this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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The Fairphone 5 price has been dropped to โ‚ฌ499. The phone is designed to be the most advanced environmentally friendly smartphone. (shop.fairphone.com)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by dwazou@jlai.lu to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] frank@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have a FP5, and love it. Yes, of course I wish it had a headphone jack.

Dual sim for my two countries I use it for, plus no sim tool needed to change hardware sim is a nice little plus.

Replaceable battery is dank. It's small and light enough to toss in a small bag if I'm going somewhere and I honestly basically never think about my battery life now.

All the rest of the hardware is pretty good. Not amazing, you can get more for the money, but also it feels good to have some morality in it. And I don't want to break it bir the peace of mind that if I do it's an easy repair, fantastic.

I hated the Fairphone case though. Terrible POS. I got a random internet one and it's much better.

[โ€“] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Adding a headphone jack would make it a slam dunk

[โ€“] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 51 points 3 days ago (23 children)

I am writing right now from my degoogled Fairphone 4 running /e/OS.

I would buy again in a heartbeat.

It's definitely not the most bang for your bucks. But it's good enough for any use, it already outlived my last 3 phones, and it shows no sign of giving up (even when I was using the Google infested OS a few months back).

I'd recommend it.

[โ€“] houseofleft@slrpnk.net 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm writing from F4 as well. The longer I own it, the more I'm impressed. Fixability has saved me replacing the phone twice now (I dropped it on the screen, and got cement in the usb charger).

If you're just considering spec, its fairly pricey, but the repairability easily makes up for it. Have a pair of their bluetooth headphones too which I love.

Question for OP: how did you find installing /e/OS? I have android still but am thinking about trying to install.

[โ€“] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I use Arch and am fairly familiar with a terminal.

Avoid their Easy Installer, it just doesn't work. And pay a lot of attention to the anti downgrade feature of the Bootloader. It's described in their guide for the FP4.

Outside of that, just follow the guide, it was pretty straightforward.

It was honestly way more work to backup everything I had on the phone...

[โ€“] Kyouki@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does everything work on /e/OS? Like banking and etc expected uses for daily use.

[โ€“] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

tl;dr it works really great for me, but there is no complete guarantee for the future, if that's not acceptable stay away.

So far, yes, at least for me. Telegram, WhatsApp, Netflix, banking, you name it. I have apps from three different banks, and they are perfect. Even the itsme app of the belgian government works a-ok. But there is no guarantee that this will always be the case.

Notably Revolut has embraced enthusiastically the new Play Integrity system, and does not work at all on any third party ROM since late autumn. I was not a customer, but it has pissed many people off.

It is not impossible that this might happen with more banks in the future.

The App of my German mutuality didn't work at the beginning (refused to log me in due to "issues with my device") but after a later update now works fine. Who know how long that will be.

Some Google things you simply loose, such as Google Pay, I also have had very mixed success with Chromecast.

Android Auto works, but refuses to use any other navigation app than GMaps and Waze. I tried installing Mapy, HereWeGo, Organic, Magic Earth... But it doesn't work. I half understand the reason, but I haven't figured out a solution yet.

I also couldn't get Slay the Spire to work, I guess it depends on some Google Play Games feature. That's probably for the better, I already spend too much time playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which is an open source roguelike available on F-Droid. Highly recommend.

[โ€“] dwazou@jlai.lu 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

People should never trust Apple

They slowed down their iPhones on purpose to encourage people to buy new ones.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/10/apple-questioned-us-senate-slowing-down-iphones-french-investigation

[โ€“] boonhet@lemm.ee 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I agree that nobody should trust any corpo, including Apple, but there's nuance to that story that never gets mentioned in these discussions.

Apple used to slow down devices whose batteries were starting to fail, in order to reduce the likelihood that your device suddenly turns off before the battery reads as empty. Simply put, if the battery couldn't guarantee a certain power output down until empty, they'd throttle the CPU.

The notably scummy part here is that they didn't tell users, and it wasn't an option you could change. To make up for it, they had a cheap battery replacement program for several years and informed users about the issue, and I believe it's optional now?

This was also several years before other manufacturers started offering OS support timelines comparable to Apple's. Apple still let you update a 6 year old iPhone when others were doing 3 years for flagships. Fairphone of course was an exception.

You should still get a Fairphone if it meets your actual needs or a Pixel if you need GrapheneOS, but if you're a non technical user who actually can make the most of a flagship, I'd recommend an iPhone over Samsung (just as expensive as Apple and these are the guys who put ads in TV UI nowadays) or Google (questionable stability with the Tensor chips in some iterations) at least. 5 years ago I'd recommend OnePlus, but those days are over. The stock ROM is now ass. I keep my old 7 pro around to play Real Racing 3 and with a custom rom I'm like 3 android versions beyond OEM support and it's actually super smooth. But I won't recommend it to a non techy user.

PS: I'm an Apple user, but not a diehard fan boy. I make comments explaining or defending them often because I feel Apple gets way more flak than their competitors who are usually equally scummy.

[โ€“] chaos@beehaw.org 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yup. I had an iPhone 6S that was affected by this. When the battery was starting to get older, things like opening the camera would sometimes just cause the phone to die. I got the battery replaced for free, but flipping it to throttle instead of randomly shut itself down was an improvement, and likely extended the usable lives of the affected phones, not artificially shorten them. It shouldn't have been done secretly but it wasn't a conspiracy to sell more iPhones.

