Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees | Hacker News Reader

Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees

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537 pointsardentsword247 comments

As Fairphone owner I have become somewhat sceptical of their repairability claim.

Mine fell on its side on some pebble stones. The power-button, unprotected by the case, got scratched. The button doubles as a fingerprint reader, which ceased working due to the scratch. At first, I thought "no worries, this phone is friendly to those who want to repair it."

It turns out, this part is not available for replacement. I think this is an oversight; just like the screen, it is an outward facing part, hence, bound to be damaged for some.

Then, I brought it to my local repair shop. The owner had to tell me that they cannot repair Fairphone's, and that, for him, it is one of the worst companies to deal with. They try to centralise all repairs in their own repair center. Which means sending the phone -- which I need -- away for 2 weeks; paying a fee for diagnosis, an unknown cost for repair, and the hassle of a flashed phone. I already know what's broken, I just want the part.

I feel this is a real shame, as I am fully supportive of the stated aims of the company, and I want the product to be good.

[Aside: suggestions on how to deal with a scratched fingerprint reader are most welcome. E.g. can the scatch be re-painted? The phone thinks the reader is there, but it doesn't register any touch. ]

> Then, I brought it to my local repair shop. The owner had to tell me that they cannot repair Fairphone's

I brought mine to my local repair shop as well and they were completely unwilling to even try to repair it. Then I went home and tried myself and managed by just bending back some pins. The display cable had gotten loose. Have worked fine since then.

But is that because the phone is difficult to repair or because repair shop personnel has clear instructions to not try anything on devices they haven't been trained on? Likely "trained" as in their parts supplier does not have a QR code to the YouTube instruction in the ring binder.

Chances are they refused because it's not only a niche phone but a niche phone that's particularly repairable without shop logistics.

Yeah, I tinker with hardware embarrassingly seldom and my impression was that it was very easy to work with. The screen, which was the issue, is designed to be replaced and I realized it was fixable when I was trying to figure out if I could replace it.

My impression was that they had never seen the model before and for some reason they weren't interested in trying. I think I talked to the shop owner and it wasn't at a chain store.

The actual screen had dislodged from its detachable frame so I glued it back to that. And the screen connector pins were a bit bent so I bent them back. Then it worked. Figuring out how the broken parts were supposed to fit together were a little bit finicky I suppose. If I hadn't launched it into a concrete wall it would've been easier to figure out.

Honestly, with a phone as easy to repair as Fairphone I don't really care that repair shops won't repair them. All I need to to be able to order a part.

Not certain which type of sensor it uses, but in any case painting it wouldn't fix it. The problem with a scratch is now it will register that as a fingerprint ridge, but it is in a fixed location, so theoretically if you re-register your finger on the scanner and always position your finger in *exactly* the same space it would still work, but as soon as your finger moves slightly, the scratches position relative to your fingerprint changes, thus changing the fingerprint that is read. You would have to fill the scratch with the same material that it is coated with, provided the scratch is just in the coating, and it isn't say a capacitive type which you've scratched part of that capacitive coating. Thus for a home-repair likely out of luck I'd think.

I could be wrong, any hardware guys please feel free to chime in over me.

Note: slightly simplified explanation but mostly holds for the three common types of sensors.

You could make an attempts using a scratch remover, which are available for scratched screens. There is some chance that it gets you there, though it depends on too many unknown variables to know for sure.

This. If it has the same index of refraction as the screen, it may fill in the damage and make it invisible. It might help to know if the screen is acrylic or glass to choose the right one. The poster has nothing to lose, sounds like.

The fingerprint reader is not embedded in the screen, but in the power button on the side of the device.

What about sanding it down, then..? This way it won't be a ridge anymore

> I brought it to my local repair shop. The owner had to tell me that they cannot repair Fairphone's, and that, for him, it is one of the worst companies to deal with.

This sounds like an odd & inconsistent story (from the repair shop guy - I'm not doubting your side of this, only his). Why would he need to be dealing directly with the company for any reason other than to purchase replaceable modules which are consumer-available & what would they be giving him trouble with specifically? Unless he's sending all his phones for repair back to the OEMs, but I'm sure that's not the case.

I wouldn't be surprised if some repair shops simply have a "mainstream brands only" blanket policy & don't consider other brands worth the time it takes to read about.

Otherwise you're right that the fingerprint module is specifically a bit of an achilles heel in their repairability. Even leaving aside the fingerprint reader isn't a separate component, it's also unclear to my why they made the decision not to sell the core module for standalone replacement (even if it ended up being quite expensive).

Sadly had a very similar experience about the screen of my FP4, which seems to have a serial fault of producing random inputs whenever it so pleases [1]. Knowing I had bought a phone with great self-service claims, I was confident they could just send me a replacement screen and I could swap it myself. But no, they insisted that I had to send it in, claiming that this would be better for the environment.

I do want to support Fairphone's mission and wish I could whole-heartedly recommend it to friends and family. But this experience and the many software issues have led me to recommend other options instead.

1. https://forum.fairphone.com/t/ghost-inputs-on-fp4/82837

You can definitely buy the replacement screen for the FP4 as it's on their online shop. If you were going for repair under warranty it does seem odd not to just send you the part if you're happy installing it.

This is the problem with all of those „gadget but repairable” companies. It sounds great on paper, but the low adoption rate means that parts are hard to come by, the products get discontinued all the time, and your local electronics repair guy has never seen one of those before.

I also had an issue with the power button on my FP4, sadly it became stuck _on_ so the phone just bootlooped and was immediately unusable.

I ended up posting it for repair, over Christmas, which did take about 2 weeks but it was fully covered by the warranty.

I've successfully replaced the USB port after accidentally filling it with sand once, and that was trivial apart from UPS losing the package the first time. I really do appreciate the repairability, even if it could be better.

You're right that I maybe phrased it too harsh, the repairability _is_ a great feature. And of course, they do more by checking supply chains for some of the parts. The thing is, if your part is not available, you're stuck with their repair service. It surprises me they don't offer all parts.

Great though, that they resolved yours within the scheduled time!

Agreed having _every_ part replaceable would be great. Then I could have Theseus's phone in several years time :-)

At least it was the finger print scanner and not your finger that needs replacing. Biometrics as an EXTRA layer of security, on SHARED devices, makes sense. As a convenient replacement for passwords, on a personal device, net negative.

This is completely out of touch with the reality of the average user. The main causes of account theft continue to be phishing and data breaches which are easily exploited because most people reuse their passwords and will never stop doing so to use a password manager. Biometric passkeys are probably the only viable way to improve the situation.

I'm sure biometrics can be imitated quite easily with stolen data.

Really? What about phone theft? If someone sticks you up and knows all it takes is your finger to unlock the phone, I would think they would be more tempted to do so, as it takes more or less the same level of coercion as taking the phone. And it's easier than fumbling around with a password... therein is the double edged sword...

Why couldn’t they force you to reveal your password?

Demanding a password introduces more error and more room for evasion than a finger, which as I said is about the same as getting the phone in the first place. You are right that in some, maybe even most cases, it may not make a difference. But when time is of the essence, additional obstacles are often simply avoided.

You also might ask who is sticking you up. For example, I believe there is fourth amendment literature re government officials that have gotten away with using an arrested persons biometrics to unlock a phone, in a manner in which compelling the release of a password would be illegal. Put another way, I can simply grab your finger or put your phone in front of your face, whereas beating you until you surrender your password is a lot harder to accomplish without creating additional consequences.

Still depends on your threat model. Not everyone lives in a place where stick-ups and random arrests are so common place that you want to inconvenience yourself 99.999% of the happy flow.

Indeed, good point. Proper threat modeling is everything.

This also explains my original reply to the ancestor comment. As I see it, most people's personal threat model essentially already accounts for data breaches to the point that they are almost irrelevant. We hear about them all the time. More and more people are learning about credit freezes or 2fa or just getting these services baked into things they already use (more banks offer free credit monitoring, 2fa is increasingly a standard). It seems like we are in a place where data breaches just become essentially background noise to the average user.

