit the headphone jack so that they sell you the solution, which just so happens to be their brand of wireless headphones, dongle, whatever... if you actually like FairPhone you'd criticize them over this bullocks instead of being an uncritical parrot.
I would prefer two USB-C over one USB-C plus one 3.5mm. It would be more useful to a lot of customers.
I don't think you get it. The reason why there isn't any space for 3.5mm now is because they didn't want to add it, they could add the space if they so choose. This is not a problem you should think about, it should be the designer/engineer/etc's concern to figure out how to fit it in.
It is normal for there to not be any space in portable electronics, that just means they've utilized all the space they had optimally; it doesn't mean they can't add more features and redesign it to accommodate the jack.
The S8 I had was the low point of Android ownership for me.
My personal use case for the headphone jack is playing music in my car. My car doesn't even have an aux input (I have to use a cassette adapter), let alone Bluetooth. And when I'm on a long drive, being able to play music while charging is a must. I will only very rarely hook up a pair of wired earbuds to my phone, but I absolutely must have a headphone jack.
I wish I had the same problem as you do with your car. Mine is old enough that it doesn't have Bluetooth (I'm not the first owner and Bluetooth was an "extra" in this model) but new enough that there is no cassette player (and no built-in aux input) :)
Follow the leader never needs this many words and for a niche and ethical brand, this is quite embarrassing.
Engineer tech founders, open source maintainers: please pass these names by a normal person before you decide on them. No normal person is going to understand that "/e/OS" is supposed to be a Unix file path, nor care. They're going to go "why does it have a '/' around the 'e' ?". If they pop it into their browser search bar, they will get an error, because the browser thinks it's a file path or something. When they go to Google.com and search for it, one of the first things that comes up is "what does e OS mean?" In fact, you can just take "OS" out of the name altogether, because normal people don't know what an Operating System is.
It is also difficult to pronounce. I've come to call it slashyslash, but telling other people about it (which is absolutely paramount to it gaining popularity) is annoying. Me telling a friend about this would go:
I use slashyslash OS by Murena. It's forward slash, the letter e, forward slash, capital O capital S. Don't search for it from your address bar, but go to your search engine's homepage first.
The first thing people care about when it comes to the device they use to organise their every day lives with is convenience. If you can't even find it in the first place, what snowball's chance in hell does it have?
Also, LCD screen, really underwhelming.
I was expecting much more for that price.
e.g. Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 has an OLED screen and supports 5G SA for 140 EUR
Also, the successor of Fairphone 4, Fairphone 5, has 5G and OLED.