🇬🇧 Interesting links / news articles somehow related to Fairphone

Your smartphone does quite a bit of damage: can’t 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. Can’t 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 “fair”, this company illustrates better than anyone how deeply rooted the problems of the telephone industry are.

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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.

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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 :frowning:

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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).

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I had a lengthy discussion about that on twitter once. A person there couldn’t imagine how Fairphone can guarantee 5 years of support when Google only has 3. That person also didn’t seem to understand that the FP2 already has longer support than 3 years. I was at the end of my explanation skills


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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 didn’t verify if the FP2 or FP3 are vulnerable.

(There’s 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 :slight_smile:

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The Met Office Hadley Centre is one of the UK’s foremost climate change research centres. This is their “Climate Dashboard” which is “Tracking the Changing Climate with Earth Observations”. 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

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https://co2.earth also has much information about climate change.

The Laughs section is particularly funny: https://www.co2.earth/earth-to-america

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They call themselves “The world’s first ecologically sustainable computers” (all-in-one computer, laptop and mice)
http://www.iameco.com/

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Jolla has released Sailfish OS support for the Sony Xperia 10 (Plus). Some hope they might support Fairphone 3 eventually, though I’m not holding my breath.

This is so difficult to comment on. Kinda like comparing Fairphone with a non-fair phone.

50 EUR for a mouse with 2 buttons. 80 EUR for a membrane keyboard (with ugly Windows key). I really like the wood though. In like 2003 I saw an Italian craftsman who made a full laptop housing, custom, for any current laptop. The price though
 2000 EUR or so. That’s the complete case though; not half of it like these laptops. Plus, the laptop they show on the website here has VGA and seems to run Windows 8.

With mice, I don’t need such for a laptop (Apple Trackpad FTW, else trackpoint). There is a mouse by Razer which can be converted from a normal mouse to a Naga (12 button) or a Hex (6 button). So you don’t need a separate mouse if you play a MOBA or MMO. Razer mice are not known to be durable though, and I already got a normal and MMO mouse as it is (plus I don’t have time for MMOs anymore).

Keyboard-wise, a mechanical keyboard can be made from durable plastic. Mechanical keyboards last longer than membrane, and keys can be replaced. Sure, they can be loud, but that is also a matter of preference (something like Cherry MX Red or Cherry MX Brown with o-rings should not be loud, and it is also a matter of using the keys differently).

Finally, the website seems out of date? As at the Archive the top entry is November 2015.

Looking great.
But is that preject still up to date?
The “Archives”-section ends 2015 and the “news” are from 2013!
The shop does not offer the laptop and the specifications of the desktop computer, featuring Windows 8 and a dual core Intel ATOM D525 CPU from 2010 seem a bit outdated.

It would be a pity if such a good concept would go waste.
But unfortunately this is the first time I heard of them; so they might have not been successful enough at marketing?

Edit:
Latest tweet from September 2017.
Latest facebook post from December 2018, announcing the starting of selling USB keyboards and mice. That’s what the online shop mostly features; in various designs.

Maybe Fairphone could team up with them, as the concept they had for their computers was really great (including repairability of course).

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“Making a one-hour call a day produces up to 1250 kg of CO2 per year—the equivalent of flying from New York to London.”

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Articles intéressants / liens vers Fairphone et des produits électroniques plus justes

Hi all,

I came across this on Twitter, I think it was retweeted by Mozilla. The focus is on the Amazon Echo but it could apply to any consumer electronics. The poster is great, a visual yet detailed representation of the impacts of a commodity electronic item.

Fairphone has made a start but there is a huge industry to change - let’s keep at it!

Cheers :slight_smile:

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Official press release: BMW Group forges ahead with e-mobility and secures long-term battery cell needs – total order volume of more than 10 billion euros awarded

Quote:

The BMW Group will source the cobalt needed as a key raw material for cell production directly from mines in Australia and Morocco and make it available to CATL and Samsung SDI.

News item source (albeit Bloomberg):

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-24/bmw-to-source-cobalt-directly-from-mines-in-morocco-australia

Though they take the easy road, as most of the big companies.
Trying to work it out in Congo, as Fairphone does, would really be a statement.

But possibly, that is not yet feasible at this moment, given the size of this contract.

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It’s the approach that counts here. Fairphone has started completely as a new comer and (simply) did it. And they were far from being that wealthy than BMW.
So again it doesn’t look like BMW wants to do better here.