In my view then, I would personally factor in physical theft as a higher threat than "phishing and data breaches". Even if low probability to begin with.

There is also the objective question of which occurs more or incurs more damages to individuals, the answer to which I do not know. I know companies often spend a lot of money to fix problems or deal with lawsuits, but individuals don't really get compensated by that the way they would if someone who ripped your phone away from you was tackled to the ground and your property got returned. For example.

As you say though, the threat model is everything.

Please explain how my life has been made worse in any concrete way since the introduction of FaceID.

You've been trained to think it's a viable alternative to passwords. It's seems you even think it's "better". Little children can figure out how to bypass it on their own, and they don't even need to be especially clever. Hopefully you never have to learn first-hand the other ways it can make an already bad situation even worse.

So far, my thumb has been worse of now that I'm back to the pattern swipe unlock.

I have a friend who bought a fair phone with a view to being able to replace its modular parts. Four years later and the model had been discontinued, so he had to buy a new Fairphone.

Would it more economical and sustainable to buy a second hand / reconditioned feature phone from Samsung?

I bought a Fairphone 3, released in 2019.

The charging port wore out. I bought another one in 2023. They still sell that part today. https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/fairphone-3-bottom-module-37

In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015. First-party parts 10 years later, what a concept! https://shop.fairphone.com/spare-parts

I don't know your friend's scenario, but this was mine.

It's not an either-or, like "either buy first-party parts for a Fairphone OR buy a second-hand Samsung". You can buy a second-hand Fairphone too. It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.

I bought a second hand Fairphone, and I'm very happy with it, except that my wife, a colleague of mine, and some friends of ours now also gave Fairphones, so when one buzzes we all instinctively check our pockets because they all sound the same...

I also bought headphones from the same company, and while they're probably not the best for audio quality, it was great being able to repair them when the headband broke. Generally, I'm a very happy Fairphone customer.

> when one buzzes we all instinctively check our pockets because they all sound the same

Isn't that the same for every brand? I have a friend who worked in cybersecurity in a certain phone company and was getting very stressed whenever my phone, which happened to be from the same brand, was ringing :D

I guess one can change the default sound, isn't that the case with fairphones?

I have a Samsung Moto, and it has a very default ringtone, not really a tone since it says "Hello, Moto" which is embarrassing but I haven't made the effort to switch tones, at any rate while I will be confused if someone in proximity to me gets a call on their Moto, my experience they don't have to be very far from me before I realize instinctively, that sound is far enough away it can't be my phone, although it irritates me nonetheless.

And I've been seated eating with people who had the same phones and I realized no, it must be their phone (although I feel a strong urge to check), because my ears are able to determine direction of a sound.

I'm also old and keep getting told I'm going deaf, so my question is, are people really not able to tell it's not their phone or are they just not thinking it through before checking.

Samsung Moto? Two different companies with very different phones. I'm surprised that such a mutant exists. Reads to me Car (with square wheels).

Moto is the only big brand I ever consider for a phone, while Samsung has never been as much as a consideration. Moto has had, which is changing, a bit of freedom - enough to tweak it into resembling a pure android experience. Samsung is incorrigibly infested - and if they ever start giving phones to prisoners, they'll be Samsung.

you're right, for some reason I had my son's Samsung Galaxy Tab in mind, and I made the mutant.

My experience with the latest Moto I have is the AI assistant is an anti-pattern but the phone is nearly unusable for a lot of things without it.

Just in case you wondered, and even if you didn't,

I admire ignorance of smartphones and consider such as virtue. I obtained my first in 2018 after years of resistance. But driving a semi and not being the best with maps and logistics, I finally capitulated.

And back then, although cyanogenmod was gone, they weren't too bad. 2019 changed a lot, with autonomous, respawning, immutable "services" and things have digressed severely since. Hence my visiting this post for Fairphone.

So take pride in your purity. It only gets worse the more you know.

It's less the sound, and more the buzz when it's on vibration. I've never found a way of changing that, unfortunately. It's probably true for other brands, but I've never really had a phone that other people have also used, whereas now I'm in a (very small) bubble that seems to be happily converging on Fairphones...

This is what makes sense. You want to be able to replace the charging port, screen, and camera. And of-course update the software, where software stability is IMHO the weakest point of Fairphone.

If the logic board breaks, you want to upgrade to the newest chip model you can get. Because third-party software becomes slower every year. If you want a phone to last as long as possible, thus getting the latest chip. For Fairphone it is more interesting, since they use a particular Snapdragon model range with longer driver support.

The elephant in the room is of-course software getting too slow and developer not optimizing their apps.

> In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015.

You can still source an iPhone 4s screen+digitizer assembly on eBay for a reasonable price. There is, however, little practical value of it in everyday use.

> It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.

You can? They're happy to repair even 7+ year old phones, I'm sure there's a cutoff but I haven't heard of anyone running into it. Might depend on the country though. Unless you mean buying those parts separately but they don't even let you do that for new phones, so "years after they're released" doesn't matter then.

It's nice that Samsung repair phones, I also don't know how long for, but you can't rely that they always will, and not all phone manufacturers are Samsung. You shouldn't have to rely on the whims of the manufacturer.

This is why phones should be modular so the parts that wear/break first are replaceable, and also why those parts should be available to you and third parties, not gatekept by the manufacturer. Repair companies can then stockpile parts themselves, instead of having to scavenge from dead phones, to repair your existing phone even when the manufacturer refuses.

My previous phone was a second-hand iPhone SE for which I had screen, power button, big button and battery replaced at various times. I think the battery was third-party & new, but the other parts were also 2nd+ hand. I don't know about newer models, and presumably there are other things that are more "fair" about the fairphone, but it doesn't have a monopoly on repairability in my experience.

You did all those repairs to your iphone yourself? I imagine that was significantly more technically difficult than repairing a Fairphone, which is made to be _user_ serviceable.

Original iPhone SE is relatively easy to work on, two pentalobe screws and a suction cup will get you into it. It’s not waterproof so there’s no glue seals to warm and melt, it’s still mostly screwed together inside, only the battery has glue strips holding it in.

From there I’ve swapped the battery, moved the logic board and home button to a new chassis, taken the camera module out and tried to clean it, had the screen+top chassis off. It’s not for everyone but it’s not technically complex with many specialist tools, it just needs a battery replacement kit, tiny screwdrivers, workspace, and patience.

Interesting! So I shouldn't expect a similar experience fixing a 13 mini when the time comes?

I've never tried, but the original SE I'm talking about is contemporaneous with the iPhone 5 chassis and iPhone 6 internals. The 13 is 5-6 generations and years newer, and likely more hostile or complex in at least some ways.

No, I went to a local electronics shop. I don't have a pile of decommissioned phones in my house, nor the eyesight or hand-steadiness for fixing things that small. User-serviceable is definitely a distinction, but I suspect family members would expect me to be their technician anyway, and I'd point them to the electronics shop due to physical issues above, and fear of bricking their devices.

If your family members ever had to mount an ikea furniture or equivalent, they'll probably have an as easy or easier time replacing a part on a fairphone. Especially for the battery. At least for version 3 and older. I don't know for later models. If you know how to swap batteries in a tv remote, you know how on this phone.

    > The charging port wore out.

Zero trolling: How did that happen? Can you share some details? (I am not doubting you.) Ideas: You are the type of person who needs to constantly charge your phone, but move frequently, so maybe you have 5x the number of "plugs" compared to an average user. Or, sadly, they used a cheap part, and it broke quickly.

I found USB-C to be pretty unreliable up until the past several years -- I had multiple phones and laptops from multiple brands <=2020 that just had USB-C ports turn fiddly or outright stop working after a year or two.

Things are better now in my experience, but for a device made in 2019, this is pretty darn plausible.

I feel like, from the hardware point of view, wireless charging should be more durable than using a cable, since the charging connection is done without contact. But then again, wireless charging is less good for the battery then wired, so it's probably a balancing act.

That being said, I know that the moment I switch to a phone that supports wireless charging, I won't be able to go back, so I've just been trying to use the phone I have (POCO X3 Pro) until it'll completely break.

