Exactly! I hope to be able to use my Fairphone 1 until the latest Fairphone is not older than a few months at the most. E.g. if it breaks now I would get a FP2, but if it breaks in one year, I wouldn’t get a one-year-old FP2, but wait for a next generation Fairphone model and use my dumb fallback phone until then.
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The FP2 already has a fairly high res screen. With 5", it is the perfect size for many cheap cardboard-like devices. And I personally believe the USB extension port could be quite useful in this regard – to attach controllers or better sensors for VR applications.
If the FP3 can be ready for some VR use cases depends a bit on the pace the industry is currently going. I think it will be great for some experiments, but no comparison to Occulus and the like. The reason for that is, that for VR to work good, you need very low latency (all the time introduced for processing – from dealing with sensor and input data to finally rendering and displaying the picture on the screen) and very fast screens (currently more than 120fps are a good target). This requires a lot of computing power and very short display response times which are of no use in other use cases. So it makes not that much sense to integrate that in the FP3.
In short: Depends on you VR use case: Occulus/Vive like gaming: Not realistic. 360 degree videos and pictures and similar apps: Absolutely, this is will be great on the FP2 already.
Could not agree more.
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I also don’t see a problem with the sustainability goals and a FP3 after say 12 or 18 months - be it a completely new design or just a mainboard replacement. The stuff that really matters about sustainability is: if you were not willing to upgrade, could you still stay with what you have now? And if you upgraded, would the device still be useful to a 2nd or 3rd hand owner? Or will it only be good for recycling?
Regarding a FP3 platform I would highly opt for going towards an open source platform with focus on free software and as least blobs as possible. Actually, if you look at the reasons for the FP1 failure then this is exactly what it’s all about: Relying on a vendor to provide closed source software and “begging” for the right to distribute it. This is just the wrong approach if you ask me.
The current FP2 platform vendor provides much better support and also for much longer, but still the FP team is more or less completely dependent on the willingness of the vendor to provide the necessary closed source blobs. In other words: if the vendor will not provide updates for Android 7, FP will face the same situation as with the FP1.
Therefore, dear FP-team: If you decide for any new platform for the FP3/FP2.x, please choose a truly open platform and not again a closed one!
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Current consumer habits don’t need to be tweaked slightly - e.g. by getting people to keep their phones for 5 years instead of 3. Something much more radical has to happen. Waste production worldwide will double between 2012 and 2025. The Swiss (for example) throw away 26.3 kg of electrowaste per person / year (131,000 tonnes in 2013). We have become addicted to technology and used to binning it the minute a new development is on the market. And it is clear from reading the posts here that many fairphoners want to keep the attitude while being environmentally/politically/socially responsible at the same time. My tiny point is that that isn’t going to be enough. Attitudes to technology and consumerism will have to be turned upside down. Kicks will have to be obtained in other ways.
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While I agree, @joekafka, I have to ask you how you want to achieve this drastic turn in behaviour?
Do you think people will change because you tell them to change? Will you force them as a benevolent dictator? Do you have any other ideas to achieve this?
Also in my opinion the long-term goal needs to be a very drastic change how we treat our earth. However this change can not be achieved by few people in a fast manner. To the contrary, it is a very gradual process. And I think this process is much more likely to succeed if we offer all people a way to gradually change instead of creating a product just for the few that already agree.
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There has to be a greater awareness of the problems inherent in rabid consumerism. People have to understand that, then they have to change their behaviour accordingly, then then have to talk to their friends and family and try to get them to change their behaviour, and so on…
Sounds nice, and I would love to see this happen. But practically (and trying to be realistic), I would like to repeat he question of @jftr:[quote=“jftr, post:47, topic:10522”]
While I agree, @joekafka, I have to ask you how you want to achieve this drastic turn in behaviour?
[/quote]
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Baby steps are better than no progress, I would say!
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Well, there are several aspects which are related to question why a person decides to get a new device. To put them as questions:
- do people buy new devices because of “rabid consumerism”?
- do people buy new devices because for them it’s not easy enough to repair broken ones (e.g. due to non-modular design, lack of availability or price point of spare parts)?
