This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm due for an upgrade from my pixel 3, which I love but the battery life is getting very low. I'm very interested in this, but wouldn't want to spend the money/resources on something that doesn't work well for me. Getting something upgradeable, then discovering the quality is bad and it doesn't last isn't very sustainable.
If anyone has any personal experience with this phone I'd love to hear it!
I've had one for a while now and overall I'm happy with it. The screen and camera are as good as some other devices and it doesn't support all of some bands that US providers use so service coverage may vary. I should also add that the touch sensitivity is a little off. I'm not sure if thats software or hardware to blame though.
I'm on a T-Mobile reseller and excluding situations like being inside a data center or being outside of town camping or whatever my service has been acceptable. Its also less an issue for me as in almost always in WiFi range.
I don't think the phone is upgradable. It is repairable though. The fact that it has an easily removable battery is enough to justify the device for me as glued in dead batteries have historically been my biggest issue with device longevity.
I never considered that the model of phone would affect the coverage, that shows how much I know! Definitely something to consider, I drive through low coverage areas a lot and do not want to get stranded with no way to communicate.
And good point with the upgradeable vs repairable. It would be so cool if it was upgradeable! Making every new part backwards compatible would be a huge pain for the designers though. But like you said the battery is the real problem with most phones. I'd be very happy with a more standard phone that just had a replaceable battery!
Have you ever had an issue that you had to get support for? Whether it's asking fairphone for help or just searching online for answers, did you have any trouble?
I am very clumsy and tend to drop my phone a lot. I worry that the disassemble-able design could make the phone less drop resistant, have you experienced that? (Or maybe you just have basic levels of hand-eye coordination and are able to hold on to a phone without issues lol)
Have you ever had an issue that you had to get support for? Whether it's asking fairphone for help or just searching online for answers, did you have any trouble?
Hmmm. I don't think so. I had some weird issues with audio on phone calls at one point but I think that was not due to the phone and more so due to LineageOS, a third party OS.
I worry that the disassemble-able design could make the phone less drop resistant, have you experienced that?
Well I don't drop my phone but I also don't feel like its construction lends it to being overall weaker. I also keep it in a case and with a screen protector on though.
Yes it's not as durable, also it's not water resistant at all.
I'd consider getting a good case with it.
The screen is Gorilla 4 so it should be fine with a protector.
Ohhh, I go between Europe and the US a lot and own one of these. Hopefully this means US companies will offer more support for the fairphone 4!
Great news. The more sustainable options the better. Hopefully it will do well
They are pretty cool but you are still stuck with Android so its a no for me.
wooo /e/ the worst name for a great os. I use their Murena as my phone and I would love to have it on a fairphone
I have a fariphone 4 since it was released and I'm very happy with it. It's does not have the most powerful or newest specs, if you only care about performance the price is pretty high, but you wouldn't buy one if that's your priority anyway and so far, it works great.
I have it and I'm pretty happy with it, but for some reason I have dropped this phone way more often than any phone I had before. Idk if this is a me issue, but maybe get a protective case from the start (unlike me)
A lot easier to buy a samsung and get rid of the bloatware. Much more powerful too. Fairphone seems like a gimmick to me.
Do you understand the selling point of this phone or not?
It's is almost always a lot easier to pay less for a superior product that is less ethical and environmentally friendly.
Looks like my next phone is decided on.
CustomROMs fun and all but it is a bit of hussle.
Hopefully United Staters get the FP4 and we get the FP5
The concept is cool but I think it is more sustainable to have a high end "normal" android phone. The Fairphone ships with a lowend chip that is already older. It may be usable now but it won't be in a few years apps and OS will be more ressource-intensive. A high-end chip of a "normal" device (8gen1/2) is way more powerful and will surely be enough for the next 5 years. The SD750G will propably not.
Not to mention that the software updates will be more reliable on big brand phones.
Hard to say for sure, keep in mind that this is a degoogled by default android, meaning that depending on how much Google services chug (and oh boy, do they chug) the phone may hold up with no problem at all.
While it is a computer, my personal Lenovo T60 from (i think) 2007 is still my favorite machine to browse the internet on and read articles. Once I librebooted it and installed debian, it ran with no problems at all and is very functional till this day
I have the fairphone 3 and it's still doing fine. I don't game on it but map navigation and 1080p videos run well.
I'd like one of these but I'm not sold on De-Googled
Same. In my experience as well, almost all alternatives to Google Maps either:
don't have Android Auto support (a must for me)
don't have local coffee shops (you'd be surprised how often these apps fail to find 7-Brew coffee shops...)
don't actually give you enough time to turn (Waze... Which is also owned by Google btw)
Waze is the closest of these but man it's annoying with that third bullet point. It's also not FOSS.
I can only imagine Magic Maps falls into one of those three categories too.
Organic Maps is surprisingly good. Not fantastic, no - but it can highlight coffee shops or restaurants or gas stations on your route
I definitely like Organic Maps the best of the options I've tried, but unfortunately it doesn't have Android Auto support.
It looks like they tried to do Android Auto support about a year ago in a branch, but they abandoned the branch. There is a new "aa" branch that is active though, so hopefully that works out.
If it does get Android Auto support, I will definitely switch to it permanently though!
