Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?
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Much much better than my last Fairphone (which was the Fairphone 2).
I switched from an iPhone this time. I'm also enjoying that Android is a bit more programmable without rooting it - running a full Unix distribution in Termux, scripting it with Tasker to run Python scripts on events etc. Actual Firefox.
I honestly don't care much about processor speed, if it can run a browser, messaging and banking apps I'm fine. But I need to be able to take family pictures which are good enough quality for occasional full page prints.
I've always been disappointed with these kind of niche devices in the past, where the cameras were barely of the level of 2 year old sub-$200 phones, especially in capture speed and low light performance. You can't ask kids to reenact something in better lighting if you missed it the first time.
There are a few other things (I'd call bugs), that are more annoying to her. And I also don't really no what to think about it. Maybe it's because of the uncommon processor.
For example, it starts to vibrate (like it's being unlocked) repeatedly sometimes when it downloads updates from Playstore and it doesn't stop until it's finished and there's nothing you can do about it.
And Firefox crashes when you want to switch a video to fullscreen.
But she's fine with it, because she knows it's the fairest phone she could buy and it hopefully lasts long and maybe updates will solve the bugs above soon.
And I guess that's the attitude you must have to buy a fairphone, and then it'll be fine. I hope it shines when we smth is broken the first time :)
Search found (view HTML or click "More about our materials") on https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5
> In addition, we account for 100% of the cobalt used in the battery by buying cobalt credits, which support the improvement of working conditions for artisanal cobalt miners in the DRC.
Presumably that's what the map signifies. Good to know/in case anyone else was curious.
Related discussion 10 years ago, only one I could find on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5813730
Added: https://www.faircobaltalliance.org/supply-chain-wide-collabo... and presumably what the improvement mention above is about https://www.faircobaltalliance.org/approach/professionalizin... ?
I bought a Framework laptop for the same reason and I successfully managed to upgrade it, not repair it!
Is there a phone that allows me to upgrade over time and not only fix it?
Turning off app updates would have the same impact if you're right about the increasing memory requirements.
Are you not able to use your bank's mobile or desktop website in your phone's browser? I don't think I've ever installed a banking app. I also use a credit union though, maybe they're less incentivized to force people onto their apps.
Customer support has requested that I use the mobile app, and that usually allows the transfer.
Either you don't get any updates and at one point you can't use any app because it's outdated.
Or you get all updates and at one point you can't use any apps, because your phone became unbearably slow.
I am typing this from a phone that I am already considering replacing for this very same reason although it does everything well and I looks brand new (rubber case, screen protection, etc.).
I understand phones are harder to upgrade because space is very limited but the e-waste we're generating (and the money impact) seems something that needs to be addressed.
I imagine if this is something that lots of people want, it will result in more alternatives, but also raised prices. So it might not save money, but it might well result in less waste.
My point is that with reasonable apps old phones work just fine. Just don't install crap apps or facebook or something like that, stick to well working apps. Use a phone as a phone, not as your universal computing interface and you should be OK for a long time.
Sounds limiting. Nowadays there are plenty of phones that can handle reasonable workloads at a reasonable price. Especially if you don't care about the camera.
I am aware more and more people only use smart phones and don't own a general computer any longer, but that is a really sad development. A smart phone will usually not encourage experimentation and getting into general computing. It is a dumbed down device.
Yes, one should be able to use a phone for computing, but generally that's not available out of the box and it takes effort to make it somewhat OK to use it for computing.
I used a motorola moto g (the one with 1 GB of RAM!) from 2015 until last year.
They want it this way because then they can sell more SoCs because users end up upgrading more often, and device manufacturers (besides Fairphone) don't complain because their interests are aligned.
On the Apple side you see devices getting support for much longer as Apple designs and maintains it's SoCs in-house, and at least to a degree value device longevity because that keeps second-hand prices relatively high, and that aligns somewhat with Apples interests.
Not quite 10 years, but we've seen feature updates for just under 7 years with the iPhone 6s (released 2015), and it's still receiving security updates and bug fixes.
Why is this not a problem with laptops?
Even at 5 years I only ever felt like I was upgrading because it was 'time', not out of a direct need.
I can only imagine a person getting 3 years out of a phone if they are buying junk.
I feel it's a temporary problem like PC's, where eventually they will plateau on performance and a 10YO potato will (eventually) be able to play 99% of "high end" games in some capacity, similar to how a Steam Deck can play most games (even most AAA) without special accomadations. But I imagine there will be at least 5-6 more years of moore's law before it falls off (like it did on PC around... 2015-6?)
----
could also just be a low end phone. My Asus ROG 5 lasted 2.5 ish years before it literally died (sent it in for repairs to the motherboard based on online symptoms, for 3 weeks. paid $100 for shipping... died 2 months later) and instead of buying a brand new phone I just purchased the same model for half the price I bought it at launch. Still chews through pretty much every game despite being 3 years old.
Granted, GPUs are the usual bottlenecks for gaming yes.
Fairphone looks mighty tempting with a replaceable battery as the only annoyance I have with my current phone (Pixel 6) is the battery is starting to lose steam.
When I think about my atari 1040ST and what it could do with a single core running at a few Mhz and a few hundred kilobytes of RAM, it makes me realise how wrong we've gone with smartphones.
(before someone mentions it, I know that my atari didn't have wifi, couldn't play full HD videos, etc, and that it was harder to develop software for it, but still, something's off IMHO)
I did upgrade a few weeks ago because the iPhone 15 cameras are amazing and I care a lot about that but I honestly had zero performance reasons to upgrade. I’ve never had an issue with a 5-6 year old phone and I always keep my old phone as a backup specifically for banking.
Somehow, I thought 4+2 GiB of ram would suffice.
Many phones are essentially abandoned by the manufacturer and don't receive any security updates not too long after release, which might just be an issue: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2023-12-01
Not only that, but many apps won't run on the older versions of the OS either, due to the API level deprecation in Android: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
In other words, you don't really get much of a choice, unless you are buying a flagship device and not everyone will be able to do that. The same goes for the comparatively expensive iPhone devices, the cost also being a factor there for many.
Slightly disappointed it hasn't happened yet.
(Motorola Sapphire was my first, 1G, and I still have it somewhere. Powering it up would probably break several laws at this point. The SIM was an entire credit-card size also...)
To be fair my first smart phone was a Nokia Lumia 720, that thing did some damage to anything it hit.