I had the battery replaced, because it was starting to bloat to the point that it was starting to bend the phone. I've had the back panel glued three times, but it still comes off, so now there's always a gap in the phone, most certainly not waterproof anymore, I would have wished that the repair would have been flawless, because as things stand, I am disappointed and had I known that this would be the final result (I could try taking the phone back to the service centre to get it reglued, but I've already done that twice, so now I feel uncomfortable and awkward having to ask yet again, for who know if any improvement.

I have this with my phone, but it's because of dust. Did you try cleaning the port?

I don't know what reliability should be, but my previous phone which a had mini-USB connector also wore out after a few years. I put the phone back on a charging stand whenever I'm home and not using it, so that's maybe 10x a day.

I've never worn one out but I've had to replace two after they got filled with sand (once from being dropped on the beach and once just from my pocket I think). No amount of cleaning would fix them, luckily with cheap Chinese phones one ebay search and €10 later I had a new charging port board.

I'm having that issue now on my Pixel 9, and I had it before on Pixel 6. My wife mockingly claims that it's me that keeps breaking the ports, but I've never had this issue on earlier phones.

> It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.

I managed to have the curved screen in my 2017 Galaxy S8 replaced in 2023 or so. I don't recall there being an alternative manufacturer of those.

For flagships at least there seems to be a pool of new-old-stock parts.

> Four years later and the model had been discontinued

Which model? Was it the FP1? It sounds like your friend was extremely unlucky - FP2 is 11 years old & there's still (a limited subset of) parts for sale for it (display & camera). FP3 (7yo model) still has all the parts for sale.

That said - I'm critical of another aspect of device longevity: software support. I upgraded from my (still working) FP3 to the FP5 because apps I needed stopped working on the highest version of Android supported by FP3. That Android version is still officially supported by Fairphone & receiving security updates but without major version upgrades the app support can be problematic. Obviously that's ultiamtely the fault of bad app devs, but ultimately it's hard to overcome.

>ultimately the fault of bad app devs

More like google's fault. They made a huge mess of completely different permission and behaviour changes between 11, 12, 13. At least since 14 they have stopped fucking around so much.

It is really much simpler for us to cut off all versions before 12, but it's unfeasible. So many devices still with 10/11. Now we cut off at 8.1, but will increase that every year starting next year as google mandates us an increase of minimum sdk version.

I don't like how companies behave like that and basically push users to upgrade their phones

Garmin in particular makes it mandatory to use their app for SOME connected functionalities (while others work just fine on wifi or wifi tethering). They unsupported old version of android for the garmin connect app pretty fast (my mom's phone was incompatible within 4 years of its release) while they don't support you to connect older devices on newer phones and say they know it doesn't work.

As a user, I don't care whose fault it is.

I ditched both Google in favour of degooglized android on older Xiaomi and Pixel phones that support custom ROMs, and Garmin for any sport equipment.

My next phone will be a Fairphone if they make something with a smaller screen.

I don't know which app you're doing, but I would most likely permanently just not download it or find an open source alternative if it stopped working for me, as no app is essential. Pay attention to the user-base, in particular is your app is supposed to work with a web of users.

While i always try to look for open source utility apps (i use several), our userbase simply don't care.

Context: Our apps are means to connect to our devices via BLE, are free and without ads (fuck ads, fuck all ads), no integrity checks. We don't publish the API but we know of a couple of clients that reverse engineered the protocol and made their own. Good for them. (one of them also came by the office to bring a friend and showed us his app that glued together the functionality of several modules from also our competitors. Cool!)

But given what we do our customers are complete normies, doing what google asks us is the path of least resistance, and gets us most audience.

Those who don't want to use the play store can find the APK in the usual sites, don't care.

If i made app for myself i would indeed distribute it differently.

I haven't done Android dev in a while, but I remember the Android SDK offered a 'backwards compatibility pack' - you selected which version you wanted to target, and how old a version you wanted to support (you could go back to like android 5) and it gave you all the polyfills necessary. The only downside was that your app size would balloon to crazy levels.

It's more or less what minimumsdk does, but there may be libraries that require you to bump the minimum.

For example, there are APIs that make feasible something that should be trivial (like autosizing a font based on size, the way it happens in iOS) but they are available from 8.0 so you cut out anything below that.

Or, we use BLE a lot and there are newer methods that makes our life easier but again are not available in older SDK versions

That "officially supported" comes with a huge asterisk though. Security bulletins for old android versions already only include backports of high severity patches. On top of that the device also gets no security patches for firmware or kernel, as the hardware and kernel are eol. The FP5 is also on an eol kernel after less than 3 years, not that they were providing kernel updates in the first place. https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...

What apps?

I use a FP3 too, but I am a little surprised

I don't know for fair phone but I was not able to install tailscale for my old Samsung Galaxy S2 tablet. Fortunately I was able to install an XDA rom

Banking. It's always banking.

They are currently on the Fairphone 6, and at least in Germany the official online store still sells a wide selection of parts for the Fairphones 3-6, and the display and camera for the Fairphone 2.

Sure, you don't get meaningful hardware upgrades (apparently there were some small ones), and Fairphone are far from the only ones selling spare parts for their phones. But in terms of keeping old phones alive with authentic parts and easy to execute disassembly steps, they are pretty good

Plus you can buy them second hand pretty eaeily too.

I guess maybe if the comparison you're looking at is the one you mentioned? Second hand normally beats everything else since it's avoiding what would other wise be waste, and there's nothing new that needs to be manufactured.

That said, I bought a fairphone about 4 years ago, in that time, I've had a bunch of issues that'd have meant replacing the phone for other non-fairphone models (this list doesn't make me look great at taking care of things): - USB charger broke after getting mortar in it - Screen broke after dropping the phone directly onto screen - Battery replacement (due to age, not my fault this time!) - Screen broken yesterday after dropping my phone onto concrete after falling over during a run.

If I'd had a Samsung, or non-repairable phone of another kind, I'd be buying my fourth phone today, instead I ordered a spare part and will repair things easily in a couple of days when it arrives.

So, hard to beat the sustainability of second hand tech, but definitely from an economical point of view, my fairphone has easily been a good call.

Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you are better at taking care of things than me.

Edit: worth saying, the fairphone 4 was discontinued a year or so ago, but that isn't the same as saying parts aren't made for it. Spare parts are still really easy to get hold of.

Many repair shops will replace your screen and battery for you. It’s pretty standard. You don’t need a Fair phone to do that.

A friend of mine had a broken finger print reader (a few cents online), he couldn't find any repair shop who wanted to repair it (probably because the display would have to removed).

I don't know about Android phones but how often does FaceID/TouchID break? I'd bet it's extremely rare.

I personally don't think it's worth it to buy a Fair phone for the extremely low chance that a component breaks and you can't get it repaired.

> I personally don't think it's worth it to buy a Fair phone for the extremely low chance that a component breaks and you can't get it repaired.

I might be misreading you, but this comes across a little like "that one use case doesn't prove you need a fairphone so don't buy a fairphone".

I don't think most people are evaluating tech like that. Only a zealot is going to consider a fairphone as the only option, they probably are looking at a bunch of criteria and options.

There's no correct answer to "what phone should I buy?" in a way that could be proven / argued for. I think people here are just saying fairphones have great repairability.

That's true-ish. The repairability of phones varies a lot, with some even having batteries glued into the model.

If you're just considering repairability, a fairphone is almost certainly one of your best options. But like you point out, that doesn't mean all other options can't be repaired at all.

But for Fairphone repairs you don't even need a repair shop.

> Second hand normally beats everything else since it's avoiding what would other wise be waste, and there's nothing new that needs to be manufactured.

That's a fallacy. By buying second hand, you enable the second hand market (people get better prices for selling their first hand phones). There are users who always buy the latest iPhones (or other flagship device) and sell their previous one. In effect you, as a second hand buyer, use the devices in the second part of their full lifetime, the first buyer uses the device in the first part. The device is used the full duration of its usability, which is good, but it's not better than if the first buyer would use it for the full duration. Nothing is saved overall.