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[โ€“] boonhet@lemm.ee 8 points 3 days ago

Additional note: they also did it with some Macbooks and I can tell you it had nothing to do with battery AGE. Machines that shower either a faulty or significantly worn battery would be slow. Apple considered 80% of nominal capacity to be the limit where a battery should be replaced under warranty on those, but the slowdowns started at like 50 or 60 percent if I recall correctly. By faulty I mean devices where the system scan in AST legally said "internal fault" or something. I used to refurb Macbooks.

It was noticeable in the 2012 macbook air because that model, a weird unicorn year with components that differed from both the 2010-2011 and 2013-2017 models, would significantly slow down with a bad battery even when it was connected to AC power. Literally removing the battery made it usable again. In other model years it was never really noticeable.

[โ€“] Cyber@feddit.uk 7 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Yeah, I have a FP3+...

I'm actually feeling guilty about considering a FP5 because my current phone works absolutely fine, had recent updates and I have a good spare battery ready to swap out on long days... so... I'll probably stay with this one even though I want the new one

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[โ€“] Maiq@lemy.lol 28 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I really wanted one but it's hardware isn't supported by grapheneOS. I wish these two companies would partner up, that would be the best of both worlds.

[โ€“] houseofleft@slrpnk.net 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Might not be the same, but they do partner with Murino to offer an /e/os degoogled alternative.

[โ€“] timestatic@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You mean Murena?

[โ€“] houseofleft@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 hours ago

Yup! Completely butchered that spelling, sorry for anyone who tried to google them.

[โ€“] Maiq@lemy.lol 6 points 2 days ago (4 children)

That's cool. At least its degoogled. GOS's security is a must for me though, after using it I don't ever want to go without. But I'm glad fairPhone is offering alternatives.

[โ€“] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago

GOS's security is very cool, but my threat model does not justify buying more disposable tech just for that.

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[โ€“] rbn@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Does someone have experience with a de-googled Android phone (graphene, /e/, ...) for professional use in IT? I need a ton of authenticator apps (Microsoft Authenticator, Oracle Authenticator,...), various VPN apps and privacy-invading 'security' apps. Does such stuff typically work without play services and with a custom rom?

In the past I used a custom rom on my private phone and already there it was a bit of hassle to get the banking app running. I'd assume it to be worse with these professional spyware apps. Am I right?

[โ€“] Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days ago

Authenticators work fine for me, banking works fine, I've had a VPN working. Have had some issues with whatsapp backup because it only wanted to backup to google drive. But after circumventing that, no other issues. This is on e/os

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[โ€“] aldfin@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Iโ€™m thinking of getting an HMD Skyline instead of this? Any reason not to? Pros and cons?

[โ€“] Srootus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Pro: Fairphone try to support their phones for as long as possible, 8-10 years for the FP5

Con: their customer support is desperate for improvement

Pro: FP offer spare parts for a long time, and there's a active gray market of people trading parts around

Con: I'm no expert on cybersecurity, but the founder and head dev or GrapheneOS talked about how FP are apparently doing a poor job with their security patches. I invite anyone to ELI5 this and do a better job than me explaining it.

[โ€“] Jumi@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Once my Galaxy S10 gives up on life which is hopefully not too soon I'll get a Fairphone too.

[โ€“] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am thinking of getting a Fairphone when the time comes to replace my phone. What are the options for operating systems? I currently have a good quality inexpensive Chinese made phone with Android. I would prefer to use an operating system that has nothing to do with Google or Apple

[โ€“] Srootus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

/e/ and LineageOS are the ones that come to mind with EOs being (I belive) officially supported.

[โ€“] anzo@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

I like it. And I'd like it more if they'd offer an incremental backup system that works over WiFi. That would be the mother of reparability. Just lost your phone? No problem, get a new one and get your backup with all stuff working right away (e.g. apps from government, banking, etc.)

[โ€“] TheMightyCat@lemm.ee 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_5_(fairphone-fp5)

Audio

Status : Broken No driver for the audio codec yet. No internal speaker or microphone is currently working. You can get all sounds via Bluetooth or USB peripherals.

That's a shame :(

[โ€“] antipiratgruppen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago (5 children)

But that's only the case for postmarketOS, and not the stock OS, right?

[โ€“] Tundra@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

yeah just postmarketOS.

Someones working on porting SailfishOS: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-os-for-fairphones-devices/21516/76

The Fairphone 4 is fully supported by Ubuntu touch though (and Fairphone5 is in the works) : https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/fp4/

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[โ€“] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago

My key feature is a headphone jack. I'm really bummed to hear the FP5 has none.

[โ€“] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I personally use a Pixel 9 with GraphineOS, I would love to use a fairphone however they desperately need to get themselves together and improve security significantly.

[โ€“] callcc@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I can't tell you the details but for some good reasons, GrapheneOS don't support Fairphone hardware. They somehow fuck things up in the security domain.

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[โ€“] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fairphone is benefiting from the economies of scales!

[โ€“] loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Econony of scales, you say... (vividly imagining a crocodile in a top hat)

[โ€“] loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I ended up drawing my vision of economy of scale capitalist reptiles

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[โ€“] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 6 points 2 days ago

Apart from the excellent repairability, this would feel like a downgrade from my S21 Ultra. Love the concept though.

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