Nokia has announced a new repairable budget phone offering great competition for Fairphone. Nokia worked with iFixit to provide parts and tutorials for the new Nokia G22 phone and promises to provide parts at reasonable prices.
The Nokia G22 will go on sale in March 2023, starting at £150 or €179.
It’s a budget phone with lower specs than Fairphone 4, but I’m excited to see the competition. I’m also surprised to see IP52 certification on a device users can open themselves, and I hope Fairphone will do the same with their next device. Later edit: seems like Fairphone 4 has IP54 certification and it’s just splash proof.
I’m still reserved to see how it unfolds. I owned a Nokia 8 in 2018, and that phone broke twice in the first year.
Didnt follow any of the links to read more, still I think it will not really compete, as I guess, its produced under normal bad conditions for the workers, else I dont see how they can stick to that price.and/or the specs are really below the Fairphone specs and those are already only mid-range.
So it shares probably the repairability values, what is good, however is most likely lacking all other Fairphone values and in addition has worse specs.
With Shiftphones BTW. we have “real competitor” at least in Germany already since many years.
My 10 year old Nokia 6303 is still working and as Yvmuell points out there doesn’t seem to be anything Fair (Trade) about it which is the Fairphone’s underlying raison d'etre
Still, that’s one of Fairphone’s marketing arguments, and while there are certainly some buyers who cared only/mostly about “fair”, I’m quite certain there must be as many who cared mostly about repairability.
It’s always foolish to not feel threatened when somebody nullifies half your value proposition! (Also colloquially known as “resting on one’s laurels”…)
I agree with the OP that Fairphone should take this in account and step up to the challenge: The smartphone market has imploded, demand has collapsed, and now everybody is trying to make a difference. Given Fairphone doesn’t have the kind of budget the big players can throw into a project, they desperately need to stay ahead of the game because there is no way they could ever catch up again once overtaken.
Just my 2 cents worth.
They are, that’s what Fair Trade was all about 10 years ago and they started the Fair trade gold. That isn’t going to be overtaken. And anyone who cared about fair trade still had no other options. Now there are the Shift Phones.
The issue is the price and global availability which Fairphone is working on.
FP never stated they want to be alone with this and they always stated that their goal is to change the industry, so I see they got one step further with this and they are still ahead of all big players in this regard.
Nothing was nullified in my eyes, nor is there any reason for Fairphone to feel threatened, its actually the complete opposite. It all depends on how you look at it and which value you give it. I think it makes Fairphone even stronger and not weaker and its not all about competition, higher, faster, more…
I think it’s a combination of both… Fairphone is still better when it comes to sustainability, how they treat their workers, and how they source the materials. I don’t expect Nokia to release their board schematics as Fairphone does.
Fairphone still has things it can improve (for example, software experience: Android 13, full access to Camera2 API, or things like the headphones jack so I don’t have to carry that stupid adapter for my son).
It’s really nice to see other manufacturers starting to invest in repairability. I am hoping more will follow. I bought a Fairphone primarily for their approach to fair trade in publishing their value chain, but to me repairability is highly important either for that cause, since the impact of electronic products with unnecessary short life cycles on climate change has extremely negative social consequences such as long-term losses in agricultural productivity, health issues due to increasing heat, flight from disasters etc. Modularity alone already is a good step into socially more responsible products since they allow the customers to reduce environmental footprints of their electronics.
Also, competition can help drive innovation, so Fairphone can profit from the others buliding similar modular phones.
And what do we think about these points today?
Are they well known meanwhile among manufacturers, miners and others along the supply chain?
Is Fairphone as dutch manufacturer and its core values globally well known enough to make workers/suppliers/manufacturers consider to prefer rather cooperating with them instead with bigger players who are known to recklessly exploit humans of any kind by any means to gain maximum wins?
If there was a choice, who would you prefer to work for/cooperate with?
I believe Fairphone meanwhile is on the winners road.
In fact other manufacturers obviously cannot catch up with these core values albeit being much more wealthy than Fairphone.
To me it looks like there is a change going on already. Slowly but surely and Fairphone initiated the move.
I value that even more than repairability. As mentioned above, some people care more about repairability and less about fairness. Regardless of your values, competition in the repairability sector it’s good for us.
Good news, but still, the writing is on the wall.
Nokia might have botched it this time, but it shows the big players are exploring the “user repairability” feature, which means it’s only a question of time before some of them get it right(-ish).
Thats most likely more an assembling line, like Re-Phone has, to be able to call it “made in Germany”. What that actually means is, still the parts are produced in China and then shipped to EU and put together, so thats in my eyes " green washing"…
What would a phone cost really produced in the EU?
It’s a good step forward. Hopefully other manufacturers will also discover that there is a market for more sustainable products - but there is still a long way to go.
But as usual the main issue is the software. Android upgrades will only be provided for 2 years and even security fixes only for 3 years. I understand that manufacturers can not provide updates for many years - but this is mostly because Android has to be adapted for every device and can not just installed like Linux or Windows.
I had some devices in use for 5 years and kept them up to date with a custom ROM - but this is not an option for everyone and also causes problems if you need your device for banking apps which require an “original” system with a locked bootloader.
Better workers conditions may/can be expected, but - look at how Gigaset did it. Yes their assembly is in Germany/Europe but the price compensation is in the model specs, but they are catching up.
Would anyone here owning a FP2 or up purchase any Gigaset smartphone these days?
So that’s how they compensate better conditions and competitive price tags, anyway I wouldn’t purchase a Gigaset model.
And look at what Nokia these days offers, still far away from some FP2 tech specs and options.
The cheapest model most competitive in this point would be a black or empty box with a printed still image on the top (screen), but who with any sense would even pay a cent for such a fake mobile if it’s not just a free give away as we once got it to keep our patience until the FP2 was shipped FoldUpFP2-Modular-small.pdf (2.2 MB)
I did not know they are producing smartphones in Europe