Some people just seems to smash phones left and right and claim that they're just using them normally. I think it's just how some people interact with the world. Put an iPhone in a case and they aren't that brittle, I dropped mine plenty of times.
I am just hoping now that I cling to this FP3 until frame.work gets bold enough to expand into phones as well.
But I've been using devices with 4GB-6GB of memory for the past 8 years almost, and they don't feel that bad to use. My phone still has 6GB of memory and does all I want it to just fine.
I use it watch youtube videos, browse the web (probably not the fastest but fast enough), use Google Maps, take pictures, listen to music. Basic phone usage you know.
I suppose its somewhat of a privilege to use a modern phone only as a phone, but there's a certain smug peace of mind to be had - as well as security.
I'm also tempted to politely ask you to get off my lawn in the off-chance you are wondering about my demographic.
Nowadays that's plainly not true anymore because chips hardly get faster year-to-year, but also my 2012 phone lasted 5 years before software support started to get mediocre for Android 4.4 (the hardware was still fast enough and the battery you could still replace in 20 seconds). I've only ever bought new phones for software support reasons (scheduled obsolescence) or because the GPS chip broke after they stopped supporting rooting and so I couldn't get it repaired (out of warranty) without forfeiting that.
What phones do you buy that you feel they're unusably slow after only 3 years?!
it's really crazy how wasteful we're being with electronics in general. my old work laptop became unusable with windows 10, just extremely sluggish for even simple tasks. putting linux on it, its working great again (in fact writing this comment on it right now.) I wish we could put more focus on performance in the more mainstream products, but at least there's FOSS for people like me. can't wait until i can put an alpine linux on my phone someday.
Indeed. from non-replaceable batteries, to weak headphone and charging port connections, to breaking cables, to mobile phone OSes. Most of consumer-oriented hardware manufacture seems to rely on obsolescent-by-design to get consumers to spend on the same type of device, in short cycles.
Probably similar to the big pharma that may appreciate the economic benefits of a chronic diseases.
Generally, a battery swap and a factory wipe would bring most people's phones back to an acceptable performance.
My only problem is replacing an iPhone battery is now $99.
1. No wireless charging. Switching to this phone would require a big change in my household's ecosystem (sorry to use a big word for a small thing, but I can't think of a better one). We have $10 wireless charging discs all over the place, and it's nice to be able to charge whenever we set our phones down. I don't want to take a step backward.
2. The Verge's review suggests the camera is OK but not great. I've been taking Pixel photos for years, and my phone is always the one people ask to use for group shots at social events. I don't want to fuss with taking a picture ten times just to get the lighting right, and the Pixel almost always meets the bar on the first shot. It sucks that a consumption device like a phone has this one critical input feature, and that there is still so much of a computational photography gap between certain brands and the rest, but that's how it is, and it prevents me from seriously considering any of them. (This isn't unique to Pixel; I hear Apple does well in this area, too.)
3. Just a nit: why is the case 40 euros? I expect to pay a premium for the phone because of the specific compromises in the design and the resulting low volumes. But this is just another run-of-the-mill TPU case that I expect I'd have to routinely replace every couple years. I don't use screen protectors, but I have an even more allergic reaction to the 33-euro price of the one for sale. I know there are aftermarket options, but I'm already taking a risk of poor part/accessory availability in the future because it's a niche product, so I don't know whether they'll still be available when I need them years from now.
By the way, I do own a Framework laptop (11th-gen CPU), and I like it a lot. I plan to swap out the motherboard next year. Unlike the Fairphone, the Framework didn't impose cost and performance compromises right out of the gate. I support sustainability, but there's only so far I'm willing to go.
2. Totally agree with that, if camera is fundamental for you maybe not the right choice.
3. They also take compromises to have an ethical production, try to guarantee there is no exploitation as much as they could, from the extraction of mineral, manufacturing ... (they didn't do it for all, but they are advancing as far as they could, also with all existing certifications for that, so it's normal that is expensive. So our choice to value that things, if we could afford it, or not.
The energy waste is a shame, but the convenience factor is mighty high, not to mention the wear and tear on your USB-C port is non-existent. Maybe one point for less USB cable waste and tossing perfectly good phones just because their USB ports are damaged?
The percentage value looks bad but how much is that in absolute terms? Using the figures from the article, wireless charging uses 6.75 Wh more per full charge. Assuming you charge that much every day, that's 2.46 kWh per year, or 42 cents at average US electricity prices[1]. I think that's a price worth paying for the convenience.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
Maybe it is negligible, but I suspect that in the grand scheme of things, the whole "fair trade" thing is negligible too, it didn't stop the company from building on that. At least, it sends a good message.
Electricity can be solar, meaning that it could be close enough to zero environmental impact - think 20 years from now when we’ve got our crap together when it comes to sustainable energy..
Edit: a point below comments on increased battery wear which I fully agree with.
Wear on the phone side of the port should be considered too.
As for wear on the phone side, the good thing of having a Fairphone is that it is easily replaceable. But USB-C ports are also designed to be more robust than the cable. So unless there is a defect, it should last the life of the phone.
How on earth does someone get through one a year? Are you using it as a rope? Copper isn't cheap but should last decades, not one lousy year.
Apple cables are notoriously fragile, though.
One giant caveat though: wireless charging could wear out the battery faster due to the heat generated. But fast charging over cable is also bad for the battery, and that’s becoming increasingly common. At least wireless is always slow charging
Sure, but compared to everything else we use, smartphones use almost no energy. The one I'm typing this on has a battery capacity of 12 wh; if you have a resistive electric water heater, standing in a hot shower during the winter for an extra second would offset half of that.
My phone's battery is 4385 mAh @3.7V, or 0.016 kWh, and my power costs $0.1252/kWh, or about $0.002 per phone charge. Based on some super surface-level estimates from googling, a typical shower is about 2 gallon/min, and the cost to heat water is about $0.01-0.02 per gallon, meaning for me it's actually about 4 seconds of hot water per phone charge.
The concern about wireless inefficiency is very well-placed, however, in the case of electric cars. EVs will become an enormous consumer of electricity in the near future, so small changes now can have a big cumulative effect. "Charge your car as conveniently as your phone" would be an effective marketing tagline, so to that extent I agree that phones set a bad example for needless energy consumption in the name of convenience.