> Nothing is saved overall.

This is not true. You're missing that, if there is no second-hand market, phones get an early, premature grave, meaning more e-waste.

Imagine there are 10 million people in the world and they all want a phone. 1 million neophiles only ever want the latest phone, released yearly. The other 9 million are luddites who are OK with a second-hand phone. All phones last exactly 10 years before failing, and never become obsolete or damaged.

No second-hand market allowed: 1.9m phones sold per year, 1.9m discarded.

Neophiles buy and discard 1m phones (into the dump with 9 years of life left). Luddites buy and discard 900,000 phones (they have no second-hand market to buy from, so they buy new phones, but they use them for full 10 years instead of just 1, so the 9 million only buy/discard 900,000 phones per year on average).

Second-hand market allowed: 1m phones sold per year, 1m discarded. 900,000 less!

Neophiles buy 1m new phones but sell their old phones to luddites, discarding none. Luddites then use them for 9 more years before discarding. There are 9 million luddites with 9 years of phone use meaning they need an average of 1m second-hand phones per year, which happens to be how many are on the market thanks to the neophiles.

> That’s a fallacy.

> Nothing is saved overall.

This might be the most ridiculous POV of the second-hand market I’ve ever read.

There’s definitely some people who are buying new phones purely because they are ok with eating the difference between the new phone’s cost price and the old one’s sale price. I’m certain that’s a tiny niche of the entire market. And there’s the even smaller niche that actually use their phone till its very last breath. On the other hand, there’s an immeasurably larger part of the new phone market, formed of people who just buy a new phone anyways when they feel like it and leave the old one in their drawer.

Source: User surveys and research I conducted in another life

> Second hand normally beats everything else

Well, also buying out-of-production new phones (i.e. 1 or 2 gen behind) it's saving phones to be e-waste without having been used even once. Although I guess that companies manage stocks also with this signal in mind, so a 2nd-hand is always better.

Not sure that's valid; in my experience Samsung phones are fairly repairable* and have spare parts available worldwide. Guessing Fairphone parts are much more limited.

* probably much more fiddly than a fairphone though

Can't speak to availability outside of Europe, but parts are sold by the manufacturer directly for fairphone, so they're very easy to get hold of if you can buy a fairphone in the first place.

Me saying "a samsung" probably isn't helpful since different models vary. Here's some ratings and detail of repairing major smartphone models though if you're interested: https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/smartphone-repairabilit...

I guess it was a Fairphone 2 from 2015? They are still selling screens, cases and camera modules but not the rest of the parts unfortunately:

https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?categ...

I bought a Fairphone 3+ years ago and, as much as I want to support this company, it was a huge disappointment. I switched to an iPhone after using it for less than three years, which is less than the life span I was hoping to use it for.

Within a year, the USB port wore out. Contacted the support as the phone was under warranty and was given two options: Order the replacement part online and get reimbursed for it. Or send the entire phone back, but it would get wiped clean.

I had some data that wasn't backed up and didn't want to loose, and because I couldn't charge it, I decided to go for the first option. It's supposed to be easily reparable, why go through the hassle of sending it back? Well the problem was that the part was unavailable on their store for months. I even looked at third party stores, that specific part couldn't be found anywhere in Europe. After three months of having a "repairable" paperweight on my desk, the part was finally available and I could change it (replacing it took seconds and I've done it while sitting at a café, gotta give credit to Fairphone for that).

Meanwhile, I see my friends with their iPhones getting them repaired within a few days or even the same day! Battery change, charging port replacement, screen change, etc. All could be easily and quickly done by a local repair shop.

In the end I realised it's not about how easy it is to repair your phone, it's about the availability of spare parts. iPhones, especially a few years ago, make it difficult to be repaired. Yet, they are the easiest to get repaired. Fairphone's spare parts are specific to their phones, and even specific to some models. Using generic parts or having some compatible across models would create more need for them = more parts available.

Environmentally speaking, (re)using existing hardware / buying second hand probably beats everything.

Absolutely. If you want to even pretend to care about the environment, the very first step is starting to buy almost everything over $100 second hand. The added benefit is that it has lots of other societally positive effects! It has one of the very highest "sacrifices made vs. societal benefit" ratios there is. Please stop buying "environmentally friendly" gadgets and equipment and start buying "unfriendly" ones second-hand. There are very few categories of products where the efficiency gains made over the last decade mean you should buy new. Certainly less than 1% of purchases we make.

I do that but I also feel kinda bad since I feel I’m taking it instead of someone else who’s more budget constrained than me

You're providing income to someone whose almost definitely more constrained than you. Without you, no one may have bought it. And the other comment is right - it's a buyers market, we need more buyers, there's a surplus of sellers. Another thing - if sellers more quickly and more easily get to sell their stuff second hand thanks to you, they're more incentivized to sell more in the future as well instead of keeping it in a drawer or throwing it in the trash.

You're doing great for everyone involved!

You shouldn't, really. I don't think there's shortage in the second hand market. We probably need more people reusing stuff.

What matters is how long devices are used, not how often the owner changes.

That's right, and buying new and taking very good care of your stuff + using to the point of being unusable probably beats serial-buying second hand devices you mistreat.

There has to be second hand users tough, otherwise the second hand devices that, for a reason or another, are not used to the end by their original buyer never get used again.

I am fine with having a phone with specs that are 3+ years old. I'm not, however, fine with loosing software support shortly buying it or the first repair knocking it out, because the parts are not available or the labour cost makes the repair unreasonable for its value.

Actually, taking on used phones with unknown history means that you'll likely end up 'bottom-feeding' where each unit bought is cheap, but you'll need to exchange them often. This strategy is even harder for less-interested who can't say what's the EOL for a phone model.

Maybe my argument doesn't hold in richer societies where you are effectively subsidised by people who'd still exchange phones every 2 years making them better value.

> I have a friend who bought a fair phone with a view to being able to replace its modular parts. Four years later and the model had been discontinued

I was also very surprised to learn this. Incompatible models are the opposite of modular parts. Fairphone apparently was happy to throw away 95%+ of the value of having "modular" parts.

I often wonder why there still hasn't been a YC-backed attempt to disrupt the "replace your phone every couple of years because your battery became slower" cartel in 2026. Seems like such a low-hanging fruit, especially given the very visible success of companies like Framework.

Am I missing something? I've kept the iPhones I bought for 6 years or so. I replaced the battery on each phone, and all it cost me was 50€ and half an hour waiting for the local non-Apple phone shop to do the work. That surely counts as batteries being replaceable in all but name?

I'm happy that worked out for you, but the whole cryptography signature of Apple batteries that throttle your phone if you get the wrong one is VERY different from "just pop out the back and get your new battery in".

I feel like the price Apple charges for batteries is very reasonable. I kept my phone going for 4.5 years thanks to a battery replacement 2 years in. They’re basically doing it at cost, considering parts and labour.

Also, your information is slightly out of date. It’s possible to do the replacement yourself if you want. Here’s an ifixit guide based on apples official repair guide - https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+17+Battery+Replacement/1...

It is so, so long... I barely reached the middle before my brain just "Nope."

They are talking about this kind of battery replacement: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Fairphone+3+Battery+Replacement... . The "TV remote" battery replacement kind.

> Seems like such a low-hanging fruit, especially given the very visible success of companies like Framework.

Is there very visible success of Framework? How many people in your everyday live have you encountered with a Framework laptop?

I love there mission, but Framework from all the feedback from users online seems to still be a product that you'll only buy if you put sustainability over performance/convenience.

> a YC-backed attempt

If any successful attempt would be launched, there would be no reason for it to go through YC. In the mass consumer hardware market their little funding and the network they provide doesn't do much. I would strongly assume that a challenger would appear in a similar form as it did with framework with nrp.

> Is there very visible success of Framework? How many people in your everyday live have you encountered with a Framework laptop?

A company that captures most/the entire market is not what is being asked for. Only a financially viable company that provides value to people looking for a certain type of product. Framework is certainly that in its own domain. And something similar could be built for phones.

