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Hardware

Fairphone Users Can Buy New Camera Without Replacing the Phone Itself (arstechnica.com) 32

Posted by msmash from the shining-star dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last year, repair guide site iFixit tore down the Fairphone 3 and gave the modular-designed phone a rare perfect 10/10 repairability score. Today, Fairphone demonstrated just how far its philosophy of modular phone design can take its users by offering the massively upgraded cameras from its newly released Fairphone 3+ model to owners of the earlier Fairphone 3. Fairphone designs are noticeably bulkier than typical smartphone designs -- but they have a reason to be. Its components have been split into seven replaceable modules in order to extend the service life of each Fairphone. Battery getting weak? It's replaceable. Dropped your phone and broke the screen? Not only replaceable, but guaranteed replaceable -- and for reasonably technical end users, user-replaceable -- with easily purchased parts from the factory. The original Fairphone 3 launched with a 12 megapixel rear camera and an 8 megapixel front camera. The newly released Fairphone 3+ is essentially the same phone, but it offers a refresh on the camera modules, bringing the rear camera to 48 megapixels and the front to 16 megapixels. Owners of the original Fairphone 3 can upgrade by simply purchasing replacement modules from the Fairphone store and replacing them.
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Fairphone Users Can Buy New Camera Without Replacing the Phone Itself More

Fairphone Users Can Buy New Camera Without Replacing the Phone Itself

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  • According to Fairphone, their radio lacks the mid-bands that are used in America.

    So, whereâ(TM)s the Module for that?

    • Not sure if joking or clueless...

      • Not sure if joking or clueless...

        Perhaps clueless, like myself? I have no idea what you think is funny about his statement.

    • According to Fairphone, their radio lacks the mid-bands that are used in America.

      So, whereâ(TM)s the Module for that?

      You can't buy one here anyway, can you?

    • Of course - they won't sell it to Americans ⦠or Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Indiana, Chinese, Australians, or pretty much anyone outside the EEA.

      And if they did, the cable, charger, and earphones are all extra cost items you have to order.

      Someone needs to add this to the story - because not everyone is going to be skeptical and want to know things like "HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?" For most of the planet it's Seinfeld's Soup Nazi ported to phones - "No Fairphone for you!"

  • repairable beyond obsolesence (Score:4, Informative)

    by MancunianMaskMan ( 701642 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @02:55PM (#60450712)
    My father in law has a fairphone (i think it's a 2, maybe 1) and once the battery was dead i had difficulty sourcing a new one: fairphone in the UK or his phone operator don't sell them here any more :-(

    I managed to get one off a German ebay seller and the phone kinda works now but sometimes it forgets to go into sleep mode, runs hot and drains the battery. The old man is very committed to sustainability and would hang on to the thing but it seem right now the software is letting him down.

    • My father in law has a fairphone (i think it's a 2, maybe 1) and once the battery was dead i had difficulty sourcing a new one: fairphone in the UK or his phone operator don't sell them here any more :-(

      I managed to get one off a German ebay seller and the phone kinda works now but sometimes it forgets to go into sleep mode, runs hot and drains the battery. The old man is very committed to sustainability and would hang on to the thing but it seem right now the software is letting him down.

      Hmm, sounds like you should throw the fairphone directly into a trash receptacle and go buy another disposable phone.
      Perhaps don't pay extra for the sustainability next time.

    • My father in law has a fairphone (i think it's a 2, maybe 1) and once the battery was dead i had difficulty sourcing a new one: fairphone in the UK or his phone operator don't sell them here any more :-(

      I managed to get one off a German ebay seller and the phone kinda works now but sometimes it forgets to go into sleep mode, runs hot and drains the battery. The old man is very committed to sustainability and would hang on to the thing but it seem right now the software is letting him down.

      Batteries for 2 is listed in their shop https://shop.fairphone.com/en/... [fairphone.com] Lineage os has a port for the 2 https://download.lineageos.org... [lineageos.org] But if he has a 1 there doesn't seem to be much available of neither hardware nor roms (from a cursory look).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      My father in law has a fairphone (i think it's a 2, maybe 1) and once the battery was dead i had difficulty sourcing a new one: fairphone in the UK or his phone operator don't sell them here any more :-(

      I managed to get one off a German ebay seller and the phone kinda works now but sometimes it forgets to go into sleep mode, runs hot and drains the battery. The old man is very committed to sustainability and would hang on to the thing but it seem right now the software is letting him down.

      The irony being, m

  • Bulky but serviceable, or sleek and elegant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @03:17PM (#60450782)

    First time I bought a PC I was very concerned about upgrade ability.
    What I found was I almost never upgraded it. A new one was better all around and cheaper as a unit.

    This might appeal to hobbyists but given the choice between bulky but serviceable vs sleek and elegant most consumers will choose the latter.
    And unless if there is a vibrant market for cool replacement parts very few hobbyists will choose the former.

    • With the way many of the phone updates have been for the past few cycles, being able to swap out cameras and the CPU will cover most of the same upgrades as getting a new phone.

      • With the way many of the phone updates have been for the past few cycles, being able to swap out cameras and the CPU will cover most of the same upgrades as getting a new phone.

        Looking at their spare parts they don't have motherboards.
        If they did they could have offered a fairphone 2 motherboard upgrade when they released a fairphone 3
        https://shop.fairphone.com/en/... [fairphone.com]

        I found one forum comment that listed a motherboard spare part available at launch for the fairphone 2.
        It cost 314 euro! That's crazy!
        https://forum.fairphone.com/t/... [fairphone.com]

      • With the way many of the phone updates have been for the past few cycles, being able to swap out cameras and the CPU will cover most of the same upgrades as getting a new phone.

        Given how this is marketed you would expect it would be easy to get parts for the fairphone 2, right?
        Well, this is on their web site, it doesn't fill me with confidence:

        https://www.fairphone.com/en/2... [fairphone.com]

        Earlier this year, we announced that we had completely sold out of the Fairphone 2, and that we had stockpiled spare parts with the aim of having them available for three more years. However, the camera module’s story started much earlier: in 2017, our supplier stopped manufacturing the Fairphone 2 came

    • Having had 3 psu, 1 graphics card, 1 mobo, a hard drive or two fail on me at various times... im glad i didn't have to replace the whole thing just because of part fail.

  • So... it is possible (Score:3)

    by bmimatt ( 1021295 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @04:05PM (#60450944)
    I am looking forward to Fairphone shipping to the US. I'd gladly upgrade from apple to something more sustainable, green and repairable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rgbe ( 310525 )
      I'm looking forward to the Fairphone too. I considered it 1.5 years ago before I moved from Android to iPhone. The reason I switched to iPhone is complex, but the leading decision was that Apple is the greenest large manufacturer by far, it's even close to the Fairphone: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa... [greenpeace.org] Yes, Apple have many practices I don't agree with, including repairability. But if you look at Apple's servicing and OS support, they support phones that are 5 years old, unlike Android phones which for

      • Apple for sure is greenest per dollar spent, that you can bank on.

        Anyway fairphone is basically a feelgood scam. I like it conceptually but it would need 3rd party modules and much lower pricing and different tiers.

  • I thought that the supported video and audio codecs were very open-source friendly as well as covering the proprietary codecs, and the video playback resolutions were very respectable. I would like to have this phone when I finally admit that my first smartphone is on its last leg. Unfortunately, the phone is not available to third-world countries like the U.S. with its crumbling infrastructure. Do I need the CDMA band in the U.S.? I didn't see it in the phone's specs.

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