(edit: oops, bunch of other commenters made the same point while I was writing mine)
I don't think so. For one, with EVs you are paying pretty directly for the charge and nearly 50% extra for the hassle of not plugging in the cable seems excessive. For a charging station it would probably be more profitable to hire someone to plug your car in instead of going wireless, even disregarding the setup cost.
But, more importantly, fast wireless charging generates heat. This is fine for the miniscule amount of energy in phones, but would probably pose a serious problem with the wattage involved in changing EVs. We're currently at the point of having charging cables with integrated cooling, the inefficiency of wireless would likely either cook the car or limit the speed too much to be viable ("charge your car as conveniently as your phone, in a meager three days!").
Lots of sibling replies pointing out that the absolute energy loss is negligible and reasonable price for the convenience.
That’s fine.
But there’s a bigger point. This convenience is being used as a justification for sticking with big brand phones. Which maybe tips the balance on the reasonableness, and, more broadly, raises the general issue of how much buying for convenience is a slippery slope. Maybe just charge with a cable?
TBH some wired chargers are only 60 percent efficient in converting AC to DC. Then you'll also have energy losses inside the phone converting 5vdc to 3.7vdc for the lithium battery.
But, what? this is ~7 watts per charge completely full charge?
One could do the following and offset those 7 watts with a lot more to spare:
Add another layer of insulation.
Add a heat pump.
Add solar panels to your roof.
Stop mining Bitcoin.
Conversely, the rather slow charge rate of wireless helps extend battery life quite a lot. This is why I never use fast charging, avoid wired charging in general, and limit my battery to 85% max charge. It's been three or four years and my battery is still at ~80% health.
Which is worse, wasting a small amount of power or trashing your phone's battery in a year or two? One has significantly higher monetary and environmental costs.
Besides all that, wired charging is not nearly as efficient as you think. The charge circuitry in your phone is optimistically 80-90%. The wall adapter can be anywhere from 50 to 90%, and scales pretty closely to how much you paid for it. Efficiency also goes down with faster charge rates.
I design switching converters and lithium charge circuits for my job. They're pretty great, but not nearly as good as you'd think.
I don't know about other Android phones, but Google's Pixel line of phones will do a slow charge overnight and time the top off to be in line with your morning alarm. So, my thought is that effort is being made here to extend battery life by specifically not fast charging overnight.
Wireless charging isn't a silver bullet either. It generates tons of waste heat, which is also bad for batteries. I'm also not sure why you're so against wired charging, especially since you have to go out of your way and pay a premium for fast charge capable chargers. If you buy a bog standard 5W/10W charger, you're not fast charging. If you plug your phone into your computer, you're likely getting slow charging (0.5A to 1A).
I use an extremely old wireless charging stand that doesn't even hit 500mA. It gets warm, but not hot. It takes all damn night to charge which suits me just fine.
That said, I agree with you, which is why I've explicitly disabled fast wireless charging. The heat is almost as bad as excessive charge current. Though both heat and excessive current together is much worse than either individually. Which is exactly what you get with super fast charging modes, and why I disable those modes.
Generally, phones ship with at least a 20W charger these days. It's fine, probably.
Really my whole deal here is that my phone has a non-replacable battery. Paying someone to crack it open and replace the battery would cost a lot more than I'm willing to pay. My goal is to preserve the battery for as long as I can so I don't have to trash the whole phone.
Ultimately, this is a decision made for myself based on my own professional experience with lithium batteries and associated electronics. I definitely wouldn't recommend everyone do everything I'm doing; it is a bit excessive. But that's just how I like to do things.
If you're on the road and using your laptop's USB-C charger to charge your phone then it'll easily supply enough power for the fastest charge mode of any phone.
I bought a Huawei P30 Pro in early 2019, never took care of preserving the battery, always used fast charging (which is very fast in that phone, 40 W). 4 years later, the battery is still going strong (now the phone belongs to my wife).
On the other hand, I bought a Pixel 6 Pro in early 2021. From the beginning, I saw that the battery barely lasted a day of heavy usage, so I was more careful (trying to never get below 20%, deactivating 5G, etc.), plus the phone charges slower (around 20 W, I think) and has built-in charge planning to charge slower overnight. Even with all that, two years later, the battery is absolute crap. If I'm going to use the phone frequently (e.g. when travelling) I need an external battery to last though the day.
The costs of wireless are on top of all of the costs of wired. You're not getting away from battery management just because you're using the air as a very inefficient cable.
That's also the main reason I'm not interested in wireless charging. A wire works fine, and it seems pretty obvious to me that wireless can never be as efficient. But I never had exact support for this belief, so thank you for that.
> Totally agree with that, if camera is fundamental for you maybe not the right choice.
With their modular approach, it would be nice if you could buy a better camera for it. I know that suggestion has been around since Fairphone 2, so I guess there must be a good reason why they're not doing that.
But if Fairphone was popular enough, I bet there would be a massive aftermarket for such upgrades.
On the other hand, it seems that wireless charging is also the reason why many modern phones have these stupidly fragile glass backs. So your whole phone gets more vulnerable.
Do you use battery saver mode? I actually try not to fully charge my phone, but keep it between 30%-70%, which puts less strain on it, and battery saver kicks on at 50%.
The only thing that make it drain faster is if I use a lot the GPS but that is usually when I am travelling in a vehicule and in those rare cases it is plugged and charging while operating.
I think you have a social media addiction issue if you have to charge your phone several times a day.
If the average social gathering is more than two people, this is already a minority use case.
If the average is even just 10 that's only at most 10% of cell phone users like you.
In short, I believe you've just written the first formal proof of obscurantism on HN. :)
Not to mention all the previous generations of phones that had it.
Oh well.
I'm shocked we have come to this as a society. If you don't accept any compromises, just admit that you don't really care and move on.
2. Do you purchase a cell phone in 2023 with "Camera quality" in mind? Not trying to be rude, I'm actively sampling this query. I can't understand this and haven't since modern smart phones proliferated. No matter the phone, set it to raw, take photo ,edit in post. Comes out leagues better than any ios, pixel etc photo. and I don't know who is taking so many photos and comparing them to care.
3. The accessory case is a criticism is a bit more valid but come on. THis phone is losing money on every sale. If they sell one of these cases for every phone, they MAY come out ahead because as you said, the cases are cheap junk. Don't buy the case if this is a problem. This last years, apple switched from leather cases to "vegan leather". Same cost, made in china. More than the cost of this fair phone case.
