Are there any plans to sell the Fairphone 6+ upgrade to existing Fairphone 6 users? At the moment I don’t need it with Android 16 and the apps I run, none of which need much memory or CPU horsepower, but I could see over 7 years I might. Mostly due to Android gradually bloating in the way most OSs seem to do with time.
Also there are presumably people running heavier apps who would need a RAM/CPU upgrade sooner than me. So it makes sense to sell the FP6+ motherboard as an upgrade. And there is a precedent for this. Fairphone 4 got a camera upgrade. It seems likely the FP6+ motherboard is mechanically compatible with the FP6 case. In which case why not sell FP6+ motherboards as an upgrade?
As far as I know this would be the first example of a smartphone where it was possible to upgrade Ram or CPU. In fact when Fairphone announced the possibility of a camera upgrade on the FP4 a lot of tech sites covered it as if Fairphone had re-discovered Atlantis. Imagine how impressed they’d be with a motherboard upgrade!
And if you look at Framework one of the things that makes their laptops so popular is that you can do this. A Framework laptop is actually kind of pricey compared to its non upgradable competitors but people accept this because they know when it’s getting a bit slow you can upgrade not only a ram and storage but CPU/GPU too. Something no other laptop can do. It’s like you’re not buying one laptop you’re buying into an ecosystem. Framework also allow third parties to make motherboards. So if you want a RISC-V processor there’s a third party motherboard with one on. So if you’re working on Linux on RISC-V, Framework is probably your default choice.
If Android ever takes off on RISC-V you could see Fairphone has an opportunity doing something like this with phones. I.e. if you want a platform to develop RISC-V Android Open Source Project on, Fairphone would be the it. As the Framework case shows you don’t even need to develop the RISC-V board yourself. The Framework RISC-V motherboard was developed by Deep Computing. All Framework did was allow them to sell it in the Framework store alongside Intel and AMD motherboards Framework developed in house.
I.e. you could do it. It would get a load of free PR. It also opens up the possibility of selling both Fairphone and third party motherboards in the store which seems like it worked out well for Framework.
Just a minor thing: The Fairphone 4 only got a camera software upgrade, not a camera hardware upgrade (FP generation 2 and 3 were the only models to get camera hardware upgrades).
While I love this… isn’t the motherboard one of the more expensive components along with the display? I am just wondering if, from a certain point forward, it would just in this case be overall more economical to just BUY the 6+ if the time comes, especially for the ones who would not feel comfortable rewiring their phones?
(Not voting down your idea, I think for those who are technically capable this would be a fantastic idea and would be a strong proof of fairphone’s “you don’t have to throw it away as soon as other phones” idea. The thing though is… I own the fairphone 6, it is registered and I participate in the forum and I’ve already received multiple emails from fairphone that “the phone I love has received an upgrade” with a link to the buy now page
Pretty sure they said that this is not intended. What will def never happen in my eyes: the user can buy a spare motherboard and replace it on their own. And as said, the motherboard is the phone so buying this instead of a new phone will not really save much money or resources.
Speculating: The only other major part of the FP6 and the FP6+ not available in the Fairphone Shop (only via a repair job) is the Midframe. Perhaps it would require the specific plus or non-plus combo of motherboard & midframe to – purely physically – fit into the device.
And then I could also imagine there would still be things to deal out between motherboard and the SIM slot.
Yeah, I mean at that point this would be “we’ll sell it to you, but unless you are absolutely sure you know what you’re doing, this one’s on you”
I think in terms of usability we won’t suffer to much on the 6. Since Google has made long-term update commimtments for its own mid-range devices, I think they’ll keep Android overall as lean as feasible and just built out (sigh) AI stuff that I think a good portion of FP users will gladly do without
I’d guess the same, which is a bit unfortunate, since it could have probably been worked around. I’m not saying they should offer an “upgrade” for everyone, but if the motherboarf fails and has to be replaced, it would make sense to make the offer.
Otherwise I don’t see a reason why all replacement parts would be the same ones for both models and still the motherboard would not be.
It’s the IMEI, basically. It’s stored on the motherboard, so a motherboard in a box is more or less a phone in a box as far as regulators care. Manufacturers have to keep track of which IMEI is in which device, and stolen-phone blocklists work off the IMEI too, so loose boards would be an easy way to launder blacklisted phones. Fairphone actually says as much in their support docs, “legal and security” is reason number one why the Core Module isn’t sold separately: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/24590029621138
Framework gets away with it because laptops don’t have IMEIs.
However, being sustainable is kind of the point of FP. Throwing away a fully functional smartphone just to upgrade one piece inside of it defeats the whole idea.
I do agree Fairphones aren’t meant to be replaced after 1 year. If you’re into that maybe look at Apple, Samsung, or leasing programmes.
I also agree that they likely make more money on the full phone, so they should push that first, rather than reserving motherboards for upgrades.
However, I think it’d be an important message to allow the upgrade, if technically feasible.
