Really wish this was available in the USA. This company has the potential to take down Google, Samsung, AND Apple if it just starts selling in the USA. There is a huge untapped market for people that are just begging to be able to do small upgrades or easily replace a screen in the USA.
I hate the fact that it almost costs as much as a new phone to get a screen replacement. Just having that component alone to be able to easily switch out would put these scam artists in the malls out of business. $220-$250 just to replace the screen on the Pixel 4a 5G??? Where do they get off at?
I actually think Mav is on to something … something very, very conspirational
Joking aside, I like your enthusiasm for Fairphone @mav5209 I really hope Fairphone can finally make the daring step overseas, but none of us here has any clue when that could be. The obstacles cannot be overestimated, and a small company like Fairphone needs to keep its risks somewhat under control.
Parents would be especially interested in being able to easily and inexpensively replace their teenage children’s smartphone screens. They’d also love that it could keep their kids from using a broken phone screen as an excuse to get a whole new phone. I’m sure there are also a lot of people who would love to be able to just easily and inexpensively replace a battery every 2-3 years instead of buying a new whole phone every 1-2 years at much greater cost (i.e. 20x).
1.) The price of the LCDs is fairly high… And we can’t even buy them direct
2.) If you have taken apart a newer model phone you would understand it’s not something you want to do. Due to the way they are designed to be thin, light, waterproof all of which makes opening them hard… makes it hard to get qualified people cheap.
3.) Because of #2 the breaking additional component risk is high so the price of the repair is set to offset the stuff they may break… Like your USB C port has an issue you need to remove a good screen and crack a $100 part…that’s no good lol.
So it’s pricey… But not all of it is profit.
But see this phone is designed to be taken apart… So it removes #2 and #3 entirely… And they plan on selling displays straight to the customer removing the middle man and some expense from #1.
I’m game on this one also… I have replaced parts on the harder phones and hated it… After I swore off self repairs I took a phone with a bad charger port in and they cracked my display and said it was always cracked (literally blamed it on me… It had rain in the charging port THAT DOES NOT CRACK A DISPLAY). This kinda phone would be perfect for me… Especially if they made it with like an extended battery and fatter back panel we could upgrade to if we wanted.
There are phones in the USA that are modular, so no need to wait for a Fairphone, the only difference is the Fairtrade attitude to the miners and factory line workers.
I looked into one such company, Teracube, but they’re low-spec $200 phones, which doesn’t bode well for longevity. They also use Mediatek SoCs, which also doesn’t bode well for longevity; as you may know, Qualcomm recently pledged to provide three years of OS updates and four years of security updates. It would be better if they had open-source firmware, but at least it’s something.
Yes, that’s the one. The full name of the company had escaped me. But as I said, they’re claiming that a $200 phone can pretty easily last four years, including OS upgrades. They’re also using Mediatek SoCs, and I doubt that they’ve managed to coax the source code for the drivers and firmware out of Mediatek. Qualcomm isn’t supplying source code either, but at least they’ve stepped up their game when it comes to support.
I have a Teracube 2e from their launch, but it’s a pretty “meh” phone. And it doesn’t seem quite as modular as the Fairphone. Maybe a merger/acquisition of Teracube by the Fairphone folks as a way to enter the US market with better quality modular phones?
The fairphone really isn’t all that pricey compared to other flagship phones, so I guess the fair trade parts don’t add that huge a percentage in costs. The teracube is a lower end phone so it has a lower end price.
Fairphone set up the Fairtrade gold source, instrumental in the cobalt alliance etc. etc. So we have the set-up costs of the ventures as well as the ongoing price of minerals at fair wages . . . .
And they pay everyone who works in the factory in China where the phone is made, irrespective of whether they make the Fairphone or not a 30% wage top-up to get a ‘living wage’
All that on 100,000 phones a year
Sure if they sell more ~ profits will be proportionally larger but not much soon.
They set out to solve a masive problem the usa faces right to repair but they solved it everywhere elts the usa is the problem china dosent have a right to repair problem
