More than a decade after launching in Europe, the Netherlands company is now selling its repairable phones in the US, starting with the Fairphone (Gen 6+).
They have a great team, sadly they continuously aimed for a broad target audience in lack of support for degoogled OSes (only doing the bare minimum) and the headphone jack indeed. Also, sadly, the long life thingie is a joke when you are a cautious user and you don’t break your phone. 5-7 years after purchase, spare parts are no longer available :/
Not a deal breaker for others but it is for me. Their rationale saying that the USB-C is more resilient than the jack is weird because I’ve never had the jack fail and even if it does that why you’re selling a repairable phone to me …
Anyways, I see they’re selling earbuds so I’m going to assume that that’s their main motivator.
I’ve had GrapheneOS for a little bit now, and while it’s great that ‘Google’ has been stripped from it, but the giant warning that you can’t avoid when restarting the phone, so many services simply breaking, it feels a lot like the old days of custom ROMs. Maybe for certain people it can be a daily driver, but goodness it’s difficult to diagnose and fix bugs when it all comes back to Google permissions and services that you really can’t get around.
/e/OS is that middle ground between GrapheneOS and stock Android, and it has most of the benefits of the former while stripping away most of the deficiencies of the latter. You also don’t have to use Murena’s cloud suite, but it’s pretty good for what it is if you do want or need that part of it.
And a bonus is that /e/OS runs on every device that can run GrapheneOS in addition to other devices, and the Fairphone 6+ is one of them.
I’ve been using it for almost a month and I’m a big fan. I was planning to wait for the Motorola phone but my screen on my old phone was rapidly becoming unusable.
I’m using it to divorce Big Tech. I created two secondary profiles, one for work and one for Big Tech. The Big Tech profile is where I’ll enable Google services and permissions. I don’t let it run in the background so once I switch back its like I turned off Big Tech. I can still use all the apps and services I’m used to, but I added enough friction that it’s causing me to explore alternatives every day.
My owner profile has Play and Play Services totally disabled. I get push notifications for Signal using Sunup for UnifiedPush. I get apps mostly through Accressent, Obtainium, and Aurora. If apps complain about missing Google services too much, they get relegated to the Big Tech profile while I find an alternative. Most of the apps that complain about it (like Ring) still work fine. Most of the “apps” I use are just PWAs that run in Vanadium and have icons on the home screen.
The biggest issues I’ve had were around RCS messaging. I was able to get it to work in the Owner profile, but it’s a known issue that it doesn’t work in secondary profiles. I’m just not getting group texts from iPhone users anymore. Oh well, everyone who matters will contact me on Signal or SMS directly. I was never able to get E2EE working over RCS with iPhone users anyways, even though my carrier supposedly supports it and the iPhones were updated.
It’s also exposing just how much I depend on Big Tech. I’ll probably be switching to Proton for mail, calendar, and VPN. My one gripe is they don’t have a way to sync contacts to my phone. Still, Ill happily pay $10 a month for storage and services that don’t spy on me for advertising instead of paying $3 a month for a service where I can’t expect any privacy.
I’m still using Big Tech while driving unfortunately, haven’t explored alternatives to Maps and Spotify yet.
You really should consider dropping Ring for something that doesn’t automatically and enthusiastically give your recordings to cops without a warrant or even a subpoena. I wish I could recommend something cloud based but they all suck; right now I’m planning to install PoE IPTV cameras around the outside of the house so the feeds stay within my network, with a remote access tunnel for myself and family members when we’re not home.
Proton is not the paragon of privacy they claim to be; they have been caught lying about log retention and have volunteered subscriber info to authorities with zero resistance. I use Fastmail for email/calendar/files, I know they don’t advertise themselves as “the one true privacy service” like Proton does, but they have a strong privacy policy and I’ve had almost 100% uptime from them over the past decade. They are also less expensive than Proton, though they don’t offer a VPN. They don’t sell your data or run any advertising in their apps and services, and they haven’t jumped on the “AI” bandwagon like Proton and other similar services have. Their mobile apps are top notch and their desktop app, while just an Electron-wrapped thing, is still pretty damned good and works great on Linux. The web app itself is 100% compatible with Firefox and its far superior forks like Librewolf and Waterfox; it’s my main working environment even in OpenBSD where I spend much of my day.