I feel like if you own a framework, you should understand that the criticisms you listed are.....not criticisms and are in fact features or obvious requirements for a loss-leading edge case device. There is no 100 percent, perfect, sustainable mobile device like there is for workstations, because the walled garden of mobile devices is unfortunatley just more rigidly architectured.
The whole idea of smartphone cameras is that nobody is editing RAWs. I have issues with the GP comment but wanting a high quality camera is not one of them. Taking decent-to-great smartphone photos, whether inane or artistic, is a staple of modern life. (Although it sounds more like a status thing in their case, like they don't want someone else in their social group to be the go-to photographer? Maybe it was just not worded clearly.)w
People preferring this phone's photos is just evidence that it actually takes better snapshots, rather than me being biased about my own tech choices. Wrangling a bunch of parents and children for a photo is hard enough. I like knowing that the camera won't be yet another reason why we need to wrangle everyone twice rather than just once.
(Fully agreed on the RAW thing. Photography for me isn't a hobby; it's just a way for the family to remember what everyone looked like last Thanksgiving, preferably not with someone's face silhouetted by poor lighting.)
I.e. Iphone 15 surely not. But iphone 5 for sure yes. Where is the cutoff?
I’m choosing iphones because they’re recognizable and have a predictable release schedule. Let’s disregard ios vs android angle if possible.
I just bought a new phone. I didn't feel good about my fairphone experience.
For what it's worth, I don't know of any systemic problems / higher than usual error rates with the Fairphone 3 main board. You got unlucky.
Consider giving them another shot sometime!
And their support tells you to pretty much f-off without are purchase receipt, even if you want to buy the part. It's garbage.
my iPhone 4 battery went up in smoke after owning it for 1.5 years.
my iPhone 6 plus developed touch disease after 2 years, the replacement developed touch disease after a week, and the second replacement began exhibiting mild symptoms after a couple months, the nand failed after another 2 years. (applecare replacements mind you.) plus I wasn't a huge fan of apple trying to sweep the issue under the rug until it gained nationwide attention.
I think you mean a trade off.
Oh, actually, I guess I do know why an opaque part of a thousand dollar phone is made out of incredibly fragile glass, but I’ve made it two years without cutting myself too terribly badly and I’m not planning on replacing it while it still works.
(Obviously, the front glass is broken too but that’s utterly unremarkable for an apple product).
That's parent's point, don't use glass panels on the back of a phone.
I put half of the blame on reviewers promoting the idea that glass is "premium" and letting phone makers get away with this design choice.
Apple largely have the competence and the marketing power to make everyone believe that their premium plastic is amazing. In fact, they managed to make us believe that for glass which must be one of the cheapest materials on earth to produce.
> You tossed it onto a tile floor
You seem to have intentionally omitted some pretty important information there.
Which doesn't surprise me. I've dropped case-less phones on concrete and asphalt many times with only minor scratching to the frame. But I've also seen people drop phones onto decent-pile carpets and break their screens. It's hard to predict what will happen.
to get serious for a moment though, id like to go against the anti-glass grain by pointing out that supposedly, successive generations of Corning Gorilla Glass get stronger by some multiple each time, yet we see phone screens smashing with the same regularity because manufacturers are just using thinner panes each time (probably chasing thinner phones more so than some kind of planned obsolescence conspiracy, although both explanations are credible). so we end up with a tradeoff between thickness, durability and glass backs, but that beats having to rule out durable phones with glass backs entirely from being able to exist
2 years later, she broke back and screen. Mine while all scratched up is still intact. Went underwater at least 5 times. Number of falls on concrete, tiles, etc.
The options are basically just plastic or glass. At least with the current phones it's now possible to replace this glass if it breaks.
Really nothing is forbidding them to release nice plastic phones.
The only reason they won’t is that they want this shiny aspect in their App Store because the consumer will hide this under a mandatory case if they intend to keep it for years.
Well It’s a shame thinking of all those nice things we could have if we actually decided to break corporate monopolies. But now we are stuck between stupid glass phones without default applications and Google spy phones.
Of course I don't have a wireless charger but hey, progress.
I'd rather have a sturdy phone that doesn't require a separate case. In fact, the replaceable body of my old Fairphone 2 is a much better idea.
However, I do want to point out that when such unfortunate things happen, perhaps the remaining parts that still works could be helpful to other fairphone users?
Another friend got rid of her FP2 this spring in favor of a FP4, but only because some apps she uses got really unusable. Otherwise she would've stayed.
IMO it's a fairly good platform and I'm looking forward to how it evolves in the future. Hopefully they will introduce a smaller phone at one point.
It's probably not as suitable for phones what with changes to antenna requirements and such though.
That is the case in general with fairphone, if you just want a cheap phone you can buy an iPhone.
Out of context, this sounds so wrong.
I think batteries are the main consumable of a phone. It seems to me there should be an after-market of smaller batteries, and a set of universal power adapters (like you get with power supplies), and shims to fit it securely within the phone.
But I haven't seen this, so either people prefer to upgrade (demand) or manufacturers successfully made it too hard (supply).
That said, one reason for the Fairphone price is the "fair to the people labouring for the parts of the phone" part. I'm unhappy with the camera quality, but honestly knowing that the premium I pay means fairer working conditions is for me an important element. I prefer to pay the small social enterprise establishing a new kind of supply chain and developing a modular phone, rather than the Samsung CEOs and stockholders.
I was hoping for more upgrades to be available over time, but that was never the case. Instead, two new models appeared with a year interval and the 4 didn't even get any upgrades. Worse even, the 3.5mm jack was removed, following the trend of getting customers to buy headphones with a limited life time due to their battery. The promise of being the responsible choice for the planet is fading away.
I also faced issues when it came to repairing my device. After only 3 months the USB-C port died, impossible to charge it and once out of battery, I couldn't get my data from it. I contacted the support and they offered me two solutions: I send in the phone, it will get fixed but wiped clean or I order the part online and they reimburse me (they couldn't just send it from the repair center...). I chose the latter as I didn't want to loose my data and felt it was the more ecologically responsible choice, especially since the phone is so repairable. Well, the part was not available on their store, checked every retailer in Europe and third party parts don't exist. I was stuck with a brick for 4 months. The irony is that if I had an iPhone or Galaxy, I could get it fixed the same day at the phone repair shop around the corner...
