Fairphone (generation 6) launched 25 June

It’s double sided and used for SIM and sd card.

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wow. I stand corrected. Thanks so much!

The external tray makes sense to me, as else you would have to unscrew back and battery to get to your SIM/SD card… And its a module you can exhange.

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I’m looking forward to reading reports about the lanyard. Will it scratch the lower of the both camera lenses…? Probably not, but that came to my mind when seeing the overlap in some pictures.

Other than that I see some nice ideas, it’s not just the same in bigger and faster but really some good ideas and improvements in areas where there were complaints earlier. Battery runtime has always been an issue, now looking at the energy label and comparing this with FP5 this seems to be a good step forward. AoD works this time, I’ve heard. The camera is a different model than in FP5 but since cameras are an important detail in smartphones I’m pretty sure the new generation will not be worse, even if the pure specs may indicate this. But at the current level of image sensors it’s really more about software.

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I’m a bit surprised nobody mentioned this part yet

With at least seven Android upgrades starting from Android 15

Of course, given the rather long times before upgrades (or having them skipped after they were announced), I’ll sense tons of “I only believe it when I see it” comments.
Still, something worth noting in my book.

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I am really enthusiastic about the accessories.
Plus the tailored case.
Plus the accessories that can be used with or without the case.

Exciting:)

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Right, screws. That makes sense. Wouldn’t want a screwdriver to put in an sd card. Fine

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Front camera same as Nothing 3a. Interesring. Next to the SoC that’s the second part in common with the nothing phone.
And the accessories that really feel like they took inspiration from the CMF phone, which is Nothing’s brand.
I wonder if there’s some collaboration going on behind the scenes.

I wonder if people will create 3D print models for other accessories. I already keep a single credit card sized ID card in the back of my FP4 case. But some kind of builtin stand that allows me to keep the phone up at a 45 degree angle on a table while in a call would be of interest.
So I hope FP didn’t patent/copyright this connection somehow.
And it will be interesting to read reviews of the camera to see if it makes sense to buy a FP 6 or wait for the HMD Skyline 2 GT.

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@JohannesWilm a short search revealed the first reviews are online and I started a wiki list to collect those

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Does the new phone have memory tagging enabled as the snapdragon 7s is higher than an arm v8.5 architecture?
Is there a secure element with weaver compatibility?

Not even Google Pixel devices have MTE enabled, so I think we can keep dreaming about MTE on a Fairphone device for a few more years.

But it’s that the reason. It’s the new battery design.

Today the new Fairphone was announced and it personally felt as anticlimatic as Fairphone releases get (yes, even worse than the audio-jack absence in the FP4).

Don’t get me wrong, the phone is okay. If my phone died today, it would surely be my first option. But my standard for judging Fairphone is waaay higher than for any other smartphone brand (as it should be, not gonna discuss the ‘why’ of this here).
Here are my pros & cons:

The good

  • Minimalism
    The Fairphone comes with good ideas. The switch, more than a grear addition itself, is a declaration of principle. I think there is some intrinsic relationship between ethical consumerism and minimalism and it is great to see Fairphone kinda does too.

  • Open source
    Fairphone has always been more invested on hardware ethics than software ethics but that took a bit of a turn today. Some of the greatest things about the release are actually not promoted by the company: I’m talking about the fact that, since release, the phone is available de-Googled (with /e/ OS) and the source code has been published. These are great news for the open source community.

  • Accessory modularity
    I am all for official accesories, and expanding that idea of modularity is great. It had been talked for (in this forum for example), for some time and it seems like a great addition. Excited to see how this evolves in the future.

  • Specs
    Regarding the phone specs, I won’t say much. They seem a reasonable advancement which make for a perfectly usable phone.
    Beyond being an okay smartphone, capable of the basics with a reasonable camera, I wouldn’t ask for much in Fairphone. For the vast majority of users, there are no relevant differences between most smartphones.

  • Promising future?
    Lastly, although not explicitly mentioned, I think we all hope the branding of the phone as “The Fairphone” opens up the possibility of modular upgrades to the phone. Something more than just the next gen.

The bad

The fact that the presentation of the phone lasts less than 15 minutes should give the viewer the hint that maybe there isn’t that much of an innovation to be presented. (Or not, I’m sure this just responds to a marketing strategy that adapts to a loss in the attention-span of our society. How considered from them).

  • The switch
    Yeap, the switch makes both lists. The fact that the protagonist of a two-year hiatus between phone generations is a button that appears to change the launcher app to a “minimalist phone”-like launcher is underwhelming.
    Great idea behind. But underwhelming.

  • Ethics, sustainability and others
    There are no significant changes between the Fairphone 5 and this new release. No new landmarks in ethical practices, no new services incorporated. Nothing new regarding the most important part of what makes a Fairphone fair, really.

  • Same old mistakes (hardware)
    Not only The Fairphone doesn’t correct some big incongruences of the company but it incorporates some new ones.
    Since the withdrawal of the bumper from the Fairphone 3 (which was only there for certification needs), the balancing between keeping a congruential ecological discourse and withdrawing more and more from the box has been, well… worse and worse. The charger, the cable, the screwdriver… And now three additions I’m interested to know how Fairphone will answer:

  1. A less replaceable battery (after their “go from 0% to 100% in seconds” claim with FP5) that now need screwdriver.
  2. Going back to a SIM-Tray system, which is more water/dust contamination prone and which requires an extra tool to open.
  3. New kind of screws (the previously in-shop avaliable Fairphone Phillips 00 screwdriver doesn’t work anymore). Very interestingly enough, the phone doesn’t include a screwdriver (to help with cleaning and everything) but it does come in the box with the modular accesories. Confusing approach.
  • Same old mistakes (marketing)
    I already wrote a post on this but I can’t state it enough. It is a big incongruence to tag your phone at 599€.
    And not only it is an unethical practice but I would go as far as to say it is a marketing mistake. As much as those .99 prices have been studied, whole round prices have been studied too and they have their marketing appeal too, especially in premium or sustainable contexts.
    I don’t even think the Fairphone marketing people have deeply thought about this, my guess is that it’s just the way things normally work. Then again, Fairphone was set up to challenge how things normally work. And this is so easy to change I just cannot understand why they don’t just do it.

What do the rest of you think? Am I mistaken to not be blown away? I am open to changing my mind :slight_smile:

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Do some reading above for (other) opinions

When the community dug up the early photos of that wallet addon, I thought that was some magsafe wireless external battery. I personally dont care for wireless charging or magsafe accessories, buuuut it is a bummer theres no extra in that sense.

i asked if the Hardware is capable to do it.
The Software side is a different thing.
You can rollout a feature gradually with an opt-in before enforcing it. This allows APP developers to fix any problems along the way.

Several ones write about the “Fairphone 6” :scream: … heck, didn’t they get the marketing memo?

This way, many users will not adapt and will end up not calling it “The Fairphone (Gen. 6)” :sob:.

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doesnt apple deliver usb2 over usb-c? c is just a connector type. dont mix stuff up. apple costing hugeloads of money and usb2 with usb-c? perfectly fine with fairphone then :money_mouth_face:

The full specification page of the fp6 doesn’t let me know about the microphone hardware.