- do people buy new devices because the old ones are hardwise-wise still good but just software-wise “rubbish” due to lack of software updates (not only related to security, but also due to e.g. app-incompatibilities of newer apps with older operating systems)?
By the way: is there any qualified, empirical research on any of these topics?
If you look at the “classic” mobile or desktop hardware segment you will recognize, that there are pretty many people running current software on dated devices - there are a lot of desktop machines being used which are older than 5 years. So for me, the software issue is the relevant part. And the software is related to the hardware (and thus this discussion here), since you can only provide software updates for the future if you decide for the “right” hardware very early in the process.
Of course, providing new intents to exchange hardware is what always happens and what is not that wrong when viewed from a pure, company-economic perspective. And FP will certainly not survive if they will not put a new phone to the market every now and then, because people who want to buy a new one will not opt for buying a years dated “overprized” device - just imagine buying a FP2 in 2017 and paying 500 bucks+ for a technically 4 yrs old device. Who will go for that (besides idealists, but this is just a small market)?
I think that the right way is the double-strategy FP is aiming for: Providing fresh devices every 12-18 months to get NEW customers but not encouraging users of previous devices to upgrade by providing adequate support for older devices as well. Of course, there will always be the “tech-geekie” people who will always want to have the brand-new device. But at the same time, they can give their used device to someone else (less tech-geekie), so this someone else will not go and buy some cheap and crappy, short-living waste but use the sustainable, used device. So please always keep an eye on the second-hand market when discussing these issues.
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Good question. Has Fairphone looked into that? Do they know anyone who has? @Douwe, do you know?
There are even many 5+ years old machines with outdated software (I recently had to work hard to convince a friend to get rid of Windows XP and install Linux). I think one of the major differences between laptop/desktop computers and smartphones is that manufacturers are advertising the latter ones much more aggressively. Hardly anyone would buy a new computer after a year but smartphones are exchanged at roughly that rate. My guess is that this is mainly due to Apple, Samsung, et al. pushing them in our faces.
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Thank you so much for this question. Before arguing here based on our assumptions, we should try to find data support all these claims.[quote=“kuleszdl, post:51, topic:10522”]
And FP will certainly not survive if they will not put a new phone to the market every now and then, because people who want to buy a new one will not opt for buying a years dated “overprized” device - just imagine buying a FP2 in 2017 and paying 500 bucks+ for a technically 4 yrs old device.
[/quote]
True. And I do not have any issue with them releasing new or updated models every one or two years (two seems more realistic i think). Thanks to the modular design, they might even be able to provide update models by simply replacing modules and keeping others.
I think I can agree. But I also see the laptops and desktops as far more complete products. The pace technology moves and brings new beneficts has slowed dramatically if you’re not a gamer. You can work perfectly well on a 2010 MacBook Pro (if you upgraded the HDD to an SSD that is. Maybe even replace the battery). But if you compare an 2010 iPhone 4 to a 2015 iPhone 6S, they are completly different beasts in terms of capability, fluidity and joy of use (with todays apps and OS updates). You CAN use that smartphone, but you FEEL it’s age in every action. This is even more apparent when looking at the 2010 Nexus One vs a 2015 Nexus 5X.
I sincerly hope that the smartphone power race slows down as well. I have a feeling we have reached a point where new devices refine, not redefine the capabilities of a smartphone: Displays nearing a resultion close to what the human eye is able to percieve, processors being able to get the most out of current networks (5G LTE, WLAN ac) and pretty solid, very usable software, cameras better then digital point and shoots of 2010 …
But I might be wrong and it could be another 5 years of smartphone race. But I am a 90% sure we will reach this point in the next 8 years.
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If there is not so much data there yet and some of you are interested, maybe we should design a (web) questionnaire about this and try to collect some data. But this would certainly go into a separate thread.
Regarding my personal assumptions (not based on empiric evidence), the following factors are most relevant for people not keeping their current smartphone:
- The “2 years contract” stuff, after which people feel that they deserve a new phone for extending their contract. In times, where many prepaid providers offer better packages than contracts, many people still don’t realize that with their contracts they are just paying off their phones. Especially many older people (let’s say 35-50 yrs old) simply got used to getting a new device every two years - and changing happits is a tough road. Yet I see many people gotten off-contract, so they are more free to choose when it’s time to get something new. The question here is though, if they maybe exchange devices sooner than every 2 years.