I appreciate all the efforts Fairphone put in setting up more responsible supply chains. But in my opinion they still failed on their sustainability promise. The devices aren't well supported, it's difficult to repair them and they quickly fall behind due to the lack of upgrades (that also goes with the main board not being replaceable). New devices follow the disastrous trends of other brands with a new model each year and removing the headphone jack. Sure, they are a business and need to make money, but not by going against their own values.
Anyone with experience of having a fairphone for multiple years?
Even with all the cloud-leeching and I presume data mining, if I crushed my phone into dust today, there's absolutely no way even if I get exactly the same model (which I can't) to get it to restore back to exactly how it was.
At this point I've been considering prodding Ansible and ADB to see if it can handle the config setup part, but given how locked down phones actually are I doubt it's viable.
I wish we had a choice; I'd happily give up some security for an experience closer to my Linux laptop. And don't even get me started on my iPhone and filesystem access there (1).
1: 99% of iOS music players don't expose their music library as a folder in Files; one of the only ones that does is, funnily enough, a cross-platform Android-iOS-Windows app, Neutron Music Player². With Neutron, I can open a-shell³ and 'yt-dlp' a playlist from YouTube or Bandcamp to a new folder in my Neutron music folder - some obscure (esp. foreign) albums and soundtracks aren't available to buy where I am.
I think performance might be what limits its actual useful life. I have had to replace phones more for being slow (since software is always eating up more and more performance) than for actual physical failures.
And you would even prefer Lineage OS? Isn't that still more or less mandating userdebug builds and entirely open?
Disclaimer: I work for Fairphone.
So in regards to security let me first refer to this thread: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/7208-8y-security-updates-on...
And it might sound unfair to compare the fairphone to a pixel device or a pixel device with grapheneos but the practical reality is that if this is going to be my one phone, than it will be the hub for all my private conversations, my bank forces me to use an app based authentication so basically my entire finances are on that device, e-mails, including those with doctors, etc.
It has to be secure and it has to up to date. And I am aware that my Pixel 3a currently isn't but I'm literally between buying the fairphone or the pixel 8. And I really don't want glued in batteries.
Now, let's see what the current state is for the fairphone 4: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/440585822094...
Release date: 3rd Nov 2023 Security Patch Level: 5th October 2023
According to the Android Security Bulletin there are two more bulletins out right now: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2023-11-01
In November and December each there is at least one Critical System CVE, with google noting:
> Note: There are indications that the following may be under limited, targeted exploitation. > CVE-2023-33063 > CVE-2023-33107 > CVE-2023-33106
So...Those aren't patched right now on the fairphone 4, are they? Now I'm not arguing most other companies are doing better, but that doesn't make it a good situation.
> And you would even prefer Lineage OS? Isn't that still more or less mandating userdebug builds and entirely open?
As far as lineage is concerned, i'll be waiting for an official release to even be there before evaluating the security but I am aware of the userdebug issue.
Though let me say that "abhorrent" is propably not the best adjective to describe it here. Unsatisfying would be fairer. As for the rest of the software... I just have to look at the forums dude...
Back when I was still working on security updates, this took up so much resources that we struggled to work on anything else (bug fixes, major upgrades, etc.). It is unfortunately a compromise that we currently have to make with our limited resources.
Still, we are planning to release these regular security updates for 10 years and we have a track record of sticking to such plans. In my opinion, that is much better than having monthly updates for a couple of years. (Btw: outside of flagships, many models don't get monthly updates anyway and not even for long.)
Google is planning 7 years of Security Support for their Pixel 8...which really doesn't help much when the battery is glued in...
Don't get me wrong, I definitely appreciate what they're doing. It's just we do so much with our smartphones these days, it's hard not to be paranoid about security issues or hacks. I really want to say goodbye to Apple though.
But you are right, and the government has done so to some degree, but they did it badly and I believe it also affected refurbished phones, making a phone pay for its production emissions over and over
I'd like to day dream that a modern day steve jobs somewhere is already working on this.
New tech like smartphone gets plateued by money makers. Why innovate when you can play dirty with planned obsolecense, selling data, recycling/polishing turd and playing marketing games and make profit on the cheap. R&D ain't free.
I dislike smarphones as they are but the idea of computing using a handheld screen as thin as window glass and being able to transfer my view to bigger screens/peripherals flawlessly is appealing. The OS could be Linux, windows, macos, android, ios doesn't matter because it isn't this mobile optimized walled garden bs but a full fledged controllable computer running the same apps but it scales/adjust the UI based on display size. You'd be using a handheld display as you are walking to work/office, tap and move it to a 15" display withy keyboard/cam and go to a meeting or start a movie on a projector by tapping the right spot again.
Seriously: who needs a headphone jack anymore?
I hate the waste generated from having battery powered headphones, and generally dislike the batterification of so many products these days. Wires can be messy but they are usually replaceable and I don't have to worry about properly disposing of them as much as I would for an item with a LiON battery.
IIRC the xperia phones are just as water/dustproof as the pixels/iphones so not really sure why we had to give up the port other than for maybe a mm of thinness and a reason to sell a new series of audio devices to consumers.
It's one of the things I feel like iPhone does right supporting most frequencies even for US models. The new mandatory eSIM on it makes it a no-go for me though when I travel to Europe and want to buy a SIM card at the airport/corner store.
I ended up going with the pixel 4, which was the newest phone I could fine that at least didn't have a camera cutout.
I have since discovered that in android developer options, you can choose to give up the screen real estate around teh cutout to effectively hide it. Given this, in the future, I'll look for phones that have a jack, worrying less about the cutout.
If the Fairphone ever comes to the US with full support, I would strongly consider it, even though I _really_ want a headphone jack. I think that for a fully repairable phone, I might be willing to trade.
It appears like my ideal phone is probably never going to exist again, so I'm going to have to compromise on something.
I'd say being able to live without a smartphone is only in third-world countries at this point, and less and less even there. In Argentina, everything from government services to booking a hair salon appointment to viewing restaurant menus is done via Whatsapp and QR codes, for example.
I very much doubt you can't pay parking without a smartphone.
I've also been to random parking lots in the middle of nowhere with a cardboard sign saying "Venmo $5/hour at X".
Even just the power out for a few days after a storm and you’re done during that time. I can think of additional failure modes.
