Unfortunately, the Bloomberg article focuses only on the financial benefits and less reliance on DR Congo (instead of improving working conditions and added value there).
What a crappy design let alone the stupid idea of selling e-waste in this careless way. I am having feelings to sue the company producing those items.
There is a rechargeable battery implemented but wasted for only once providing its limited energy (~600mAh). No second thought wasted on eventually investing a few more cents for protection circuitry and maybe an adapter ĀµUSB male -> ĀµUSB male to recharge it for further use. There would not be much more to change.
This in 2018 and in Europe, I am ashamed
I would had rather expected such an encounter in a third world country.
āWithstand going through a postal serviceā
Yes, very thoughtful keeping the CO2 footprint in mind for ridiculous 600mAh.
āIt can be recycled up to 500 timesā
Yes, but being several times rechargeable by the customer and THEN recycled would be the more ecological way imo.
Power banks with only ~600mAh obviously are not that bulky as we can see here, so what a poor argument.
Btw. I would rather have a cable with plug instead of a broken ĀµUSB port.
For me itās hard to believe their business model is based on such processes.
I would not touch one of their products of this kind.
Thanks for this imo very negative example, as we all can witness again here - many companies these days still donāt care about their impact as long as the cash flow is satisfactory.
Has anyone ever heard of āAlphonsoā?
By random on our German national radio station DLF I heard of an Android (Apps) background monitoring service called Alphonso.
A short search on the net brought me here.
I always expected something worse going on in the background as not all network traffic is purely going directly to Google. Now I know for sure that having too much trust in such devices running stock Android (IOS) is a bad idea.
Seems like every smartphone owner is potentially keeping an Alexa sniffing device.
Interesting article on The Hidden Costs of Cobalt Mining from the journal nature sustainability.
Sad conclusion of this research project:
āSo, unfortunately, sustainable cobaltmining in the DRC is still a utopia.ā
Completely off topic:
Interesting to find those two articles in this journal within a few weeks, that seem to be a bit contradictory to each other:
-
Global study shows environmentally friendly farming can increase productivity (17. August)
A major new study involving researchers from the University of York has measured a global shift towards more sustainable agricultural systems that provide environmental improvements at the same time as increases in food production. -
āHigh-yieldā farming costs the environment less than previously thoughtāand could help spare habitats (14. September)
Agriculture that appears to be more eco-friendly but uses more land may actually have greater environmental costs per unit of food than āhigh-yieldā farming that uses less land, a new study has found.
Have not read those either.
A german startup that wants to build an electric car with solar panels on top of it (finally someone who does this, I already thought of that years ago!) features a picture of a Fairphone to showcase their app!
Someone thought of posting it alread half a year ago: Sono Motors is using a Fairphone 2 to advertise their apps
Fairphone as a Service is mentioned here
https://f-droid.org/en/2018/11/10/twif-29-new-matrix-server-and-mirror-testers-wanted.html
Lol, posted almost simultaneously:
Has anyone else read/heard about this?
It could start a new big discussion in the consumer market.
This is quite cool. Though Iād say all credits go to iFixit. Motorola just promotes a service iFixit already provides for some devices anyway.
And btw, I donāt know if Iād call the difficulty of the screen replacement āmoderateā. There are 5 s in the guide and personally I donāt trust the standard āTo reassemble your device, follow the above steps in reverse order.ā sentence once disassembly involves melting glue with a heat source.
Same as me, by my past experiences in repairings I tend to say there is a 50/50 chance that the putting back together process simply equals a reverse order.
Each direction is a new experience. But this sentence is much easier and quicker to type than once again take snapshots of what has to be done and explaining more details.
Probably because most people are glad about having (successfully) reached the main goal of applying the fix and then quickly wanting to end all this hassle.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Interessante Artikel/Links zu Fairphone und fairer Elektronik
About Fairphone and Shiftphones
30.000 phones sold since 2014ā¦and there were users here stating that 160.000+ Fairphones since then were noticeable lessā¦
Anyway the Shiftphone founders mentioned some very honorable values too:
āWe actually own the mold that you need to make this battery, which we use in all our devices. This way, we can make sure youāll always be able to get a new battery for your phone.ā
Great move first of all that there is a generic part and even more as it is the most fragile part due to use.
That independence is important to the duo, who despite interest in their products, refuse to bring in outside investors to grow their company faster. āThat is also our promise to our customers,ā said Carsten Waldeck, āthat we canāt be bought. To assure that we will still be around in 20 years.ā
Although they have chosen to take the hard risky way I appreciate this move most.
There were several very interesting ideas and prototypes available in the past which were acquired by wealthy companies or investors just to be dumped or locked up.
Iām afraid that I have to revise my statement from here as we are at least on par with Apple:
Yes - we can!
"Apple, Fairphone make the cut in Greenpeace survey
Greenpeace has issued a fresh report that assesses the environmental impact of the worldās leading technology companies. It said only two firms had made significant strides to lower their environmental footprint. (17.10.2017) "
Taking a look at Appleās new semi-giga central building I do believe that many trees and other parts of the flora and fauna had to give up their home area. I guess no solar panel or other new technology can compensate for this impact having removed things which has grown in decades.
So I would say that puts Fairphone to the top in this concern.
Itās probably easy to miss in the blog post about Fairphone turning 5 years old, so hereās a direct link to the brand new Fairphone impact report (PDF, 67 pages)
The article, āF-Droid: The privacy-friendly alternative to Google Play Storeā: https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/fdroid-intro-1
This is a pretty good introductory article about F-Droid for non-techie, regular hoomans. Iād wish I had this post at hand when I started to tinker with alternative appstores; fortunately, now other people have. Share the love!
Recently featured on 35C3. Vids and PDF and wiki (for more info) here:
This video is already 3 months old, but I havenāt seen anything on the Forum yet (sorry if someone already posted it).
This is a video by TechAltar about European phone brands making a comeback:
The presentation of Fairphone is at 4ā36