>still be a product that you'll only buy if you put sustainability over performance/convenience

That would product that I and countless others would be gladly willing to buy on the smartphone market.

At what price though? There are many people who say they would buy a phone like Fairphone, but not at that price, or not unless it had a 3.5mm headphone jack or a better camera, etc etc. Talk is cheap but sustainable phones are not.

So are you buying a Fairphone right now? Because from my rough estimation Framework and Fairphone are about the same when it comes to performance/convenience tradeoff right now.

I mostly focused on the "YC disruption" part in GPs question without considering whether there is actually an opening for a disruptor. I think Fairphone may already be filling that gap.

I don't see a reason to buy a new phones when I can buy refurbished flagships from a couple of years prior. The fact that this is the best option available is precisely what strikes me as being so straightforward to fix.

So what would your straightforward "fix" look like? Buying refurbished phones is nothing to "fix", and undercutting the psychological effect of pre-ownership price-drops is essentially impossible.

I'm really not sure what you are getting at.

>So what would your straightforward "fix" look like?

A repairable powerful phone with replaceable battery and pathways to minor upgradability that you can trust not to fuck you over long-term. I.E. the closest equivalent of Framework to smartphones.

Is the average Framework truly more environmentally than an average MacBook.

MacBooks tend to last a long time. I used my 2012 Macbook Air for 7-8 years easily. It's still working today. My M1 Pro 16" has had no issues at all for nearly 4 years. They’re extremely reliable (except butterfly era).

Personally, I don’t think Framework laptops are. I think they are only more environmentally if you upgrade your MacBook every year or every other year. I think this is extremely niche. Not only are you getting a laptop with much worse battery life, noise, heat, screen, build quality, you are also getting a significantly slower CPU and GPU. AMD and Intel chips simply can't keep up with Apple Silicon.

I don't know I had contemplated buying a second hand macbook for a family member and...most macbook available in the second hand market have hardware issues. Every time I checked laptops in the 300-500euros price range it was easier to find a lenovo thinkpad, dell latitude, or fujitsu in good conditions with a fresh new battery and ssd installed than it was finding a macbook.

Yes it is.

One thing important to take into account in the life of a device is what happens when it's thrown out.

A friend of mine works at an electronics recycling facility, and with regular desktop or laptop they're able to take them apart to scavenge some rare metals, separate inert materials like cases from dangerous ones like the battery.

That's much more costly for Apple products because of how they're integrated, so they end up not recycling much.

Doesn't Apple recycle them for you if you trade them in?

I guess they do, but if you bring them to your local recycling center they'll probably won't get much for it.

Which sucks, because that means even for recycling responsibly you're again tied to Apple.

Yes, it absolutely is. Fair phones won't be scrapped because the company killed them remotely like MacBooks: https://www.vice.com/en/article/apple-macbook-activation-loc...

Can't say about Framework, but between a Macbook and a Dell, that both got a glass of water on them, the Macbook was completely unusable, while the Dell still works (except issues with GPU) 5 years after the incident, after only one day in service for cleaning.

your anecdote doesn't prove or disprove anything.

the most reliable test of durability is prices in the second-hand market. Apple laptops hold their value very well.

It proves or disproves as much as the op which said:

> MacBooks tend to last a long time. I used my 2012 Macbook Air for 7-8 years easily. It's still working today.

There are multiple things that are valuable, without that being a proof or durability.

Note that I am not saying Apple products "are" or "are not" durable. But if we talk about anecdotes then there are both ways. I would have liked to find some neutral, longer term analysis, but a fast internet search did not turn up anything that seemed relevant (only anecdotes and opinions).

They are reliable but, are they marketed as such? How many HNers are routinely upgrading their 3 years old MBP just because they can and they want a new one? I bet many

HNers are very niche. My point stands.

I think that the average Apple MB user is pretty loyal to the brand and updates HW much more than a Dell / Lenovo / HP / whatever

Because phones are incredibly cheap and its hard to compete with that.

You can get something like a "Motorola Moto G86 5G" for less than 200$ and that comes with a 120 hz full hd screen, 8 gigs of ram, 5200 mAh battery and so on. Basically everything you could ever need unless you're deep into photography or gaming. Instead of ordering a battery at 40$ and replacing it, I might as well buy an entire new phone and get a minor upgrade on everything every few years.

Minor upgradability might as well be baked into a phone.

Because people who don't want to buy a shiny gadget every couple of years and would rather pay more upfront and use for longer are a small minority.

Too much hearsay. Details please

My wife has a Fairphone 4, released 2021. The earpiece broke. I ordered a replacement; it arrived within 3 days and was very easy to replace. So a good experience with that.

This. Fairphone is not much different from any other company or actual hardware. Electronics are modular already…

I gave my 7 year old iPhone XS (which still works perfectly and fast, and gets updates) to my mum. The battery was at 70% so I decided to get a replacement. The local malls repair shop had a spare battery in stock - they fixed it while I bought groceries.

You get longer support than that on Pixels

The easily replacable parts feature sounds like it'd work great in a university context. The uni's service desk could stock up on replacement parts and fix the phones right there instead of having to send it in for repairs.

If e.g. someone's mainboard breaks, they can just give them a new phone and take in the old one, and then use the remaining parts to repair other employees' phones with working mainboards.

Same as any other major employer, surely? At least, you’re describing how it works at my previous employer (large private enterprise).

Universities in the Netherlands usually do not have the free cash for stocking up on parts, in general they take them in your get a loaner and they repair it afterwards or send it back to the manufacturer. But i guess it is a plus the design team is in the same country.

I'm sure a university should be able to find a couple of thousand EURs floating around somewhere.

Seeing news like this, I wonder whether there is a market for an OSS Android and/or Linux distribution that provides the management comfort of Chromebooks without being tied to Google, Apple or Microsoft. A little like Keycloak but one layer higher.

With all the US/EU issues currently, you might even be able to spin up a company to support European services that need management based on OSS management software.

Ubuntu is pretty strong already in that niche - either using Landscape as a first party management solution, but it also tends to be the distro most-commonly recommended by the big third-party MDM vendors like Scalefusion and Jumpcloud. Not sure what their mobile story is like, but they certainly cover laptop / desktops.

If Android is not a blocker, maybe even then, Jolla, a Finnish company, has been offering a Linux based mobile OS for quite some time. I frankly don't get why other EU companies building the hardware, like Fairphone and Volta, don't partner up with them.

> Android

> without being tied to Google

That's a contradiction.

No. I'm on GrapheneOS and not tied to Google.

You must be thinking of the Google Play Services but these aren't required by GrapheneOS.

No, we're thinking about the fact that Android is Google owned and developed and no removal of Play Services changes that.

Every Android ROM is critically dependant on Googles work to actually develop and secure the OS.

It is tied to google inasmuch all target phones are google branded. https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Hopefully that can change, in the future

It's tied to Google's development strategy, such as removal of Manifest-V2, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41905368

It could change now, it could have changed years ago, they just have no interest in trying. It's pretty annoying honestly.

As long as it depends on Google paying upstream development that GrapheneOS updates from, it is tied to Google.

Now if GrapheneOS was its own thing without additional AOSP code updates.

This becomes sophistry, though. "tied to" in a way that doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

Ah but it does, as Google can decide to close down AOSP shop at any moment.

If that happens, the world can always try to fork. Until then it seems kind of pointless to do so?

Try is the keyword here.

Hence why these efforts should not rely on US institutions good will in first place.

Can try to fork?, china , russia, and lots of smaller countrys are steadily moving away and as basic introperability standards for phone and internet will remain, they can do this, and pressure is also mounting to get a linux phone fully functional, that will alao happen. And in a world where Guggappl is providing genocide and abduction services, Billions would happily choose other alternatives.

China and Russia are likewise involved in their own genocides (Uyghurs and Ukraine respectively), and they are just as interested in developing centralised systems of control. They will not give the world truly free and open platform.

