F4 Remove Selficam

Hi i am currently looking for a new more privacy focused phone and stumbled across the fairphone. One of the things i am planing to do is removing the selfi camera and 3d printing sth to prevent dust from entering, i watched the video how to replace it and it looks quite simple, but are there any software locks that (like on some other phones) will prevent the phone from booting or otherwise drastically limit its function outside the camera app? (like messages, browser)

apparently it’ll still work.

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It might be too easy, but why not just cover up the camera with some tape?

Also, if you remove the camera, there is no need to print anything, since it’s under the screen glass anyway.

You could also modify one of the many prinable cases so that it extends over the notch and covers the camera.

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Hi Dakkron

The idea of covering the phone is an obvious simple option and has been mentioned more than once.

The front selfie camera is behind the screen so the camera lens can be painted over with black nail varnish internally.

The only advantage of removal is that it could be sold . . . :slight_smile:

Fairphone is repairability and sustainability focused, not privacy focused.

Why? What do you fear here?

Best wishes,
Thomas

As this was an amusing question, and one that could be answered rather simply, I decided to try it. On my FP4, running stock FP4.FP44.149.20220722, removing the front camera seemed, after very brief tests, to have very few problems. There was no problem booting, and there were no errors. The camera app degraded gracefully with respect to the front camera: the main back camera functioned normally, and pressing the switch sides button surprisingly did not crash, but simply reverted to the main camera after around one second. The one odd bug was that the wide-angle camera seemed to stop functioning, and selecting it caused the camera app to crash. This seemed to be related to the front camera, because disconnecting both the front and wide-angle cameras caused the wide-angle to degrade quite gracefully (the option simply disappeared, and the zoom bar rescaled).

Removing the front camera was very simple; after removing the top section, with its six screws, it can simply be disconnected and pulled out; it isn’t attached to the body in any other way. Reattaching it is equally simple. There would be no need to print anything, as Dakkaron mentions, because removing it has no effect at all on the exterior; in fact, it’s not immediately obvious, looking at the front, that the camera has been removed; it just makes the area slightly darker, without the reflections on the lens.

People come to Fairphone, I think, for several different reasons, and it is a virtue of the phone’s design that it is able to offer something to them.

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