fairphone.com
A completely open source, rooted, hardware and software on which you can also install FirefoxOS and UbuntuOS too.
I'm really struggling to buy into Fairphone's vision when it appears they started with a cheap Chinese reference design with cheap Chinese parts manufactured in Chinese factories. It's a good start, though.
Edit: Here's the block diagram for the CPU:
http://www.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Media...
The GPU appears to use LPDDR2 memory, which causes it to falter in benchmarks against devices with the same GPU cores (the standard right now is LPDDR3 GPU mem)
But why would you think MTK is comitting any intellectual property violations with the design?
I guess that by acknowledging the possibility they give credence to the idea? But the tone implies that the author does not believe in the idea themselves.
I was pointing out that most games are optimized for the Snapdragon and Tegra families of chips. So unless MTK is "borrowing" the IP from one of those two, many games aren't going to run great.
And it's 325 EUR. For just a little more I can get a Nexus 4 that has really good specs. I understand why the Nexus 4 is so cheap and how these guy cannot compete on price, but I'd be willing to pay, say, 600 EUR for a truly open device that has good specs than half of that for a really awful device.
> Android OS (4.2 Jelly Bean): Special interface developed by Kwame Corporation
Oh please, I'd have expected a project such as this to know better than not to screw up with stock Android experience.
> And it's 325 EUR. For just a little more I can get a Nexus 4 that has really good specs.
So, in fact you just don't put social values before the specs...
I would suggest that this is about social value as much as when all those movie stars bought Toyota Prii.
If you want to help Africa, give money to Doctors Without Borders or UNICEF, don't buy a smartphone and and brag about it on twitter while sipping fair-trade coffee.
Hear, hear TylerE -- well put. It reminds me of "Smug Alert": http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e02-smug-al...
The best course of action, of course, is to take the most socially-conscious option for every consumer choice. So, donate to DWB and buy a fairphone -- or, better, stick to your old phone.
The fact that I'd pay 6-700 EUR for a phone that has the performance of a 370 EUR Phone (Nexus 4), way less than the performance of other 6-700 EUR phones on the market, means that I do care about other aspects of the phone more than about performance. I just want something usable, not a brick.
Still, either way you calculate it, the extra price is somewhere between 50 dollars and 50 euros. And since it has a perfectly good warranty in the US, I doubt that's the difference. At face value it really looks like one of those ripoffs that scribble out the $ in the price and put a euro or a pound on top of it.
maybe your standards of "usability" are skewed.
A completely open source, rooted-by-default hardware and software on which you can also install FirefoxOS, Ubuntu and Debian too (http://www.fairphone.com/#faq)
I don't know the precise delineation, but there are some resources (tantalum, used in capacitors, is notorious for this) mined in regions of the world, especially Africa, which are run by regimes which don't respect the United Nation's definition of human rights. IOW, warlords firing machine guns over the heads of slave labor to sell the minerals to fund their weapons purchases.
So, it's not specifically about a named conflict, such as a war, but about some kind of traceability back to whether or not the suppliers were approved by some body. IDK which organizations do this.
Note that my description does not validate this phone and its traceability in particular. It may be just as backdoored and loopholed as the USDA definition of "organic" for all I know. However, I hope my explanation of "conflict-free resources" is useful as an ideal. And I hope this phone is actually taking marketshare from those manufactured with "conflictful" resources.
On a personal note, I've been driving myself crazy trying to choose the best smartphone to buy right now. I don't particularly care about games and I know I want Android. So this phone might just be the choice for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Cong...
From the article: - 45,000 people were dying daily as of 2009 - estimates on deaths due to the most recent conflict (deadliest since WWII) were 5,400,000 (though that number is in dispute, no one seems to be standing firmly behind another statistic). - 400,000 women are raped yearly (2011 statistic)
WTF.
For some reference as to which companies do the best, check: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/conflict-minerals-c...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Virgin+Mobile+-+PCD+Chaser+No-Co...
What, exactly is the moral alternative that Zizek would have us live by if not trade? Marxism for example, which runs under the philosophy "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" sounds great. But then, who decides what constitutes ability, and what constitutes need. And how can I make me and my friends that committee?
He's also an unapologetic Marxist, so I suppose that'd be his alternative. You might start looking for answers to your questions in his books.
Does anyone know if that is an existing theme or mod?
By "I'm sure" do you mean "I assume" or "I am certain, they have explicitly stated it?"