- Many people simply treat their devices very badly, which is partly due to the contract thing. When they get a phone for say one euro, why shoukd they care? When I look at the average condition of devices on professional 2nd market selling platforms (like e.g. Rebuy in Germany), I am really shocked by the fact how badly people treat such expensive devices. I also assume that the closer it gets to the time when their contracts expire or they know that they are getting something new, the less they care.
- The dependencies between hardware and software. While it’s pretty easy and straight-forward to install a new operating system on a computer, it can be pretty complicated on a phone. The worst thing here is that every device is “special” in the way, that you can’t just put in a generic install medium (like a Windows or Linux DVD) and simply install it, but someone else has to actually port/develop software for the very specific phone you have. This leads to less popular devices being completely neglected by custom ROM communities, while even if you buy some crappy noname pc or laptop you can be pretty sure that you will be able to install a recent operating system on it.
Therefore, to fight against 3. I am really opting for choosing an open platform with the least blobs and the best mainline linux kernel support possible. Another huge issue is the lack of respect of the users’ freedom that the closed platforms suffer from. I am pretty convinient, that fair hardware and open platforms with free software would be a perfect match and I am quite sad to see that the FP team has only been trying to address the fair hardware aspect so far.
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There are a lot of discussions on this topic in this forum already. The open software topic is a very complicated one – and looking at the recent news concerning Firefox OS and Jolla the outlook is even darker on that matter. Let’s keep the topic on hardware here.
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Well, the hardware issue is tightly connected to the openness of the platform, not free software in general therefore I don’t see this as offtopic. Apart from that - most (if not all) Firefox OS were never running free software but contained lots of blobs (believe me, I got one of them) - just like FP1 and FP2.
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Isn’t the same true for Jolla and Ubuntu OS?
I couldn’t disagree more. I cant see a single reason why new phones would change this.
The phone should last 5 years - not 10.
Imagine this -
Fairphone releases a new model every 5 years. This means someone who buys a FP in 2015 should expect it to last until 2020. But someone who buys a FP in 2019 should expect it to last until 2024.
FP2 already has outdated specs in 2015. By 2020 they will be very outdated. By 2024 they will likely be almost unusable. So, someone who buys a FP2 in 2019 has to get rid of it after a year or so, because it doesnt work.
Nobody will buy a new FP2 in 4 years. How many people today would fork out hundreds of pounds/euros for a phone from 2011? Not many. This means Fairphoje can’t afford to continue supporting FP2, so thousands of existing users ditch it and get the latest Apple phone instead.
Releasing updated models is the ONLY way to keep Fairphone fair.New models should be designed for new customers, not existing ones.
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Sure. But many articles in the press make people believe that these platforms are be more “free” than Android for whatever reason.
Actually, one good thing about FirefoxOS (and the others as well) is that they only use parts of Android on the lower layers (which talk to the firmware / hardware) and do the above layers themselves. So they can keep updating the OS without rebasing to newer Android versions - and therefore without dropping support for older devices.
I wonder if the connectors in the FP2 are proprietary, or if some 3rd party could also manufacture a logic board with a more free SoC (although no other manufacturer probably will be able to make it as fair as FP), so people would have more choice regarding this. There is a very promising option emerging here: lowRISC, but it is not mature enough for FP and does not include a modem. Yet, it would be cool if FP would try to team up with them, but this would require re-thinking the priorities regarding the openness of the hardware platform.
I think the FP2 is pretty much IP protected … but they don’t talk about/don’t answer (Yes, I have asked that question). So it’s pretty hard to answer. I don’t think users will be able to improve the design or play around with it. We will just be able to buy it … or not. At least for now, I don’t know what the company is up to.
And RISC is a completely different instruction set and Android (or any other OS) would have to be ported to it first. AFAIK Android is only available for x86 and ARM (and x86 only half since some apps don’t run on it).
Upps. There is Android-x86 
And aren’t RISC and ARM related? I have to read this up again … And it would be nice if someone could explain all the IP craziness in this field.
“Today’s world is amd64, armv7, and soon aarch64. Everything else is dead, Jim.” (Miod Vallat)