Was really hoping to see a Fairphone 6a. Similar to the Google Pixel Series. Just a cheap version of it. I really don’t need 120Hz, OLED or “No Bezels” all i want is big battery and a headphone jack that is all.
a few things i like:
- moments is an interesting concept
- it says you can toggle off gemini ai. this is good
- display goes from 10-120hz for battery
- ultrawide selfie camera
- microsd card slot!
- power button fingerprint scanner, way better than underscreen
headphone jackn’t :(
This this this.
They want to sell their buds and headset.
don’t misunderstand me, those are great repairable bluetooth devices, but if i were to not have a headphone jack and just a “long lasting repairable phone” , i’m sticking to my Google pixel.
Just get a cheap usb c -> 3.5mm adapter. Problem solved.
First of all no, i dont want to carry a dongle as i may plug in multiple headsets.
Second of all, i want to charge my phone while listening to music, and i want even less to carry a doubling d’ongle
Third of all, i fail to see the “eco responsible” part of needing to buy more things than nécessary, then wearing down needlessly the usb-c over time.
So, with all due respect, piss off
PS : you’re the same kind of person who said “don’t want a phone without headphone jack? Only buy one that has one instead of complaining” when apple started the trend, and guess what mfers, i’m never stopping complaining
You’re going to plug in multiple headsets to your phone in regularly? You can’t just have a cheap dongle on those headsets’ cables?
Funny how almost everyone in here saying they need the 3.5mm jack also just happens to have a dozen pairs of headphones they use every day lol.
So much for eco responsibilty to buy dongles that could be avoided and wear usb-c.
I doubt it’s some conspiracy, but it does still suck. I’m on my 3rd USB port on my fp4 because I use wired earphones. Replaceable USB port was my initial reason for buying a fair phone otherwise I’d likely be buying a new phone every year.
USB C is not up to that kind of use, and BT ear buds suck…
They want to sell their buds and headset.
Not sure if it still is that way, but when i bought my FP4 years ago, free buds were included.
No headphone jack means I won’t even consider it, very sad to see it’s still the case.
love fairphone but i cant go bacl from graphene os. its so nice not having google attacjed to everything.
Worth noting buying a second hand phone is still better in every aspect and sadly 2nd hand Samsung from 3 years ago is still better and cheaper. Though Fairphone is getting closer with each release!
2nd hand Samsung from 3 years ago is still better and cheaper.
Cheaper? Yes. Better? Hell no, unless you can root it and install a custom ROM.
You can - Samsung phones are really well supported for that.
I would never go with Samsung as a conscious choice for custom ROMs, mostly because all well-supported devices are pretty old, which means lower chance of getting something in a decent state for a reasonable price used, that wouldn’t require immediately swapping the battery already. Not to mention the Knox eFuse which means losing functionality when flashing a custom ROM. I’d argue a used Pixel is a better option, the 7 Pro can be had for relatively little money and is still a good phone.
Yeah pixels are definitely the best but they’re expensive and not as accessible globally.
**Snapdragon 8 gen 2 enters the chat…
Can you show an example of one from 3 years ago?
Because my experience was that most ROMs were based on AOSP/ LineageOS , which supports very few Samsung phones, and no flagships since the 2018 S10.
And even of those, many didn’t support IMS/VoLTE/VoWiFi which made them useless in any geos that didn’t have 3G fallback for voice. You can’t make or receive phone calls.
Oh I just meant rooting not custom ROMs as I’ve never tried any. Rooted android will get you very far on its own so custom ROMs often feel like an overkill tbh
You will need to add on the price for a new battery replacement on a 3 year old Sammy lol
For real, though, what is it?
Compared to the Fairphone 5 it has some improvements but also a few downsides:
Pro:
- It’s a bit smaller (~4mm) and lighter (~20g)
- Slightly better camera (future tests will tell how much better)
- 120 Hz display
- More RAM and storage (although I feel that the previous 6GB/128GB option was also sufficient for most users)
- WiFi 6E Tri-Band (however you will likely never need this speed)
- Bluetooth 5.4
- Slightly larger battery
Con:
- Backpanel now requires a screwdriver
- Display has less resolution/PPI
- Performance of processor will likely be nearly identical to predecessor (however it’s more efficient and modern)
- Downgrade to USB 2
- 600€
My conclusion: Overall the improvements are ok, however just releasing the Fairphone 5 with a newer SoC might have been the better/more cost effective choice. Sacrificing display resolution for 120 Hz feels also quite wrong. 600€ is very pricy for a phone like this. Cutting some premium features away like the 120 Hz display or a bit of RAM and storage (that you can extend anyway with an SD card) might have saved enough to get the launch price down to somewhere near 500€ which would make it accessible for a wider audience.
Downgrade to USB 2
What the fuck?
USB 2? What a stupid choice that appears to be. Did they have any reasoning behind that?
The extra RAM and storage probably increased the price much more than the screen upgrade.
I bought an oled phone for 200€ a few years back. What I’d really want is that every smartphone sold in the EU is open, with open drivers and OS with root access if you want to. And some investments by the EU to support open smartphone OS.