A good alternative to Spotify is Tidal, a little less expensive and they pay artists much more than the other services, plus they offer independent artists an easy way to distribute their own music, similar to Bandcamp.
Maps is a tough one, Google and Apple have cornered the market there. HERE Maps used to be great, especially a decade ago with Windows Phone devices, but I haven’t looked at them lately.
It’s only going to get more difficult to get Big Tech out of our lives over the next few years, so there’s never a better time than right now to start. I wish you success and freedom on this journey, my friend.
That’s not the same thing.
There’s also nothing worse than being on a long journey wanting to listen to music but needing to also charge your phone before you reach your destination.
I use one of those every night and they’re awful. I buy them 5 at a time because they’re not very durable, and you end up with this especially irritating tangle of cables.
Listen man, if the phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack, IR Blaster, FM radio receiver, pop out rotating 6mp camera, micro SD slots, 2g compatibility, Native flash support and a physical keyboard that pops out like the fucking matrix, then it’s a complete piece of corporate shit and you’re a complete neo liberal bum bandit if you think otherwise…
Screw that microSD slot, give me the full fat SD slot like my Treo 650 had back in 2007! The spring loaded kind so I can lose yet another SD when I pull the phone out of my pocket and the card snags on my jeans and goes flying and I don’t realize it until I’m 30 minutes away from where it happened, and now some guy in the AutoZone parking lot has my dog photos and Space Trader save files.
Magnetic ink screen, that’s my make or break. It’s so damn nice to just look at my phone in broad daylight, and it keeps me from wasting time on youtube.
Headphone jack is a close second though. Shame, maybe we’ll see what the fairphone 7 looks like
I’ll be that guy. No headphone jack, no sale. As others have said, I’d love GrapheneOS as well, but I know why that isn’t in the cards.
They have a great team, sadly they continuously aimed for a broad target audience in lack of support for degoogled OSes (only doing the bare minimum) and the headphone jack indeed. Also, sadly, the long life thingie is a joke when you are a cautious user and you don’t break your phone. 5-7 years after purchase, spare parts are no longer available :/
Yeah, no jack no thanks …
Not a deal breaker for others but it is for me. Their rationale saying that the USB-C is more resilient than the jack is weird because I’ve never had the jack fail and even if it does that why you’re selling a repairable phone to me …
Anyways, I see they’re selling earbuds so I’m going to assume that that’s their main motivator.
I’ve had several 3.5mm jacks fail. I’ve yet to have a USBC port fail, but I’ve also had fewer USBC ports and for fewer years.
I’ve had them both be problematic. Nothing deoxit can’t fix.
Headphone jacks have a hell of a lot of leverage on that port. An IP68 headphone jack is honestly pretty bulky.
I’d rather have one. I also also like us to go back to phones that are 1cm+ thick and just fill it out with battery.
I’ve had GrapheneOS for a little bit now, and while it’s great that ‘Google’ has been stripped from it, but the giant warning that you can’t avoid when restarting the phone, so many services simply breaking, it feels a lot like the old days of custom ROMs. Maybe for certain people it can be a daily driver, but goodness it’s difficult to diagnose and fix bugs when it all comes back to Google permissions and services that you really can’t get around.
/e/OS is that middle ground between GrapheneOS and stock Android, and it has most of the benefits of the former while stripping away most of the deficiencies of the latter. You also don’t have to use Murena’s cloud suite, but it’s pretty good for what it is if you do want or need that part of it.
And a bonus is that /e/OS runs on every device that can run GrapheneOS in addition to other devices, and the Fairphone 6+ is one of them.
I’ve been using it for almost a month and I’m a big fan. I was planning to wait for the Motorola phone but my screen on my old phone was rapidly becoming unusable.
I’m using it to divorce Big Tech. I created two secondary profiles, one for work and one for Big Tech. The Big Tech profile is where I’ll enable Google services and permissions. I don’t let it run in the background so once I switch back its like I turned off Big Tech. I can still use all the apps and services I’m used to, but I added enough friction that it’s causing me to explore alternatives every day.
