You’re making much more sense than I do
This contradiction is actually revealing that I wanted to buy that Fairphone 2 so much!
It even would be an upgrade from my S3 in terms of speed, internal storage etc. So it would actually still feel like a new phone like I was used to get every 2 years.
But I’ve unintentionally given myself the reasons why I should stick my S3 if I’m commited to being ethical!
Just to clarify some points: I’m in Europe, and got my S3 almost for free (I cost me a one-time payment of about 40 Euros and no increase in my monthly fee.)
Going as long as possible with my current phone will mean getting out of touch with new, too resource-hungry apps - but I’ve actually grown accustomed to the limitations of my phone overs the past 2 years (when I bought it, the S4 was already on the market and the S5 announced).
Not being able to run certain apps and games made me rethink how much time I was spending with that phone, which is a good thing.
Thanks for pointing out my contradictions to me
P.S. if someone knows about Fairphone having any partnerships in Switzerland, I’d be really interested )
Okay, that’s quite on the point, thanks !
Now I just need to show my dear carrier that he should offer the Fairphone as a bonus for renewing my contract.
Here’s an anecdote about recent news in the swiss cellphone world (my homeland), just to give everyone here a good laugh.
In Switzerland, there used to be only three legal carriers in the first 5 years when cellphones became available to the masses (from 2000 on). One of them, ‘Orange’, was my first carrier, and I’m still with them after 15 years, as they always had the offers that suited me most, with relatively few bugs and issues.
It’s a real mess understanding that Orange Switzerland isn’t actually afiliated to Orange France anymore since 2012; a certain Mr. Xavier Niel (who already owns ‘Free’, a french, hugely succesful low-cost carrier scaring the sh*t out of the big players over there) then bought the rights to the name Orange; he left the hard work to the actual operator and only cashed in on the royalties for the name. A couple of months ago, the owners of Orange Switzerland decided to buy the company for about 2.7 billion Euros (!) or 2.9 Billion USD to be able to rebrand it. ‘Orange’ then became… wait for it… ‘Salt’. What, and pepper, right? Very clumsily, that new name wasn’t explained during the much hyped event held live online to celebrate the new identity of the new operator, and it appeared only after some time that ‘Salt’ actually stood for “Swiss and Lichtenstein Telecommunications”. Maybe they factored in to be ridiculed for the name, as any attention is better than none at all, but I doubt that…
Anyway, I’m now with ‘Salt’; after numerous bumps and incredible misfunctionings, things are running more or less normally now. The new brand offered a bunch of new contracts, among which a number of “all-year passes”, implying you pay a fixed fee once for the whole year and can use everthing as much as you want.
I’m guessing that might be attractive if you’re a heavy user. I myself am their nightmare of a customer, they make very little money with me: I rarely use my cellphone to make calls and have 60 minutes included in-country; I have unlimited text messages in-country (which is what I use the most, I’m an addict), and 1 Gb of data, which I never, ever use to fiull extent, the whole thing for about 42 Euros per month. That might sound expensive depending on where you live, but Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries in the World, and Geneva one of the most expensive cities, so it’s actualy a very good deal
Hope this was a little bit entertaining to some of you
Will it again work with normal sim cards or with micro or nano sims this time? (will sim adapters be included?)
Somewhere I read that the back cover is interchangeable. Will it be possible to choose from different colors and/or styles right from the beginning?
And finally a wish: If the software isn’t totally fixed yet, please please please (!) increase the maximum volume for headphones and leave out the warning that loud music can damage your ears. It pops up every time I want to turn the volume to the max!
(and another one: it would be great to be able to turn out the camera sound - it’s pretty annoying!!)
Anyway, I’m looking forward to use the FP 2 woot woot
It will be micro SIM. Adapters would only work from a small to a larger SIM slot not the other way round. But you can usually get a new SIM card from your provider or just cut it down.
I haven’t heard of the possibility to order a Fairphone 2 with a different cover. I think this will be added later.
In my FP1 there is no camera sound. So I guess there is a way to turn it off already
I am very tempted to get the fairphone 2. However I may not be able to, not due to it’s price, but due to the fact that I will be moving over to the US next year.
I am wondering if the Fairphone 2 would have a specific module for it’s “networking card”, because if so I would be able to pre-order the Fairphone 2 as it is now, replace the module later with a US one once it becomes available, and enjoy the 3/4g data over there.