What a shithole civilization.
Honestly, this might be the first fairphone which I would classify as good enough for daily use.
OTG compatible is a rare feature, I have an endoscope camera that uses OTG, but not a compatible phone.
Also, no mention of a headphone jack.
Ok but what about a headphone jack ?
Yeah I find a fairphone 3 to be powerful enough so I might just keep repairing it
Doesn’t seem to have one.
But to be honest, most headphone jacks on these slim phones suck and even a cheap USB-c to audio jack dongle is better than the average phone headphone jack.
The devices from Fiio show that it is still possibile to create a good quality Android device with a good headphone jack, but we might need thicker phones. I just use dongles or audio players
I respect your opinion, but I lived through 90s computing and think dongles died the death they deserve and these phone manufacturers can go to hell for bringing them back or thinking that bluetooth audio is good enough.
Additionally most of the droids I have bought that have a jack are the perfect thickness in my mind. Weighted enough to stay in my hand and take a couple dozen drops without accident. Plus the headphone jack is used as an antenna and provides radio capabilities so I can listen to local news instead of whatever the tech industry wants to feed me. Which is a nice option.
Bluetooth audio is good enough when you’re comparing it to phone headphone jacks. Phones aren’t audiophile devices. No one is going to notice the difference in sound.
A 3.5mm jack adapter is as unintrusive as can be - it just stays on your headphone cable.
It depends on what dongle and for what it is used, for something like headphones or earbuds I just leave my dongle on the cable, the same for in my car. I used a Redmi Note 13 Pro for a while which has an audio jack, but it was TERRIBLE so bad that I bought extra dongles before I switched back to using an iPhone.
I also already dispise looking for an Android phone, since I have terrible experience with Samsung Phones and Google products and don’t want either of those. Having to look for a GOOD audio jack on one is not worth the hassle for me, if it is for you then more kudo’s to you.
Ill just use an old school iPod or a USB-c cable
A thicker phone would be great. All these manufacturers forgot at some point we actually need to hold these things with a human hand.
Having said that my fp4 is actually a pretty good thickness. They just screwed that up by rounding the the edge so much seemingly to reduce contact grip.
Fairphone is probably going to be my new phone when I upgrade.
Fairphone has been a really disappointing experiment in so-called sustainable tech over the years. They keep making new phones instead of continuing to support the old ones, which might be greenwashing. (Whereas if you got a legacy Framework 13, it’s still user-repairable and upgradable.) If they wanted to make a non-upgradable device, maybe it would have been wise to make it high-end to futureproof to work until 4G gets phased out. Fairphone still is not making their products available in the U.S., and Murena is a borderline scam company and I am genuinely shocked Fairphone works with them.
And I’ve heard their logic with the headphone jack, but I do think AUX is the lesser of two evils as removing it will just lead to more e-waste with broken bluetooth headphones that rarely last as long as good wired ones. Fairphone’s own bluetooth accessories have gotten negative reviews for their lower build quality, so Fairbuds are likely not the solution to the headphone jack problem.
For the simple fact that non-Europeans can buy them directly off the website, I would sooner recommend feature phones from Sunbeam as it also has user-replaceable batteries and you can send it in for repairs. Or just any phone used.
I’ve had to swap a lot more cabled headphones out due to cable damage than bluetooth headphones, but i also only use overear headphones, which have enough battery storage for days. Also, there are also overear headsets that are dual-useable with headphone jack or bluetooth (no noise cancelling with jack tho). Also, the issue with the replacement of headphones lies with the producers of headphones w/o changeable power source, not with the phone.
And regarding availability in the US: i have the suspicion that the average european will be much more inclined to pay the 2-300$ upmark in price just for greener tech than the average american. i’m sure that they would love to sell more phones, but it’s not ecological or economical to ship them onto a continent where 80-90% of people would either compare specs only and cannot afford to go for a more sustainable phone or - a predominantly USA thing - who revel in the fact that their choice is not ecological.
What about headphones with a replaceable cable? Higher quality cables usually last longer aswell
This is what I do and have had vastly better experiences than with Bluetooth.
Yeah, my current bluetooth headset has that option, and i keep a cable in reserve. the ones i had to replace were mostly in my teens/tweens, and were still cabled in-ear style - easier to hide under clothes and hair, but also no cable replacing if you don’t know much about how to solder. TBH, if i had to decide i would not go back to cabled headphones at all - it’s simply too limiting and irritating to deal with, especially with multiple audio sources. When listening to music the latency is not important (and has improved a lot in comparison to the humble start), and it’s been a while since i had phones which had sound quality issues because of bluetooth.
I’ve noticed Europeans get really defensive when Americans criticize Fairphone for not making international shipping available.
I get it, Americans bad. Burger cowboys who drive big trucks and hate nature don’t want green phone. I hate it here and wish I were born somewhere else. But some of us want a sustainable option and we have zero options.
One plus did the same thing. Now they’re no different then all the expensive brands out there.
