The Guardian includes the Fairphone 3 as āthe ethical alternativeā in a list of āFive of the best mobile phones ā whatever your budgetā ā¦
6 Likes
Yet another modular āphoneā :
1 Like
For those who need a dumbphone, I can recommend a CAT25. It is rugged, and you can remove the battery (later CAT dumbphones donāt have the latter feature and run some āsmartā OS like KaiOS or w/e it is).
I just donāt get the point of adding GSM to such. I would not put a SIM in it anyway. Iāll be buying a Pocketsprite for the family. Thatās the kind of device I would on my keychain if my kid is bored in the train 
1 Like
European Commission produces new rules to make household appliances more sustainable:
3 Likes
The article claims:
The Fairphone 3 has been launched. That is no more than a step in the right direction, because smartphones are almost impossible to make sustainable.
2 Likes
Local though not fair.
6 Likes
You bet me to it 
I first learned about it on notebookcheck.net. The company website is very slow and glitchy, but the product specifications are very thorough. If only some other manufacturers were this open about their products. The only information missing is input/output ports. I can see from pictures that it uses a single micro USB port though, which is probably a good choice for compatibility with other chargers in Rwanda. Only the cheaper āXā model has a removable battery. The other one is glued shut. The X uses the lighter āGoā Android 9.0 with its 1GB of dynamic memory, which Iām sure would work just fine.
True. Rwanda is a nice country though. I can not say that work practices there are fairer than in China, but Iāll wager that they are. I want to learn more about Rwanda now.
Correction: How wrong I was! Rwanda is still most certainly not a nice country. A simple look on Wikipedia about the leader, Paul Kagame was sufficient.
2 Likes
Your smartphone does quite a bit of damage: canāt that be fairer and more sustainable?
The smartphone that you carelessly let disappear into a drawer after a few years of use, comes about in rather problematic circumstances. Canāt that be fairer?
And of course Fairphone is mentioned in the article:
We asked experts from the field, viewed reports from telephone brands themselves and spoke with Fairphone, a Dutch telephone brand founded in 2013 that recently released its latest model; the Fairphone 3. Precisely because of the great effort it has to make to make its devices āfairā, this company illustrates better than anyone how deeply rooted the problems of the telephone industry are.
2 Likes
WireGuard removed from Google Play Store, rectification in progress
Google appears to be cracking down on software asking for donations, despite such software being FOSS. The software is still available on F-Droid.
One more reason to be not relying on Google Play Store.
3 Likes
An article about Fairphone with mostly stuff we all know
I had to cringe a bit at this sentence
The company designs for longevity, easy repair, and modular upgrades.
That might lead to unmet expectiations I fear 
6 Likes
The item is in Dutch but that news should be linked elsewhere as well. The point is that the first Google Pixel was released on October 4 2016, and receives its last security update in December 2019. Which is 3 years and 2 months (38 months) updates. For a flagship device. Which cost 800 EUR. By one of the largest corporations in the world (Google).
6 Likes
I had a lengthy discussion about that on twitter once. A person there couldnāt imagine how Fairphone can guarantee 5 years of support when Google only has 3. That person also didnāt seem to understand that the FP2 already has longer support than 3 years. I was at the end of my explanation skillsā¦
2 Likes
Also had disbelief, or laughs that is was running ancient Android 5/6/7 (whatever it was at that time). What matters is that the device is stable and secure though.
Of interest for the Android jailbreak (or unpatched vulnerability) community is https://research.checkpoint.com/the-road-to-qualcomm-trustzone-apps-fuzzing/ which I suppose (not sure) could defeat Widevine, and/or get you root. I didnāt verify if the FP2 or FP3 are vulnerable.
(Thereās also been a jailbreak for a lot of iPhone devices.)
The article that clued me in that the fairphone even exists (i had no idea until then, would have likely brought FP1 and FP2 otherwise)
Now a FP3 owner
9 Likes
The Met Office Hadley Centre is one of the UKās foremost climate change research centres. This is their āClimate Dashboardā which is āTracking the Changing Climate with Earth Observationsā. The dashboard contains clear graphs which should be convincing in a discussion, even with climate change deniers.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/monitoring/dashboard.html
2 Likes
https://co2.earth also has much information about climate change.
The Laughs section is particularly funny: https://www.co2.earth/earth-to-america
1 Like
They call themselves āThe worldās first ecologically sustainable computersā (all-in-one computer, laptop and mice)
http://www.iameco.com/
1 Like
Jolla has released Sailfish OS support for the Sony Xperia 10 (Plus). Some hope they might support Fairphone 3 eventually, though Iām not holding my breath.