Fairphone 3 - Interview of Bas from FrAndroid

FP1 and FP2 are not the same size. FP2 has a 5" display whereas FP1 is about 4".

3 Likes

I do not know where you got that information, but obviously you are wrong. It is a very different smartphone:

@BeMiGro: Thanks!

1 Like

OK. Point taken. The power button is probably a different size too.

But still: Why?

Exactly. That’s what I’m complaining about. Make future models more or less the same, except for parts that have to be different for some reason.

2 Likes

I like the way you think, but I do not believe in wonders… :wink:

6 posts were split to a new topic: Discussion about life cycles

Hi, after a long time I am back here… Unfortunately I couldn’t afford the Fairphone 2 but I have read here that they want to do a new, cheaper version of the phone. I can hope that the processor will be something in the middle range, like the Snapdragon 660 that seems to be a great middle range chipset. Definitely a serie 400 would be an extremely bad idea under the aspect of durability and I don’t think that the difference in price is so high. Also I hope that the modem will be something with a widest range of frequency supported as possible, like the Sony Xperia X for example, this is important for the future proof aims of this phone.
Anyway these are only my consideration, I look forward to see what will be the final decisions about this future phone, hoping that this time I can afford it and it will suit my needs.

2 Likes

Compatibility will be quite easy if all drivers are free and mainlined.
IMHO, we should concentrate here, new HW (except minor upgrades like bigger memory) is pretty secondary, unless it brings real benefits.
I’m not caring about more performance (I’m still fine w/ my 5yrs old phone). Yes, android is getting hungrier by the day - we should start cleaning up the mess there.

2 Likes

Would it be possible to have a lower-cost model w/ the same board populated for only one SIM ?

In my 15+ years experience in linux embedded world, unmaintained firmware is rarely a problem, but proprietary drivers are always a huge pain and should never be used
(for anything but short-lived toys).

Therefore, we should concentrate on free and mainlined drivers. (and for android, use mainline kernel w/ minimal patching). If the HW vendor doesn’t provide specs, then either
not buy that crap, or just crack it and develop free drivers.

8 Likes

I do belief this could be done.
A compromise could also be like different other phones in the market offer a combined sim/sd card slot. So customers can decide purchasing a more expensive dual-sim FP2 or a “FP3” with combined slot, but maybe then more ram 64GB+ and not equal sim functionality for both slots as in FP2. (where each slot offers the same functionality).
I think this could turn out less expensive than FP2s actual design. Just a thought of mine.

But which modern chipset should be used to be considered “open”? AFAIK Qualcomm, Mediate, Samsung and Huawei are all proprietary closed solutions, any suggestion about something that could be considered modern? Since Android requires modern hardware to run, even the “google-free” version…

3 Likes

how about eg. imx6 ?

That one was launched in January 2011…

The i.MX 8M sounds good. (I’m not an expert in this at all, so that’s just from a layman’s perspective. ;)) Nice detail: The i.MX microcontrollers are now produced by the Dutch company NXP Semiconductors

3 Likes

I thought that, too. But then I came across this article:

NXP is positioning the i.MX 8 chip family as a solution for connected vehicles and industrial or medical products. So don’t expect it to show up in a lot of consumer devices anytime soon.

1 Like

That combined SIM/SD card slot is a bad habit of some phone manufacturers. What if the user wants to use two SIM cards and a SD card simultaneously? In my opinion, this should be abandoned in favour of separate SIM and SD card slots. Also, you can’t save much money there. You still need two SIM card readers and one SD card reader.

Please not! What if a user travels regularly between two countries and has to switch the 3G/4G SIM card at the border? Also, I don’t think that you can save much money with that.

3 Likes

Well, depends on when it’s really coming and how much it will cost.
I’m not up-to-date on the etnaviv from, but I’d guess we could get the G7000(-lite) running with reasonable efforts (maybe less than 2…3 MM). IPU and VPU don’t seem to differ much from the previous versions, so I guess ptx folks will catch up quite soon. Anything else should be mainlined pretty soon, too (IIRC fsl folks already submitted patches on lkml)

An interesting question is the power consumption and how fast it can switch between operation modes. I never used imx* on lo-power devices, so I’ve got no idea about it.

You can save space. In such small cases like smartphones, such slots make up a lot.

By the way, I’d like to add another requirement: very robust (IOW: industrial grade) connectors. I just have problems w/ my toshiba notebook where all USB connectors now have loose contact. Smartphones usually have only one - and if the usb slot its broken, you can the throw it away (I doubt anybody seriously replaces usb connectors in smartphones)

The logic is already in the SOC, so it doesn’t matter anyways. The only external parts are PHYs and slots. I doubt (haven’t checked) that combined slots are more expensive than two separate ones (actually, should be way cheaper). And I’d guess there’re even combined PHYs, that even can detect the card type - maybe even 2 in one chip, or integrated in the socket.

I think you would be surprised to see what this community is up to :wink:

10 Likes