Comment by 1dom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1dom | Hacker News Reader

I feel the votes and excitement in this thread aren't from people with a Fairphone 6 or PMOS.

From the PMOS wiki: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...:

> No internal speakers or microphones are currently working. Media sound (not calls) is working if connecting a Bluetooth or USB audio device.

I got a Fairphone 6 last year, after having a OnePlus 7 Pro which I bought in 2019 and still worked flawlessly, apart from not having received an update in several years.

The Fairphone 6 works. It's slower and more buggy than a 7 year old flagship though. I'll probably use it until it dies in however many years time, but my overall experience with Fairphone has been that I've paid a huge amount for a below standard, poorly supported, but apparently fair phone. The Fairphone forums are a trainwreck too.

I really, really wish Fairphone was better, but the entire company experience is so janky for how expensive the products are.

A prime example: I thought I lost a few eclipse pictures because they weren't showing in the gallery after I took them. I'm pretty certain it's this same bug from over a year ago: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fairphone-6-camera-pictures-mi...

Me and my partner both got our oneplus 7 pros at the same time, and hers also lasted. She upgraded at same time and just wanted/needed a phone that works for work, so she opted for the Pixel 9a instead. It's cheaper, faster, more reliable and better supported.

Sorry to rant - it distresses me a lot when good intentions take a lot of money and deliver a relatively subpar product and service. I guess this is the price of principled tech. It's really not great, unfortunately.

It's a bleak situation. I don't have a Fairphone (after much agonising, I went instead with a used Pixel when I finally decided to retire my previous phone). I love Fairphone's mission and hope they succeed but indeed it is very difficult to justify spending that much on a phone with those specs, particularly when the company is young and so its promises of replacement parts, extended updates, etc, are difficult to assess.

I have played around a bit with pmOS, originally on an early Pinephone (the "Braveheart" model, which was plagued with hardware issues) and more recently on an ASUS MeMO Pad 7 (which at the time was in the "Community" support category but appears to have since been archived by pmOS). Even on devices where it "works", it tends to be slow, buggy, very heavy on battery and some peripherals like GPS and camera very rarely work.

This is absolutely not intended as criticism of the Fairphone, Pinephone or pmOS teams - on the contrary they are doing fantastic and important work. I think the problem is just really hard when you're working against the interests of some of the wealthiest corporations on earth (and governments seem to have zero interest in helping solve it).

> I really, really wish Fairphone was better, but the entire company experience is so janky for how expensive the products are.

Fellow Fairphone user here & I don't really understand this comment. Why did you buy a Fairphone?

As far as I can understand, the main reason anyone would buy a Fairphone is because they want a fair(er) phone. That "fairness" involves reducing profit-driven exploitation - there's an implicit understanding there that that massively increases supply chain cost, right?

It just feels like you're trying to have your cake & eat it too here. Nobody should be comparing Fairphones to a flagship of any era.

Sorry, I strongly disagree with what you're saying here, and I think you're part of the problem. I bought a fair phone because I believe treating people and things fairly genuinely leads to a better output over time - it should, and it hasn't with Fairphone.

I'm not trying to have my cake and eat it, to extend your analogy, we both had the cake, we've both eaten it - it's the same cake. I'm saying I appreciate the cake was fair, I appreciate the staff were paid well, I appreciate good fair ingredients were used, I'm glad I bought the cake, I know why I did, because it aligns with my ethos.

All the necessary things that went into an average cake - and more - have been put into this cake. My point here is I don't understand why it tastes worse than the average cake. Based on my view of the world, it should taste at least as good as a regular cake, because it has more money, at least similar quality materials, and should have higher quality, more passionate labour involved.

I feel like you don't understand my comment because you've taken personal offence to me providing critical feedback about the taste of your favourite cake. I like your cake vendor, and the cake vendor cause. This is why I want them to succeed, which is why I provide the honest feedback.

If you say you can do something well, it just needs money and fairness, and people give you money and fairness, and you don't do the thing well... that's not really fair.

> No internal speakers or microphones are currently working. Media sound (not calls) is working if connecting a Bluetooth or USB audio device.

See the other blog posts by the same author in the story posted.[1] He's added support for these and other hardware parts for the FP6, currently being upstreamed directly to the Linux kernel.

[1] https://catcrafts.net/posts

Thanks for this. My main hope is that as PMOS become daily-driverable, the nature and number of irritated Fairphone users will quickly make PMOS a better alternative to any of the Androids available on FP6.

If that happens, the resultant hardware/software/freedom combo could be well worth the cost. I hope Fairphone make some big donations to PMOS if this happens - it would not be very fair for the people responsible for a buggy phone get all the money whilst the PMOS people who make it great, fair and open get nothing.

There are definitely trade offs with Fairphone but it's unfair (no pun intended) to compare them with a company like Google without mentioning their strong points.

Fairphone does focus on having a better social and environmental impact, this comes as part of the price. It does also focus on repairability which also comes as part of the price. If those are things you do not specifically value (which is fine), that definitely makes their products too expensive in comparison with other manufacturers. The support side could definitely be better but as a small company, I personally thinks it's okay.

I have a Fairphone 4 and I'm happy with it, it's fast, takes good pictures, and just works. It has great support in communities as well. I was able to easily change a part of a Fairphone 3 (dead usb c port) and the experience there was just great, they really made repairs super easy.

They're fair points. I do respect their ethos and what they're trying to do, that's why I hope they have more success than they're having at the moment. I do want to give equal weight and time to that. But at the end of the day, I'm buying a modern phone, it needs to behave like a modern phone.

FWIW, my understanding is the FP6 seems to be notably less successful and "just works" compared to earlier models.

It isn't really slow. It takes average pictures, and sometimes loses them. It regularly does annoying little freezes and bugs.

The FP6 has average spec, average performance, more bugs than average, worse/slower support than average (at least on their own forums) and a higher price than average.

I believe fair stuff done right should be at least as good as average, and I'm fine to pay more than average for that. When I pay more than average and get less than average, and looking like they're ignoring/avoiding problems in their own forums, that feels as though someone isn't being very fair towards their customers.

I share the same experience with My FP6. I want to love it. But the edges of experience are so rough it pains me damn near every day.

I'm flipping it as soon as Motorola releases their GrapheneOS compatible phone. I hate that I have no other decent options, and that phones are getting bigger and bigger, but I don't really have a choice.

If Apple would be so kind as to release an SE-sized phone again, I'd jump right back. iOS 26 is horrible, but they at least seem to be on the right track to improve things again.

> but they at least seem to be on the right track to improve things again

Where did you get this impression? It seems to be the opposite:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556

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