Hi. Completely new to Fairphones and am considering my first purchase. Here are some of my main considerations:
Hardware:
(FP4)
Faster processor, bigger battery and fast charge are nice. No headphone jack, no stereo speakers more expensive are definite minuses.
(FP3+)
Easily accessible fingerprint reader, headphone jack. Slower processor, smaller battery capacity, no fast charge and no stereo speakers are definite minuses.
OS
(FP4)
FairphoneOS (Android) only?
(FP3+)
FairphoneOS, /e/, possibly some custom ROMs, Sailfish OS.
Active community where developers and DIY people meet is very cool.
I am currently using an LG G8 as my main phone (home country), and a Sony Xperia 10 ii (flashed with Sailfish X) as the phone I use in the country that I am stationed in. I use Linux (fixed distro) as my daily computer OS. I need a replacement for my LG G8, as LG is no longer supporting it. My instinct is to go with a phone that can run Linux (preferably) or a de-Googled alternative. However, parking apps (among others) don’t work without the Google Play service. Currently, I can purchase Sony Xperia ii as my main phone for half the price of a Fairphone 4 and I can get a fair amount of Android apps to work with the Alendalvik layer of Sailfish X. However, I would like to support the right to repair, and save the planet… I am quite conflicted. I would appreciate any comments that can help me focus and make a decision.
Small comment, unless I’m wrong the Fairphone 4 DOES have stereo speakers. The top one is forward facing, the bottom one is bottom facing.
Consider also, the warranty period and guaranteed software support time. How much is 5 years of both worth to you?
Admittedly, the software support will be less relevant if you choose to use a different OS. But Fairphone committing to 5 years of support might be helpful to the developers of those different OSes.
I’m not sure what your definition of fast charging is, but with the right equipment, the FP3+ charges full in one hour (“QuickCharge”). Of course, it’s not recommendable to discharge to 0 % and charge to 100%, but QuickCharge does it in one hour.
Regarding operating systems, Fairphones never had customROMs ready from day one, but they came became available with a little delay once the community (LineageOS, /e/OS …) had readied them. I am absolutely certain that will be the case with the FP4 as well.
Just mentioning that I have made Sailfish OS build for FP3 which had only some small issues but I haven’t made it public yet because I wanted to fix the issues but then too many other projects caused some lack of time to finish it.
Yes, it was intentional, but I got the link wrong, there were a couple of posts in that topic about the status for the FP3 and this would have been the correct link
Thanks for that. I am not a big fan of UbuTouch. I can’t really explain why. Something with web apps not being real apps? I had the original Ubuntu Touch phone, but it has been quite a while…
Thank you for your major contribution in this area, mal. I see in the forum that you are very active with trying to get Sailfish OS on the Fairphone and working properly.
My concern is that more and more apps, like parking, banking, small money transaction apps, corona passports, etc. appear to require Google services, which locks us into surveillance capitalism with no obvious way to avoid it. As soon as any of those apps are installed, even using /e/, we are kicked back to basically a bog standard Android OS…
Like that will make any difference I think the direction you point out to /e/ etc. is probably the best most can hope for unless they want to engineer their own software and even then they may miss out on lots of apps etc.
I think the direction you point out to /e/ etc. is probably the best most can hope for unless they want to engineer their own software and even then they may miss out on lots of apps etc.