"They will not give the world truly free and open platform", uhuhu!, but we are giving them the pivot point to claim the flag of freedom , rather than just doing that ourselves. also, one more move from you know who, and a whole lot of countrys will have to very seriously start looking for stable deals that last longer than it takes the ink to dry. China just ghosted nvidia, on the "something 200" ai chip to start shipping in march, tsmc and all there suppliers have stood down on that, and will of course, instantly re focus on the next job, which might be a batch of chips for fairphones....

> but we are giving them the pivot point to claim the flag of freedom

Nobody said that, so you're arguing with the strawman.

The OS offering actual freedom is GNU/Linux.

The day they do that, Android will just be a Chinese product and Google will lose control over it.

Huawei took control of its own destiny instead of relying on Google forks.

https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/design/

https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/harmonyos/develop/

And I am still sad that they didn't go for an open source hard fork of AOSP. Would have been fun.

Indeed and if Google would pull the plug on AOSP, some initiative like this would become the de facto Android standard.

I love your optimism. What you'll see is return to 2000s where you may have had "Symbian" as the operating system, but the phones weren't compatible between themselves and apps broke and didn't work across manufacturers (or even product lines) because there was noone enforcing compatibility.

I wonder if you forgot that or you're too young to remember what kind of bizarre hell mobile development was at that time.

Heck, even early Android was really hard to develop for because CTS suite didn't cover enough and all of us spent hours upon hours (and many dollars) trying to reproduce and fix Samsung, Huawei, HTC and other bugs.

I never said it's going to be smoother than it is right now, just that Google will lose control.

8 of the top 10 manufacturers are Chinese, the last two are Samsung (which definitely isn't going to side with Google) ... and Google themselves.

If Google doesn't publish AOSP anymore, Pixels will be the only phone with their software on it, Samsung might attempt something alone and the rest will pick up the development from a Chinese government consortium which will be the de-facto default mobile platform instead of the Google one.

I doubt that people advocating for GrapheneOS would pivot to a Chinese powered platform.

They would have to follow like everybody else, they aren't powerful enough to dictate market trends.

8 out of the top 10 Android manufacturers are Chinese.

Google would just lose the ownership of Android to a Chinese consortium used by everybody else.

Anyone on Graphene is tied tot Google, for it requires Google hardware.

Posting from an FP4 with slashyslash! (/e/)

Good move from a service perspective, repairs while you wait instead of backing up, transfer to new phone, sending the old one in for service, yada yada yada. Also great for Fairphone's growth to have a stable business partner.

As a Fairphone owner, I use them for one reason I rarely see mentioned.

I think they're very imperfect phones for a lot of reasons: they're bad value on a pure hardware specs to retail price comparison, their security update support isn't where it could be & the repairability - while best on the market - still has gaps.

However, the rarely mentioned story is their supply chain advocacy initiatives. Not only do they try to source as much of the hardware ethically as they can, their work has also had a broad knock-on effect on the entire industry. Their living wage advocacy for the assembly factories they use has resulted in wage improvements within those supplier companies for employees working on non-FP hardware as well. Their work in Congo with the Fair Cobalt Alliance is a big part of the reason that other companies like Apple are even able to source "certificate recycled" cobalt for their batteries (albeit those certifications are misleading due to the mass balance system, they're still a lot better than nothing).

Fairphones are awesome, and they even come with a de-googled version of android. Also: Made in Holland!

Made in Suzhou, China.

As far as I know only Gigaset and HMD manufacture in Europe. And even those two only do final assembly in Europe, the components are still made in China.

Technically Fairphone could ship you a box of parts and have you assemble the phone yourself. Then it would be "Made in Europe" (or where-ever you live).

HMD manufacture in Europe? That's splendid news, something to upgrade after my old flashed pixel kicks the bucket

So? Step by step. Once the FairPhone gets a large-enough market, they may be able to move parts of the production to Europe.

Perfect is the enemy of the good (it also took HMD a while to have a model that was manufactured in Europe).

You’re not wrong, but honest question: do Fairphone actually have EU manufacturing as a goal? First I’ve heard of it.

I'm fairly sure they don't; at least historically, the goal has been to improve the situation on the ground, not to move production elsewhere. (I think this was the post in which they explained that thinking, but I didn't reread it just now: https://www.fairphone.com/en/2025/10/15/lets-talk-about-fair...)

The default OS is not de-googled Android though, but regular Android. You have to buy the /e/OS variant, which is slightly more expensive (or flash it yourself).

But with the long-term support and access to spare parts (the university can stock them), this seems like a good move. Also happy for FairPhone that they are getting more traction.

> The default OS is not de-googled Android though, but regular Android. You have to buy the /e/OS variant

For some definition of de-google, though. /e/OS is based on LineageOS which is based on AOSP which is developed by Google. And microg contacts the Google servers, doesn't it? My understanding is that it's just an open source implementation of the Play Services.

You really don't want /e/ on Fairphone. That's frankly worst of both worlds.

Insecure hardware with limited patches and updates, running insecure software with much patches skipped or delayed.

Most recent fairphone is based on Android 15, while 16 is available from mid-2025. Yes, that matters, releases is not only eyecandy, but also some security patches (ie: not many patches are back ported from 16).

https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/244637136412...

Features: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

Historic security updates : https://web.archive.org/web/20241231003546/https://divestos....

So, I'd rather have second hand debloated midrange Motorola thank /e/, even less so on Fairphone.

*designed in holland

In the province* Holland, but the country The Netherlands :)

I live in South Holland and I still say to foreigners that "I am from Holland" meaning "I am from The Netherlands".

Technically correct but Holland has long been used as a strong branding name for the entire country. It wasn't until recent that they started to make a better distinction between the two.

Philips, ASML, Inventum and many other companies used "Made in Holland" on their products despite not being in the provinces of North and South Holland.

Pars pro toto... ;)

Partially, AOSP is still made by Google.

This no different from the fallacy of using Chrome and VSCode forks.

"Employees who have an iPhone from Radboud University can continue to use it as long as the device is still functioning. However, returned iPhones will no longer be reissued."

I wonder what the take rate will be from people rejecting the Fairphone and requesting their own SIM instead. The inner IT purchasing cynic in me says this is just a simple way to cull out your purchasing costs by only issuing one quasi-unpopular* device.

* I used to issue out phones at a large hospital and we allowed device choice. We saw ~90% iPhones, 10% Android in our fleet.

Probably not many, the iPhone only has a 35% market share in the Netherlands.

The Fairphone 6 is a pretty good phone.

According to the WhatsApp-leak, it is 51.41% Android and 48.59% iOS in the Netherlands.

https://github.com/sbaresearch/whatsapp-census/blob/main/cou...

People who are happy to use services from facebook may also be disproportionately more likely to are happy to use the iOS garden

That’s a wealthy nation.

That sounds unreal to me. Typically rich countries, like the nordics, are majority iPhone. But then again, Dutch people are know across Europe to be cheapskates so maybe that explains it ;)

Android is generally more popular in Europe.

The reason is how messaging works. In the US (and Canada?), SMS was affordable since before smartphones, and people kept using SMS once smartphones became common. Apple automatically integrated iMessage into that. Americans are used to texting using the default messaging app, and using an iPhone to text another iPhone provided a better experience than plain old SMS/MMS.

In Europe, SMS was extremely expensive in the late 2000s/early 2010s, so people never really used it, and instead started using cross-platform internet messengers. MSN, Skype, then WhatsApp. Android was/is seen as the same or better quality for a lower price, so why buy an iPhone?

You know that it costs the same as the cheapest iPhone?

You know not all Android phones in NL are Fairphones? And you know plenty of ANdroids are much cheaper than a Fairphone?

Which probably explains the 35% market share if that's true.

But I get it, you wanted a cheap shot.

You know there are plenty ones that are more expensive than the iPhone? Like most of Samsungs Flagships, the Foldable ones etc...