More importantly, even if I didn't need one I would still want one. A headphone jack is a universal connection for audio, Bluetooth is not. And wired headphones are strictly superior to wireless headphones, as they don't need to be charged and can't be lost as easily.
Also, there are wired usb-c headphones, my partner is using one.
But for car you can consider modern cassette adapter with Bluetooth and built-in mp3 flash player.
Cursory browsing... There's Infinix (serves mostly Africa and Asia) and Tecno (popular in India) and a few other brands that are mainly released in Asia. Beyond that, can you really count all 14 "Redmi" as separate phones when some only differentiate "5G" or "not 5G"? Same with various "Fan" or "VIP" editions, which typically tweak one or two peripherals?
Are you really in the market for vivo, Realme, TCL, Oukitel? Or a specialist/rugged brand like Ulefone or Doogee?
Ironically, the most popular handset made outside of China for a worldwide market is the Galaxy A24, which has a horrendous single on-board speaker. So much for audiophilia! (In fairness, as soon as you restrict Chinese and Hong Kong headsets, you're down to just a few brands. Weird tangent, it's nice to see Nokia putting out spec-competitive mid-market Android phones. I might get one next because Asus and Sony are sticking with two OS upgrades.)
Then I fell into a rabbit hole and plotted the GSM Arena prices of phones with jacks and without: https://gitlab.com/PennRobotics/permalink/-/raw/main/handset...
From that, I can fathom that headphone jacks are largely bullshit features tacked on to devkit-derived bargain bin phones, which creates a huge peak in jacked sub-$150 units. From $300 up, where you expect good peripheral selection and a normal Android experience, it's clear that headphone jacks are in the minority.
I was in the same boat: gotta have headphone jack. The best player here was LG. Keyword: was. Now I'm convinced that until phone makers actually prioritize wired audio, the better path forward (and which won't be long-term obsolete) is picking the smartphone with the best overall specs/support plus a USB splitter and whichever grade of USB DAC you prefer to drive your headphones. It's easier for the manufacturer to waterproof their case and gives more room for battery, etc. This also lets you quickly transfer your preferred hardware to a tablet/laptop/desktop, which seems like a pain unless you're in love with something high-impedance like HD600, ATH-R70, DT990, etc.
Anyone who has good wired headphones. Or issues with Bluetooth headset. Or need to have wired audio output together with wired charging.
I hope more phones will be available with audio jack.
People born before the year 2005 who don't throw away perfectly working electronics when a new shiny alternative comes around the corner.
Anyone who wants to listen to music with headphones and doesn't want to be tracked via bluetooth. Bluetooth tracking beacons are used extensively and can log your location within a foot of where the beacon is placed or from as far as 20 miles away.
Bluetooth also increases your security risk. There have already been several exploits with bluetooth over the years.
* Pairing UX is unreliable and has corner cases that even Apple hasn't solved and they're probably the best case. 1/8" is predictable and reliable (and doesn't require extra thought / kit to make sure you can power at the same time).
* Battery life isn't an issue for wired headphones.
* Latency is unacceptable for some use cases (mostly specialized audio), and sometimes audio quality is degraded too.
I like wireless audio, (especially for workout listening) but I miss the headphone jack on my original iphone 5 SE at least once a week.
How much of a chance that you'd find some other detail that's not ok if it had a jack?
Edit: also https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/b7vjo9/anything_mor...
What about jogging? Not a good example either?
If that's the case in the US, I've learned something new. Generally, based on comments, there seem to be fewer consumer protection laws over there.
I do have another one (from my spouse's phone), but my current phone doesn't need an adapter, because it has a 3.5mm jack.
It flies in the face of claiming to care for repairability and sustainability. Wireless earbuds (maybe including the ones they sell) I by and large dont have replaceable batteries. That isnt sustainable.
If my USBC jack breaks from wear and tear being in my pocket with a cable attached to them, I no longer have a working phone and need to buy a part to fix it, if the headphone jack breaks, I can live without headphones and still have a functional phone. If the selling point is sustainability, they miss the mark by creating extraneous rubbish, even if its not direct
2. USB-C adapters are one extra thing to carry around and easy to lose or forget, unless you just never unplug it, which is cumbersome
3. Many people who were born before the year 2005 (me included) have wired headphones that they prefer and have used for years that still work fine and have the sound quality and comfort that fit our needs.
4. Outside of the smart phone world, 3.5mm audio jacks are still very common and not obsolete
5. Bluetooth is cumbersome on many phones and headphones, introduces latency, and affects audio quality
I wouldn't buy a phone just because it had a headphone jack, but it's definitely a draw for me when a phone does (+ a removable battery or expandable storage, but HN is probably gonna tell me those things are obsolete as well).
2. connect it to the end of your headphones and leave it there
3. do the above
4. buy a good adapter
5. don't use bluetooth and buy an adapter
e: I was a little flippant. Point being: Time has marched on, TVs don't have RCA jacks either. You are an enthusiast and that's fine, I am too, but everyone else has moved on to bluetooth and wifi-enabled speakers and TVs. I'm happy to simply have the option, it's not like half-decent dongles are particularly expensive.
2. connect it to the end of my headphones and leave it there
3. remove it so I can connect same headphones to laptop
4. lose adapter
repeat
Doesn't your laptop have USB ports?
"Not enough people complained" is a terrible metric. Companies do anti-consumer nonsense all the time and there is no effective way for the customer to "vote with their wallets" when near enough everyone converges on the same solution.
And why did Apple do it? Don't overthink it -- it is more profitable for Apple not to put headphone jacks in their phones because then they get to sell expensive AirPods. That's it, that's the reason. There have to be millions of super frustrated iPhone users like me out there that are annoyed every single time they have to use a stupid fucking Lightning dongle just to listen to stuff with decent headphones, but Android is not an option for me and the iPhone 7 is too old to be viable, so I just clench my fists in my pockets every time I think about my garbage iPhone (and sometimes whine about it on the internet.)
Removing the headphone jack was bad, is bad, and will forever be bad. Just bring it back. Sell it in the Pro Max as a super audiophile high end DAC thing, I'll pay the $2000 or whatever you want, I don't care, just put the fucking jack back in.
You don't have to overthink, you just need to think. Why permanently graft a part to a highly space optimized device when it isn't even being used most of the time?
I got over it, you should too. It helps to try to put off the onset of grumpy old man syndrome as long as possible.
