Just announced: SHIFTphone 8

This might become an interesting alternative to a Fairphone 4: SHIFTphone 8 Status - SHIFTPHONES -

Hardware-Killswitches, IP67, and electronic waste positive

What do you think?

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It’s just at the crowd funding state, nothing developed, nothing planned exactly, nothing sure. So please wait and see.

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Looks really nice model, hardware switches for the camera . . .

Couldn’t access an English descriptive page :frowning:

When developing the SHIFT13mi, as with all our devices, we focus on modularity and, where possible, on fair production and raw material extraction. We make sure that fair raw materials are used and that conflict raw materials are either avoided or otherwise compensated. Both the people involved in production and nature are very important to us.

This will be more an alternative to the FP5, as Shift needs years to develop so far…

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The SHIFTphone 8 sounds very interesting!!! :slightly_smiling_face:

Delivery: expected at the end of 2023

That is very ambitious. I don’t think they’ll make it that quickly.
But am still curious how exactly the final product will look like.

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Let’s see at the shop page how the detailed specifications are:

I like that. That’s a very unique feature.

The replaceable battery is the highlight of all Fairphones and Shiftphones and one of the main reasons why I decided to buy a Fairphone.

That is positive as the little notification light this is missing in the FP4.

That is slightly larger than my FP3+. Let’s see how the overall size of the phone will be. I don’t want any phone that is significantly larger than my FP3+.

I think “eSIM capable” means that you don’t get physical SIM slots. That’s a bummer. The largest disadvantage of eSIM is the deficient support by the providers and the complicated and expensive deployment. That means that I don’t get eSIM at all providers, and if I would get one anyways, I must pay for every deployment and wait for a letter to arrive. That’s ridiculous! I would accept eSIM if all providers offer eSIM and deliver them instantly and for free via their online portal.

I read this as “no headphone socket”. That’s a real bummer and the thing I dislike the most on the FP4.


I think I will stick to my FP3+ as I do not see any “better” phone on the market. I honestly don’t know what to buy if my FP3+ breaks down. And I do not really have a recommendation if someone asks which phone to buy.

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Might as well be the same as with the FP4: one physical SIM slot plus eSIM capability in addition.

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Hardware killswitches are nice but I think most people that care about stuff like that won’t be interested in a phone running a spyware OS with mostly proprietary drivers and firmware. So as much as I like the intention, I can’t help but think that this is investing time and money at the wrong end. My biggest problem with all phones is the lack of openess on the software side. I wish Fairphone would do more on that front but I understand they have limited resources and overall I am rather happy with where we stand with community support for various OSes. This is likely to be a big drawback of SHIFTphone and frankly the only thing that stops me from investing 444 EUR into pre-ordering one right now.

I’m cautiously hopeful about that phone. If they manage to have a reasonably modern SoC, RAM, and storage offering(s) then it could compete with the FP4. With the hardware killswitches and a good, open software stack (bootloader to OS), they could also compete in the Linux phone market if they attract those developers.

Unfortunately it’s too early to tell if that’ll be the case. I never recommend to pre-order anything, and this is no exception: all they’ve offered is promises. In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to watch it’s development.

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Without funding/pre-order the phone will never exist. Its already the 8th Generation of a Shiftphones so it will come, its just the question when. The price def. does not indicate it will/can come with a new high end SOC given the size of the company and they fact they care about their employees in China as well.

Edit: specifications planned are a QC SOC of the 700 series, min 128GB storage and 8GB RAM.
Reg. Google: they always offer their OS without Google as well. The community so far is not big enough that there is a lot custom ROM development, although they are open to it. Guess when they really want to attract a bigger market, they have to expand from german speaking customer only.

Edit2: I’m quite curious to see how they will manage to get the IP67 certification (or better) and guarantee “a short water dive” combined with the modularity.

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