Also not everyone wants a shitty OS, that restricts even simple things like picture synchronization to promote their own shitty cloud service

It's not just any phone though. Imagine what it would cost if Apple presented a fair phone

If Holland is anything like Denmark the cost of employee phones can be budgeted as an operational cost, which means it's basically free. I doubt that is their reasoning. It's far more likely this is a part of the massive anti-US tech dependency wave which is rolling over Europe. Digital sovereignty is a hot topic these days.

As far as what people want... it depends... A lot of people have two phones anyway, since they don't want to pay the additional taxation for using a company phone privately. Also because it's easier to turn it off when you're not working. In education I would imagine a lot of teachers/professors would prefer to not give their private numbers to students.

I think the choice of Fairphone is about digital sovereignty. It's not only repairable, but it's also available with e/os, an android version which is much more independent from Google

The US hasn't turned out to be a reliable partner in the last few months.

They’re hardly pioneers; my wife’s employer switched from Apple to Fairphone as the pre-selected option a few years ago. They have about 10k employees.

I thought one of the issues for Fairphone is that their security update schedule / security practices are a bit lax? Their phones are regularly requested by users to be targeted by GrapheneOS, but GOS developers contend that the security practices for the Fairphone are problematic. They apparently get security updates late and don't properly implement verified boot and attestation.

I like the devices, but I've stuck with Pixel devices for the better security practices. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that a university wouldn't be concerned about late security updates and the like.

I was going to keep to myself on this one, but this is a good jump-in point.

The security capabilities of their hardware are what makes GrapheneOS incompatible to target the phone, Not any specific security practices of the developers of Fairphone.

Having said that: if there’s a way to MDM GrapheneOS, I’d be looking at that also!

The n+ patch interval on Lineage, /e/ and the rest of them, that’s plain and simply more days your administrators are at risk of giving up the keys to your castle - and that’s a tough pill to swallow!

>They apparently get security updates late and don't properly implement verified boot and attestation.

It doesn't matter if their os gets security updates late, becase security updates depend on the rom maker this case grapheneos.

That's not entirely correct. There are also updates to the baseband, bootloader, binary driver blobs, etc. E.g., the bootloader for the FP3 was set to trust roms signed with the AOSP test keys (https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro...). That's not something fixable by the OS / rom maker.

The security issues stemming from such things are likely real, as well. There was a paper released some time back, about binary blobs, that found:

> Our results reveal that device manufacturers often neglect vendor blob updates. About 82% of firmware releases contain outdated GPU blobs (up to 1,281 days). A significant number of blobs also rely on obsolete LLVM core libraries released more than 15 years ago. To analyze their security implications, we develop a performant fuzzer that requires no physical access to mobile devices. We discover 289 security and behavioral bugs within the blobs. We also present a case study demonstrating how these vulnerabilities can be exploited via WebGL.

(From https://arxiv.org/html/2410.11075)

These risks don't seem to materialize if you're not targeted by something like an intelligence agency. Not sure publicly funded research has such security requirements, at least by default (they can always buy custom equipment for a project, or just not put such data on devices you take home / out and about). Might be worth it compared to the very real benefits it has around the world by paying good salaries and fairer material sourcing

That's probably true, but some of the mistakes FP has made in the past could probably be widely exploited, so it doesn't instill a lot of confidence IMO. E.g., they were signing their OS images with the AOSP test keys.

It's not a particularly old company (a little over ten years I think?), so presumably they've had to learn a lot of those kinds of lessons at the start of their lifetime. But at this stage, I'd assume they've learned the lowest-hanging lessons, at least.

Tangential to the article but I’m on year 6 of waiting for the alternative smartphone market to offer what I’m actually looking for and here seems as good a place as any to complain about it:

I just want a screen with a headphone jack and a web browser on a device that isn’t serviced by Apple or Google.

I don’t even care about having the battery being removable. It doesn’t even have to be able to make phone calls.

I’m getting ready to go back to a dumbphone and digital camera because no one is making what I’m looking for, and it sort of seems like they never will.

> web browser on a device that isn’t serviced by Apple or Google

Which browser though? But what you're describing sounds a lot like a Linux tablet, which do exist: https://itsfoss.com/linux-tablets/

Most of those are suboptimal, go straight to the starlite.

https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_10_v-12264.php + https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/

This looks promising. Is the camera any good?

https://amateurphotographer.com/review/sony-xperia-10-v-revi... https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/technology/phones/sony-xperi... looks nice enough

Cheers.

it has OIS at the very least, which is something. But you'll always would better be served by a dedicated camera if you really care about pushing photos.

EDIT: jolla also sells this, has a jack https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone

Goalpost move detected.

I’d also like the phone’s browser to allow me to filter inane comments on Hacker News but I don’t know if the technology is there yet.

Well, to be fair they did mention "digital camera" in their initial message, but I would agree that it sounds like a goalpost move indeed.

I was going to refer to the new Jolla Phone, but then I realized that it doesn't have a headphone jack.

Furiphone lost theirs as well.

Interesting that they settled on a standard model at all. The announcement implies that the university is responsible for phone maintenance and repair, which makes sense as a motivation, but is not something I would expect in itself from a cost/expertise standpoint. I would be curious to know if a Fairphone makes servicing cheap enough to warrant doing it in-house for an IT department.

It’s also tacit, but I assume it helps them to interface with a Dutch company. Did they get any financial incentive for it?

The university should push the maintainance to the holder of the phone? That seems unreasonable.

As mentioned in another comment. Universities already have in house it services. Being able to fix the phone right there with spare parts is likely very cost efficient.

I think the alternative was to contract it out to an IT company rather than push it to the holder. Same as company phones in corporate environments

If it is like my usual experience with European academia, it may be intended to more heavily push use of Microsoft 365 services, which tend to somewhat assume phone availability. I think that usually universities cannot force the use of personal devices for work, so providing mobile phones on request is one way of moving to a more purely Microsoft service infrastructure. It looks like Radboud is a Microsoft shop, so I would not be surprised.

My university, for example, is gradually removing all office phones (already voip) and replacing them with Teams voip as the only phone system for the university, encouraging personal phone use of Teams, but having computer-based use as the option for people who refuse. As they don't provide mobile phones, however, they can't require Microsoft Authenticator, and so at least officially will still give hardware keys on request (and fortunately still allow TOTP, even if they don't advertise it).

There is a movement in Dutch academia to move away from Microsoft/Google services. E.g. SURF (the IT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions) are extending their NextCloud pilot to all Dutch edu/research instututions:

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/241846/surf-biedt-opensource-nex...

Many individual universities are also making decisions to reduce dependence on US tech, see e.g.:

https://rug.my-meeting.nl/Documenten/Keuzevrijheid-IT-oploss...

(Apologies for the Dutch links.)

If they already have an IT department, they already have the staff to take care of this additional workload (after a bit of training). How much difference is there really in repairing a "repairable" phone and a computer? Not much really as "repairing" a computer is often just fiddling with the software and / or just about changing an easily available and "standardised" parts. (When was the last time any of us saw any IT department doing actual board level servicing to repair a computer?) It will be the same with the Fairphone too (Fairphone makes it easy to change the battery, the board and the display screen).

If the university didn't make phone repairs themselves they would have to send the phones off for repair, or contract with a local phone repair shop. Or the secret third option: telling your employees to get it fixed and send you the invoice. None of them are cheap, and some of them will make you very annoyed with your billing/procurement/finance people. After a certain scale doing it inhouse makes sense, and with the right phone it's not much more difficult than fixing a business laptop, which is also commonly done inhouse with available spare parts

Dutch wages are high though. Especially at scale it could make sense to bundle all broken phones in one big box, ship it off to a low-wage country and then ship the phones back after refurbishment.

7500 employees, 7500 phones. If they all need one repair every other year that is nearly 20 repairs a day. That is a full-time job, which in The Netherlands has an employment cost of around €75,000 a year (including a place to work, pension, benefits). I bet someone in Romania could do it for half the cost. Shipping 100 phones in a box every week isn't that expensive.

If they want to use an MDM solution like Microsoft Intune to enforce some security compliance they are kind of forced to provide the device. People typically don't accept their private phone to be managed by their company IT.