I mean, that's a valid way to view it, but I doubt it was an engineering decision first and foremost. Hanlon's razor applies: 1) Apple makes a ton of money from selling AirPods and 2) this decision was made during the Jony Ive era of "remove literally everything that is not strictly necessary just because fewer ports is more aesthetically pleasing". Under these conditions, of course they would remove the headphone jack. It's Apple doing Apple shit.
But: people used the same arguments -- less ports saves space, who needs it, etc -- to argue that the HDMI port, MagSafe, and decent keyboards would never come back. But they did, in MacBooks that were thicker than the previous generation. Sometimes you can teach old dogs new tricks.
They could have polled the market to see what it wants: release an iPhone that has a headphone jack and is slightly bigger if needed, and a slim one that doesn't have one. This will never happen, and that is my point: you or I will never know if people care, because people never had the ability to choose.
> Time has marched on, TVs don't have RCA jacks either.
Bad comparison. 3.5mm audio is still standard almost everywhere else for audio. RCA jacks are not. Your laptop, speakers, Steam Deck, monitor, and yeah probably your TV still have an audio jack.
> You are an enthusiast and that's fine, I am too, but everyone else has moved on to bluetooth and wifi-enabled speakers and TVs. I'm happy to simply have the option, it's not like half-decent dongles are particularly expensive.
I'm not an enthusiast; I, like probably 90% of the US population, have wired 3.5mm headphones in my home that I like to use with my electronics. It's bonkers to me that people are calling wired headphones obsolete; this makes me think that they either throw away all of their electronics when something new comes out, or are under eighteen years old and have never owned a pair.
You can list things as much as you want, but the market shows that almost noone puts their money where their mouth is once a phone with a jack is launched.
This likely has more to do with the fact that the only phones that have headphone jacks are low-end "cheap" phones with worse specs everywhere else. If the new Galaxy came out with a headphone jeack, I don't think their sales would suddenly tank.
It can be, but your operating system needs to support it.
Support for audio delay compensation is pretty good on macOS. No idea about other OSes, though.
Personally, I've never met anyone who had a need for reading floppy disks or connecting their computer printer to their phone, but I know many people who like to listen to music with their wired headphones on the go.
It has to have a headphone jack, it has to have wireless charging, it has to have cameras as good as the iphone, it has to have an AV1 video decoder, etc.
Same problem with the Framework laptop. Everyone has a different set of obscure hard requirements.
very reasonable requirements, imho
Couldn't get a work phone with headphone jack... privately I dread the day where I need a new phone and need to probably forfeit both headphone and microsd to get something that's not seventeen inches in diameter or released more than three years ago so already out of support. Internal storage is overpriced, and I use that headphone port literally every day when falling asleep with an audio book; bluetooth buds are too thick to lay/lean on and would also get lost under the blanket and crushed overnight.
Another downside btw is that you can't charge your phone anymore at the same time. I bought a wireless charger to remedy that but the device gets super hot, thermal protection kicks in, and it starts to throttle the charging. Doesn't seem great for battery longevity. There's devices that combine power and headphone jack into USB-C, but there I couldn't find a single one where the reviews didn't say it broke after two weeks or unusable sound quality or so. I simply miss a separate headphone jack... but this will have to do. Thanks for looking up which one you've got :)
Also, bluetooth earbuds designed for sleep [2].
[1] https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/MYMC2LL/A/beats-flex-a...
[2] https://ca.soundcore.com/products/sleep-a10-a6610z21?ref=nav...
The sleep ones cost 170$ O.o
The ones you get for free with some phones, or the cheapest ones from a vending machine, are currently fine. I don't need custom specialty products... or, well, maybe I do, once a new phone without headphone jack is forced upon me in order to have a normal life where I can run the local transport company's app and other such semi-necessities...
Murena does have a note on their site[0] regarding sale of the FP5. They don't have it yet, but they may eventually.
[0]https://murena.com/america/murena-fairphone-5-availibility/
It seems clear to me that all else being equal having a twice as large screen is a major upside. So it is really just a question of when the downsides (such as price, thickness and durability) shrink enough to tip the scales in favour of folding displays.
But this is Android, at the price of an iPhone. I'd buy if it wasn't running an ad company's OS on it.
Actually, I probably don't want to know.
> Water projected by a nozzle (6.3 mm (0.25 in)) against enclosure from any direction shall have no harmful effects.
> Test duration: 1 minute per square meter for at least 3 minutes
> Water volume: 12.5 litres per minute Pressure: 30 kPa (4.4 psi) at distance of 3 meters (9.8 ft)
Also with these things you never buy at the line. You get something that's a couple of ratings higher than what you expect. That allows some margin for error and uncertainty.
That's true, but some people have more accidents than others! If you're the sort of person who drops their phone in water every couple of months then a waterproof phone ends up being a huge cost saving.
I actually killed a Nokia 6303 because the alarm went off and it vibrated off the window sill into a large pan of potatoes I'd just boiled. You just never know what is going to happen.
But the time it really got hammered was when it was pissing it down in the middle of nowhere in the UK when I was waiting for a train that would never come and I had to try and organise a taxi in an unfamiliar place. That would have killed the Fairphone 5 dead. It was soaked. Everything was soaked.
Edit: I also have a Pixel 7a which is the same.
It's not like using a squirt-bottle. Just buy the seal with the repair part, example below.
https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-x-display-assembly-ad...
The culprit is Steve Jobs' obsession with thin phones. Just thicken the phone and add some gaskets and you are good to go. People put those thin phones in thick cases anyway, so it is fine.
Ask me how I know.
I went in and got it out.
It's not really about that. It's about being able to play music from your phone in the shower. Or use it in the bathtub. Or take it on a cycling ride while it's raining. Or put it on a bar table without worrying about spilling beer on it. It makes a big difference not to have to treat it like a delicate flower.
Assuming that the average phone weighs 100g, that's 100 million tons of phones per year.
In the aggregate, it adds up a lot.
I looked into a bit. Seems like no, the overall quantity (by weight) is increasing every year. There is a tiny decrease in big CRT screens, but it's offset by the steady increases in electronics of all sorts in developing countries. Phones and other small devices do make up a smaller portion of the overall weight, but overall it's still going up year after year.
https://ewastemonitor.info/gem-2020/ has a lot of good info.
At first glance yeah, a phone has much less e-waste than a laser printer. Is this true though? Yeah, the laser printer takes up more space in a landfill. But what about everything that went into making the phone, and the waste resulting from these processes? Maybe the lithium ion battery alone is considered much worse waste than anything in the printer.