I could also wait for the US compatible Fairphone 2 to come out -if it ever does-, but the first option lets me get my mitts on one sooner, and I like that thought.
This is very likely because there is no reason to do it otherways and Fairphone has already learned from their mistake with FP1 which received storage upgrades (to unify the two partitions).
There is no technical reason Fairphone 2 would not work in the US. AFAIK there will be no technical changes for the US release next year. The only thing you don’t (yet) have in the US is support in warranty cases.
To verify what I just said, you can check whether your favorite provider in the US supports one of the 1G/2G base bands (Quad-band: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), one of the 3G frequencies (Bands 1 (2100 MHz), 2 (1900 MHz), 8 (900 MHz)) and one of the 4G frequencies (Bands 3 (1800 MHz), 7 (2600 MHz), 20 (800 MHz)). I’m pretty sure Fairphone 2 covers all your needs in the US.
Which is exactly why I have asked the question: I have already checked and as far as I can tell, there is only one network provider (Sprint Corporation) that supports one of each listed frequency bands. They even label Band 20 (800Mhz) for 4G as Band 26 ! I haven’t lived in the US for any extended period of time, never mind having my own preference for a service provider. If I use the Fairphone 2 as it is over in the US, it’s either I stick with that single service provider - a coin toss of whether it’s going to be one that provides the services I need -, or I’ll have to stick with limited connectivity.
Of course this was from a quick check on wikipedia, and I’ve screenshot and blanked out the frequencies that the fairphone doesn’t support.
If anyone else have a more comprehensive list of service providers I would be grateful. If not, I would prefer not to be fed information in which is already a few clicks away, and which I have already looked into.
You are right, this seems strange. Maybe they will release different versions of the phone after all.
The reason why I thought they would not change Fairphone 2 for the US market was the following: Fairphone 2 have too little resources to support various different versions of their phone. Additionally they designed their phone from ground up. It would only be logical to build a phone that is usable in all possible markets. Next to the European market they already plan releasing the phone in the US. Hence – I thought – they have a phone that works equally well with providers on both sides of the Atlantic.
me too, @ben, would have preferred a smaller screen. however, having FP1 as my first smartphone ever i observed over the last 12+ months my gradually changing habits in using either laptop or smartphone: most readings are now on FP1 only (email, texting, forums, online magazines, news). i still write selected (=longer) emails on laptop and, of course, longer texts anyway. ‘laptop only’ is graphics, i still need a mouse for that. since i rarely use the phone – less often then the camera or the mp3 player – the slightly larger screen may turn out to be an advantage for reading + writing.
conclusion: the not-too-high price is well in the range of a new laptop. since i need to replace my 5+ years old laptop anyway, i pre-ordered FP2.
I’m adding @Marco here. @Marco, Can you clear this situation up? Will the FP2, as it is released here in Europe, have the same specifications as the one being made available in the US? Will the “Europe FP2” support all US frequencies?
When I got my FP1,
Everyone was like “What? You still got 80% of battery after one day?” It was the feature everyone was looking for. 2000mAh for such a small screen was wonderful.
A thing that, many manufacturers ignored.
Most people use their phone for texting, reading small articals, listening to music or playing low-quality games.
Not for Emulating a Playstation or seeing the best reflections in car games.
Samsung etc. placed phones on the markets nobody was able to use. They just pushed this “high performance handy market” so they were able to sell expensive phones.
FP 1 had here a huge advantage(huge battery&affordable). So I recommanded it. But now, nobody is interested anymore in a "old, expensive Samsung"
Fairphone fell in the trap of the big manufacturers.
PS:2000mAh in Li-Ion won’t be at 1000 after 5 (maybe not even at 10) years of using it and even Whatsapp in 5 years won’t able to use too many special window opening effects for the FP1 processor.
Sorry I wrote about 4000 mAh before It 2000 of course
There is a product called “geeksphone Revolution” where the user can decide which OS to use, before turning it on.
Only a “normal” Android on the Fairphone2 is a fail.
So two solutions for the Fp2 are:
replace Android bei another one (like Firefoy OS, Ubuntu), or
it comes with the opportunity to switch between 2 OS (Android, Firefox).
So far there is no information about this option on this site!?!
The information we have is that Fairphone are releasing the phone with ‘Android for Fairphone’ preinstalled and they are openly releasing everything that FLOSS Software communities need to port their OSs to the device.
woot woot