Providing a device doesn't require picking a standard issue model of phone. IT departments often support an employee's choice of phone (or at least, choice of manufacturer) provided it's compatible with management software.

... from a given set of options.

> The announcement implies that the university is responsible for phone maintenance and repair

It says "Do you require a (replacement) smartphone for your work at Radboud University?", so it's probably for a handful of board members and the like, not the actual faculty staff.

The thing I would like to see is a second purpose for smart phones, an afterlife, calculator heaven?

It doesn't have to be cheap. It might for example resign into a security camera or a doorbell. A metal bracket with a connector, a button or a connection for one, a seperate psu with a bell or a relay for one, screws to attach the wires, perhaps a stripped down end of life OS (altho it could just be a mode) and it becomes a very good doorbell with motion detection, a good amount of storage, two way video if you want it. Share with someone [temporarly]. Backup footage on laptops, pc's, phones, storage devices etc etc

For $100 in parts it would be highly competitive in the space but it could be more expensive as it can basically do everything a $1000 security camera offers and more. Battery backup, sim card, etc. A big phone brand might even be able to get a contract with local law enforcement so that they can have/request [emergency] access.

It's just one example, a small/portable computer could resign into many things. The device only needs to know it is now a TV remote control.

I'm on board as soon as they include a zoom camera.

But for now it seems like I'll remain with a Pixel and GrapheneOS.

A camera with optical zoom would be indeed nice.

For me another feature is what disqualifies it. Fairphone 6 would have been otherwise acceptable for myself, as it has quite decent specifications, but it only has USB 2.0.

Other smartphones at around the same price not only have USB 3, but also DisplayPort 1.4 (e.g. from Motorola).

I hate when I see even on many smartphones over $1000, that they save a few cents by implementing USB 2 instead of USB 3, and a few dollars at most by not implementing DisplayPort.

The SoC used in Fairphone 6 supports both USB 3 and DisplayPort, but its designers have saved a few external components by not offering these features.

Pixel is also disqualified for me by the same reason. Unfortunately only some smartphones made in China offer complete features and without excessive locking of the phone.

> Pixel is also disqualified for me by the same reason.

How so?

I think all pixels starting from 6 or 7 have DisplayPort output through USB C.

I watched a movie the other day with my projector connected to my pixel 10 running grapheneOS. Other than getting a phone call halfway through the movie and a few hiccups selecting the audio Jack output, everything ran smoothly.

This is good to know, but they certainly do not advertise this feature as existing.

On Google Store there is no information about this and other sites, like Gsmarena, also do not have any information on it, unlike for the smartphones from other vendors that have DisplayPort.

On some older Pixel models, it has been discovered that DisplayPort existed in hardware, but it was disabled in software by the Google operating system. It could be enabled only by replacing the OS. I see that you also do not use its native OS, so this condition may have remained true.

About newer models, it was supposed that the hardware support might have been removed.

How did you discover that DisplayPort exists on your Pixel 10?

Was this mentioned in its user manual?

Do you have the plain Pixel 10 or some Pro version?

Do you happen to know whether you have DisplayPort 1.2 or 1.4? I.e. which is the maximum resolution at which you have used it, can it do 4k @ 60 Hz on a monitor or projector?

Did you have to use the audio jack because the smartphone does not know to send the audio through DisplayPort, or was that a limitation of your projector (or perhaps of some DisplayPort/HDMI converter that you may have used)?

Having this feature and not documenting it for the potential buyers is even more stupid than not implementing it, as this can lead to lost sales. Like with Fairphone 6, I have considered buying Pixel 10, which at least has USB 3, but I have eliminated it from the possible choices for the lack of DisplayPort.

EDIT:

Googling now, I have found an article at Google's "Pixel Phone Help":

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2865484?hl=en

which says "Connect your phone to a display device (Pixel 8 and later)",

So indeed, DisplayPort is supported officially starting with Pixel 8.

Nevertheless, it says nothing about what kind of DisplayPort is supported, i.e. which is the maximum resolution that is achievable on a monitor/projector, and this help answer is well hidden, you have to search specifically for it, instead of having clear technical specification of the Pixel phones, easy to discover by potential buyers.

Moreover, it can do only screen or window mirroring, instead of having a desktop mode like other vendors, so I think that it probably is limited to 1080 lines, which is the resolution of Pixel's screen (non-Pro models, but Pro are only slightly better). In that case, it still does not do what I want, which is a 4k resolution on a monitor/projector (it can record 4k movies after all, so I would have expected to be able to play them).

I used the Jack for audio because I wanted to use my surround speakers instead of my projector's tiny speaker, but sound through DisplayPort worked just fine as well. The difficulties I was having were actually about android defaulting to the projector speakers instead of the speakers connected through the Jack, the solution was to go to the sound setting and just selecting the correct output.

As for DisplayPort version, I'm not sure.

I second this, although since the Pixel 8(a) they all come with USB-C 3.2 and DisplayPort support. You have to buy a cable that supports it, though.

Thanks for this. My Fairphone 4 has USB3 and works well with my laptop docking station. I would not have imagined that Fairphone regressed on that point.

They need to make a small diagonal model, 5" screen max, 1/2" thick, PCBs inside a rubber frame ( so no extra case needed ).

Also nice would be replaceable plug-in modules a` la Frame.work laptops.

Looking to replace my iphone 12 mini. Alas the fairphone is also obnoxiosuly large. Seems the only phone available today under 65mm is the Jelly Star

I looked into the Jelly Star about six months ago. Downsides are the lack of dual-frequency GNSS and eSIM, and blanks in my spreadsheet are chipset speed, unlockability, warranty, slow motion camera speed, screen brightness, storage speed, and battery life (on 2Ah that might not be very much). The IR blaster and FM radio are cool benefits though, and it's very cheap. May be worth a try if you're feeling adventurous and enjoy it being a conversation starter, but I wouldn't expect much longevity from it (battery life or warranty)

The thing is the apps themselves start to be unusable on smaller screens as DEV don't take them into account anymore.

Me too. I've seen that horror too :-)

I am surprised they give smartphones to university employees. I haven’t heard of this incentive in many other European universities.

Its just for the employees who need a phone to do their day job, and isn't owned by the employee

Great! I just bought a 6 a few months ago and I'm very happy with it.

Might even get another one and run E or some other less googlified os

Fairphone is going to enjoy the next few weeks. Radboud isn't the only one!

Please, make a Fairphone mini. I'd buy it right away, whatever the price.

Also whatever the battery size though?

Not that I disagree. I bought a Fairphone some years ago and sold it onward because it simply didn't fit in my hand, but the phone I got instead had a delicious combo of small physical battery and terribly inefficient chipset (2019 Exynos). I'd still make the same choice but it's a considerable downside (thankfully the only downside of this phone besides its age and software support by now)

I know several family members who have bought Fairphone's and been disappointed by them. It's really impressive how repairable they've managed to make such integrated devices, but it seems like they didn't do such a good job on making a reliable phone in the first place.

I think what we really need is legislation to force all phone manufacturers to at least make the batteries and screens relatively easily replaceable. Maybe a cap on the replacement costs and a minimum support time would be a reasonable way to do that.

> I think what we really need is legislation to force all phone manufacturers to at least make the batteries and screens relatively easily replaceable.

We are slowly getting there, user removable/replaceable batteries are part of the following regulation (first link I've got)

https://www.brownejacobson.com/insights/compliance-obligatio...

The big caveat will be that some leeway is going to be given to "waterproof" devices. Remains to be seen how many producers jump on that angle to avoid serviceability.

I've read that the Fairphone 6 is more like a "regular" phone than the previous one, because it has a standard phone chip (Snapdragon) instead of an IoT one.

They did that to get longer software support from Qualcomm, but now they can get long support for Snapdragon chips.

And with an unlockable bootloader (that can be easily unlocked without needing to contact the manufacturer or require any special software).

What ROM are they use FP with?

I like how they’re re-using old Samsung stock where possible and only switching people over as needed. It avoids unnecessary waste while still shifting to a more sustainable standard.

cant stand big phones. thats my contribution to this discussion.

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