I have no idea. It would be interesting to see something that attempts to tally these things.
I replaced the battery in my iphone 6S twice. People who drop their phones a lot have to replace the screen.
This is already a reality with GNU/Linux phones. Even more, they have lifetime updates.
Basically we'll never use 5 in a 1 - 5 score, or 10 in a 1 - 10, because what if something better came along?
I've been to training seminars and done surveys about workplace issues where we've been specifically instructed to use the full scale, because clustering on e.g. 2 - 4 will result in NOTHING, it gets removed by HR/software/analysis as average and not worth dealing with, resulting in no change.
I'd still argue that it issue is in how people use the data, but it remains a problem.
Impressive
How workable is it today and how well would it work on a phone like this?
https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairpho...
Murena also sells it preinstalled: https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairpho...
I think "hardware security" of Google phones sounds nice on paper but you never know if these is some NSA chip or some other exploit build in that the Graphene OS devs never know about. I do not trust Google AT ALL and would love for them to support different Phones, because /e/ is does not sound very secure in comparison, they build on Lineage OS and they actually lowered security to widen compatibility AFAIK and I guess /e/ OS is just copying + de-googling.
What were these issues?
The developer is gone, so no need to avoid the project completely, but CalyxOS is an interesting alternative anyway.
The parent comment brought up the dev originally, but seems it's no longer an issue. Different commenter than the person you're replying to though.
The GOS team has done very thorough work to audit the supported devices, including the hardware, firmware and software components, to make sure they reach their high standards. They've made upstream contributions to AOSP, Linux and other projects with features and bug fixes to improve security and privacy of users. The project is well regarded in security circles, and I have no reason to distrust the team.
As much as I dislike Google, I wouldn't mind using their products if they respected my rights and freedoms. The GOS project ensures that more than any other modern smartphone, and I wouldn't change it for anything else.
Which means that these requirements are at least partly informed by the capabilities of Google pixel phones.
I have to say though that the timely security update thing is really a weak point of Fairphone. Yes they have years of support but they often delay updates for many months or skip major upgrades altogether.
GOS is reliant on work upstream like most products and projects are, it's why they stop supporting phones once the SoC and it's associate blob code fall out of support of the manufacturer. Fairphone doesn't do this, they keep pumping out new versions filled with unpatched vulnerabilities while pretending the software they're producing for the hardware they're supporting is up to date when it actually isn't. It's not a weak point, it borders on fraud.
That leaves backdoors created by and for Google, concern for which I suppose your comment still applies. It seems less likely to me though...
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some backdoor in the Qualcomm chip the fairphone 5 uses or the radios in other phones. Without open hardware you really can't trust anything. Not when we know we're all being constantly spied on by the state and by the corporations who design/manufacture our hardware.
The turnkey is right there, who will turn it?
Worse than that, most apps use random google stuff that they don't need, and the developers inevitably forget to check for NULL when they ask for the optional google service. At that point, the app fails with a null pointer exception at startup. Most apps fix this in a week or so, but they don't add de-googled android to the regression tests, so they end up breaking it again in a month or so.
The final straw was standing outside my car in 40F driving rain and staring at a java stack trace that was preventing the charger from turning on. At that point I pulled my work iPhone out of the glove compartment. If I didn't have it with me, I would have been stranded.
On the bright side, my Pixel 6 Pro got something like three times longer battery life than advertised until I broke down and installed the Google crap in a sandbox. At that point, battery life immediately plummeted back to advertised.
I wonder if politicians would intervene if more people realized that 66% of the battery usage of an Android phone is Google surveillance crap running in the background.
I say this as someone who's not a big fan of Google. If it's anything like iOS development, there’s a good chance it never dawned on them.
On iOS, there's a slew of things you want to check for as dev due to permissions and the like, but there's so much more we simply assume is there based on the frameworks Apple ships with the OS.
If ever there would be an option to de-Apple iOS, I wouldn't even know where to start to check for nil values, if only because Apple has significantly moved to abstract things away to make it easier on us, and they never allowed direct communication with components to begin with, everything runs through an Apple provided delegate.
The only one that didn't work was a podcast app with in-app purchases, which isn't supported.
Everything else just works.
The whole process was easy and painless.
I really appreciate the iOS support window but it's messed up that their laptops ad desktops (which can last _so long_ and be useful!) just fall out of support despite still being very capable machines.
The kicker of course is I at least updated it all to MacOS 12 to give to a friend and everything still ran extremely well. But at one point these machines will stop working for purely incidental reasons
I think you’ll be safe on ARM macs for 10 full years.
I get that there's a legit question of having 2015 MBPs lying around, but honestly just having a switch to let you install it feels legit. It's not like the hardware is changing that much over the years, and they have to have the OS support a bunch of hardware configurations anyways
They’re talking about security updates. Your definition of support seems to be “latest bells and whistles with a major release.”
Your 2015 MBP was eligible for a Safari security update released last month and a macOS security update the month before[0].
This means your 2015 MBP receives similar support as the iPhone they mentioned.
We can argue if seven years of the “latest and greatest” is sufficient for a laptop before it is relegated to just security updates, but I don’t understand the lament.
It’s a capable machine, as you said, and it still ran great. If the manufacturer gives you all that was advertised at purchase and then some and then ensures it’s safe to use while not receiving new bells and whistles, how is that a demerit that causes frustration on your end?
I was worried that Apple was going to discontinue support for my early-2015 13" MBP after their new Mac announcements in the late Oct 2023 event, so I took it to the Apple Store in Sept and had them replace the battery which had been needing service for a while.
It's stuck on macOS 12 Monterey, but got a macOS security update in Oct (possibly its last) and a Safari update just over a week ago.
The iPhone 6 is stuck on iOS 12 and has missed out on 5 major iOS versions. It launched with iOS 8, so it only got upgrade support for four versions of iOS.
I'm never going to put my brain between 2 radiation emitters. And that's just 1 reason why I'll always use cable.
It’s also going to be real easy for refurbishers to repair these, either by picking parts from other old ones or by buying replacement parts, hence even a slightly broken one may still be worth money.
22000mAh battery. Giant ridiculous 1200 lumen flashlight. Weighs more than a pound. A quoted "hundred days" of standby time. Why have replaceable batteries if your phone can go three months without recharging?