There are ways to retrofit wireless charging to almost every phone. I have no experience with that but I am sure you will find something if you search online.
I emailed them directly this as a suggestion. But I would love there to be an entry level phone model with a smaller display. I am hesitant that my future kids would have smart phones for most of their early childhood. Having an entry level iPhone SE’esque with smaller display as well as more physical buttons and a bigger top notch (so you can apply front camera privacy cover) would possible change that calculation and would be a great addition to their product catalog. I strongly suspect soon the “screens must always get larger” bubble is going to burst if only there was a major phone manufacturer willing to take the risk and actually make one.
I’m really glad the FP6 is smaller then the FP5, and lightrer. Ok, still only 0.1”, but it shaves 20g (10%) of it’s weight. Now to get back to 4.5-5”, but I guess that would be more expensive, as there is no demand for those screens. (50” TVs are cheaper then 42” TVs due to this as well)
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Even if there are screens, the rest would just not fit in the phone. Because of this little bit smaller the FP6 Battery is screwed now. Modules need space and more when not everything is glued
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This could be the case for everything else, but the battery works perfectly without screws, as loads phones have proven before the first iPhone was introduced.
I suspect the screwing down of the battery in the FP6 has more to do with adding rigidity so it can be drop resistant up to 1.5m (average drop height when you drop your phone). My Nokia 6310i phones dropped more then enough and lots of times I had to fit the battery again, but no functional damage was ever done to the device. (nicked corner of the case was worst that happened, the 10th time it dropped)
Not sure I get your point. Are you talking about the FP6? Even if its working without, dropping it, falling apaprt will most likely damage the connector I guess.
Well all FPs before the FP6 worked like this.
So its about space for the FP6, modules need space (especially when not screwed).
Yes I can appreciate that but even if the phone is physically the same I would personally go as far as creating an iPhone SE type top notch and bottom notch, so make the display less tall to accommodate physical home button and a proper top notch area to install for example that privacy camera cover. The middle of display top notch “islands” are nightmare to control the front camera.
Yeah, the disappearance of the physical buttons for home, back and apps annoyed me a lot more then the headphone jack.
The mantra of Fairphone is to make electronic more durable and repairable.
But to really achieve this goal, Fairphones should not only be repairable but also fully upgradable just like we can see in the laptop market with Framework.
Indeed all Framework laptops generation share a common motherboard form factor making possible to get the very lates motherboard with new CPUs/SoCs even on the very first edition of the Framework laptop.
Fairphone should do the sale and offer not only full repairable components but also full upgradable components and not just very rare or few options like cameras.
Future Fairphone models should all share same motherboard form factor and connectors to be able to switch to new motherboards and so new SoCs, networks chips, … without having to change the whole phone.
Technically there is no valid reason to not offer that option, it’s just a matter of defining a common form factor just like Framework is doing on laptops and just like you have in desktop PCs with ATX/Micro-ATX/ITX.
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I think the main limitation for this is the actual software. FP can probably design swappable main boards and storage, but afaik android is not fond on moving core hardware components about.
This was (iirc) one of the main limiting factors in the last and one reason why modular phones never came to fruition outside of swapping what is basically a modular set of usb attachments (same as Frameworks modules).
This might be solved now, I don’t know for sure, but I would not be surprised if the os has to take specific cpu and ram settings into account, and as such are not easy to swap around without core software iterations (which might be outside of the scope of what FP can do)
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I’m not speaking about hot swapping mainboard, nor about keeping the existing Android installation. As storage is on the mainboard, it’s impossible to keep the existing installation.
Instead swapping the mainboard by a new one would just be like changing to a new smartphone and you’ll be welcome by a fresh new install of Android, and restore your apps and settings from the cloud, like you do when changing smartphone.
So no that’s not a good reason to not offer that option. As long as you advertise it correctly by warning that you’ll not keep your existing software installation and we’ll have to set it up like a new phone, which is frankly perfectly acceptable and even logical, it’s not an issue.
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Ah, ok, that would be a more viable solution indeed. I thought you were suggestion a change to internal components as you can do with a desktop.
I would personally be more interested in variations on usb c connector, microphone, camera, so you can upgrade those over time, as a new main board feels like a big enough change that a redesigned main housing is necessary as well.
