Hi, yes I am absolutely aware. Though it might be a bit off topic here to get into a lengthy comparison of these two companies and their products.
Briefly. The same chipset as FP5 yet longer updates promised, a replaceable battery, higher IP rating, the communication done mostly in German ( I need to use the translator to fully grasp what is going on) and it does not seem like a finished out-of-the box product yet (as far as I can understand their webpages properly). Some of the updated software is released in light version without Google Services presumably because Google Certification is pending but that is a bit above my tech level to get into the details. Finally, ordering it now should get you a phone in October.
But why do you think I have started this thread if it was so easy for me?
Me and my wife, we are Fairphone customers since day one! My wife has participated in the original croudfunding of FP1, we both have invested money into the company some years ago, we have both bought FP3s, my wife has upgraded to FP3+âŚ
I could simply walk away, but instead I invest my time into this thread with the intention to give valuable feedback to the company, please appreciate that!
On my part, if there are issues with running android smoothly (or at all) in 2030+ with only 8GB of RAM, I feel fairly confident that de-googled OSes will still work. Most of the RAM increase seems to be driven by an increase in background services, data collection, AI and VR (Fairphone doesnât even support AR, I think? So why the concern about VR?), none of which are interesting to me.
I am of the opinion that even light gaming will be fine. I know of a simulator game being currently developed for all platforms (including PC), and the developer is intending to make it run well on surprisingly budget devices by our standardsâŚ
I think you missed a very important law in Europe that is now applied : every phone maker has to update a phone released after June 2025 for at least 5 years after the last phone produced.
If Google doesnât want to make a bad advertisement of Android and then lose money (less data for sale), it should keep the Android devices work well during the legal period at least.
What will happen is that you wonât be able to run heavier AI stuffs locally.
Combined with NexDock or NexPad or similar products the phone could be a more generic computing device, which would save us from having to buy more devices.
That was a ddesign flaw only Microsoft made. Other OSâes were smart enough to put device drivers in the 1st section of the memory, not at the endâŚ
The Linux kernel (Android uses a Linux kernel) has a lot better memory management and wonât have this issue. The main issue could be size of apps. When you use it as phone/messaging device, maybe take photos and navigate with it, 8GB is more then enough for the forseable future.
For example, my â18 Nokia 6.1, 64GB storage, 4GB memory. Still runs perfectly, apart from hardware issues (no voice during calls, rest no issue). Runs on 64 bit Lineage. Even my Moto G2 and G4 would be perfectly usavle if not for the hardware issues I have with them.
My â22 Samsung A13 with 128GB storage and 6GB memory is struggling with just about everything with 32 bit Samsungs OS. No defects so far, but terrible software support.
For me, the FP6 is a way better option with 8GB mem then any other device on the market in the same price range. (The FP5 is larger and heavier, so no thanks) The fact that there already is Lineage development for it helps a lot.
Just for reference: notebookcheck has published a test report, which also comes to the conclusion that 8GB RAM will most probably turn out to be a bottleneck if the device is intended for use over a long period of time.
Correct, indeed only what they expect or rather an educated guess based on their current findings (e.g. that the FP6 performs in almost every benchmark test below average). But yes nobody can know the future and it might turn out either way.
Personally, at the current state, I too think that for a significant large group of people the overall performance of the FP6, should be rather sufficient regarding the average period of usage.
But as far as I understood the main critique here in this thread --the pessimistic expectation for when you would use your phone longer than that or already have exceeding use cases (like AI or desktop pc replacement etc.)-- was exactly the point.
They all share the same fear, that eventually this chosen memory configuration might become a bottleneck. And @abba gave just a reference to another (more skilled) testimenony.
I might be mistaken (i.e. I did not check any tests by Chip yet), but âthatâs like Chipâ rather sounds dismissive. Could you please elaborate further why you think Notebookcheck is not a respectable source.
Iâm not an expert in this field but the tests seemed very thorough.
Or asked differently: Which institution could you recommend? So that we can check what they say.