My owner profile has Play and Play Services totally disabled. I get push notifications for Signal using Sunup for UnifiedPush. I get apps mostly through Accressent, Obtainium, and Aurora. If apps complain about missing Google services too much, they get relegated to the Big Tech profile while I find an alternative. Most of the apps that complain about it (like Ring) still work fine. Most of the “apps” I use are just PWAs that run in Vanadium and have icons on the home screen.
The biggest issues I’ve had were around RCS messaging. I was able to get it to work in the Owner profile, but it’s a known issue that it doesn’t work in secondary profiles. I’m just not getting group texts from iPhone users anymore. Oh well, everyone who matters will contact me on Signal or SMS directly. I was never able to get E2EE working over RCS with iPhone users anyways, even though my carrier supposedly supports it and the iPhones were updated.
It’s also exposing just how much I depend on Big Tech. I’ll probably be switching to Proton for mail, calendar, and VPN. My one gripe is they don’t have a way to sync contacts to my phone. Still, Ill happily pay $10 a month for storage and services that don’t spy on me for advertising instead of paying $3 a month for a service where I can’t expect any privacy.
I’m still using Big Tech while driving unfortunately, haven’t explored alternatives to Maps and Spotify yet.
You really should consider dropping Ring for something that doesn’t automatically and enthusiastically give your recordings to cops without a warrant or even a subpoena. I wish I could recommend something cloud based but they all suck; right now I’m planning to install PoE IPTV cameras around the outside of the house so the feeds stay within my network, with a remote access tunnel for myself and family members when we’re not home.
Proton is not the paragon of privacy they claim to be; they have been caught lying about log retention and have volunteered subscriber info to authorities with zero resistance. I use Fastmail for email/calendar/files, I know they don’t advertise themselves as “the one true privacy service” like Proton does, but they have a strong privacy policy and I’ve had almost 100% uptime from them over the past decade. They are also less expensive than Proton, though they don’t offer a VPN. They don’t sell your data or run any advertising in their apps and services, and they haven’t jumped on the “AI” bandwagon like Proton and other similar services have. Their mobile apps are top notch and their desktop app, while just an Electron-wrapped thing, is still pretty damned good and works great on Linux. The web app itself is 100% compatible with Firefox and its far superior forks like Librewolf and Waterfox; it’s my main working environment even in OpenBSD where I spend much of my day.
A good alternative to Spotify is Tidal, a little less expensive and they pay artists much more than the other services, plus they offer independent artists an easy way to distribute their own music, similar to Bandcamp.
Maps is a tough one, Google and Apple have cornered the market there. HERE Maps used to be great, especially a decade ago with Windows Phone devices, but I haven’t looked at them lately.
It’s only going to get more difficult to get Big Tech out of our lives over the next few years, so there’s never a better time than right now to start. I wish you success and freedom on this journey, my friend.
Is it not worth repairablity and potential headphone jack upgrades? Their pr is really moving quick now… 🤔
How would they sell a headphone jack upgrade?
That’s not the same thing. There’s also nothing worse than being on a long journey wanting to listen to music but needing to also charge your phone before you reach your destination.
they make em with a usb-c + 3.5mm -> usb-c still not the same, but a way to get by
I use one of those every night and they’re awful. I buy them 5 at a time because they’re not very durable, and you end up with this especially irritating tangle of cables.
it’s always something.
Listen man, if the phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack, IR Blaster, FM radio receiver, pop out rotating 6mp camera, micro SD slots, 2g compatibility, Native flash support and a physical keyboard that pops out like the fucking matrix, then it’s a complete piece of corporate shit and you’re a complete neo liberal bum bandit if you think otherwise…
Screw that microSD slot, give me the full fat SD slot like my Treo 650 had back in 2007! The spring loaded kind so I can lose yet another SD when I pull the phone out of my pocket and the card snags on my jeans and goes flying and I don’t realize it until I’m 30 minutes away from where it happened, and now some guy in the AutoZone parking lot has my dog photos and Space Trader save files.
don’t forget the nipple blasters, bidet, shower squeegee, AM radio, FM radio, CB radio, xray, zray, and replicator.
Well the phone’s modular for a reason…
I don’t think it’s modular in that way
Magnetic ink screen, that’s my make or break. It’s so damn nice to just look at my phone in broad daylight, and it keeps me from wasting time on youtube.
Headphone jack is a close second though. Shame, maybe we’ll see what the fairphone 7 looks like