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I would like that, too, but I know that this is impossible. The restrictions regarding the overall size of the phone just rule that out. There is just no margin to design a ‘future proof’ size of a mainboard.
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I think the vibration thing is fully customizable in Standard Android? But I previously that was the first thing I turned off on new phones, so don’t know if this is still possible or possible with this horrible “new” vibration motors (LRA) that are used in every device now.
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I don’t see why it’d be impossible. Why?
First, because Framework does this on the laptop market successfully, and laptops, while of course bigger, also have some size and thickness restrictions.
Second, because smartphones tends to be bigger rather than smaller over time, and so there would always be room for the motherboard, particularly considering that batteries will become more and more dense in energy (we already have some smartphones that use silicon/carbon technology that offer greater energy density, and we are not even talking about semi-solid or solid state batteries yet).
Of course it requires to decide of a motherboard form factor and stick with it when designing new smartphones models so that it works both in new models and also in previous models cases. Which is exactly what framework does on laptops. Even though they improved the laptop shell over time, the motherboards are still compatible with all laptop shells they produced, because they put the motherboard form factor as a design requirement to cope with.
@WilcoBoode Why choose? Both are possible and in my opinion both should be done. Again, Framework is just doing that in the laptop market, you can change everything on a Framework laptop. Of course on a smartphone you’ll have things that would only be possible to upgrade via logic board change, as they are integrated in the SoC or soldered to the motherboard (and a smartphone is too small to not solder them) like storage, RAM, or network chip, but you still can have camera lens, microphone, speaker, … that could be upgradable (not just repairable), and even battery (when new more energy dense technologies emerge to get more capacities in the same battery size) without changing the whole motherboard.
In my opinion, a durable phone, and electronic device in general, should not only be fully and easily repairable, like Fairphone are (and of course Framework laptops too), but also easily upgradable (like what Framework is doing).
Also I think that is Fairphone decide to work and make full upgradability possible, they would have far more success than today, as whatever we think about other smartphone brands, most of the time even regular smartphones are durable enough to be kept for many year, even 5 to 7 years or more, particularly now that some manufacturers offer 7 years software upgrade support, and that independent repair centers has developed making repairs far more accessible even for regular smartphones (even when you need to change the screen, cameras or USB-C port).
There are a lot of good reasons, to stay on the known path and this was discussed already several times. Smartphones are highly integrated devices, swapping the CPU means basically swapping the whole phone, rendering a big electronic part unusable. What to do with the old mainboard?
Giving away the working old phone to someone who can’t or doesn’t want to afford a new phone, when buying a new one, makes more sense then swapping part after part and filling the drawer with unused old ones.
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Because you are still comparing apples to oranges. On a smartphone every single millimeter of size counts and no, phones are not getting bigger and bigger. We have come close to the end of this with something between 6” - 6.5”. Meanwhile batteries are also not improving that much anymore, but SoCs are still getting faster and screens get brighter. At this point one design goal is thickness and the other is battery duration. Duration has to be around one day and thickness should get as close to zero as possible.
And yes, that might not be what counts for you and it is really not what counts for me, but it is what count for a whole lot of Fairphone users.
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To be fair, he advocated for doing it like framework does and you can’t swap the CPU on a framework laptop. You swap the mainboard and that would work on a phone as well as long as they use universal bus protocols like USB or have an interface with extra-pins for “future-proofness”. And the mainboard alone is not the whole phone by any means.
I sold all my Fairphone 3 parts to people who tried to fix their phone. That includes the motherboard and I made way too much money even. It works the same way with Desktop-PC’s and the framework laptop. You just sell the old hardware. There is always someone willing to use your old stuff as long as the price is right. It doesn’t get to waste and a unified design would make this even more feasible, not less.
So while I agree that the whole thing is challenging to pull of, I just can’t see how this wouldn’t be a good thing once figured out.
Another important feature that FP7 should have:
A CPU that supports running the Linux Development Environment (Linux terminal)
That having that in combination with USB 3 for external monitor would allow for insane productivity.
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If this is about a terminal und the usual command line tools, than Termux has everything since years.
If it is about graphical tools, it is a matter of time until Googles Terminal App is ready.
Either way, it is all pure software and has nothing to do with the CPU or any other hardware.
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