Mobile World Congress 2015 - send in your community questions

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Hi gang,

Mobile World Congress (MWC), the biggest trade show event in the mobile industry, will be happening the first week of March. While Fairphone will not have a dedicated booth at MWC, some team members will be attending.

I’ll be there to report on the latest issues many of us are concerned about - fairness in the supply chain, phone longevity/durability, and issues of security, privacy, and open (source) software platforms.

As a starting point, I’m interested in getting updates about the following organizations and companies who are working in these areas:

Blackphone, Firefox, Ubuntu (Canonical), Sailfish OS (Jolla), Puzzlephone

Now, I’m eager to hear what you guys are interested in!

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  • What’s the progress of Fair Trade Gold and other fairly mined ressources?
  • What are the other companies doing against electronic waste disposal in developing countries?

Though I’m not sure that these issues will be discussed there, Fairphone could still bring them up and raise awareness. :smiley:

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I would be really interested in Ubuntu’s and Sailfish Os approaches to longevity (like in how long can we expect software update for devices) and privacy. I am also interested in Ubuntu’s approach to Open Source and the “scopes” that seem to be exclusive to certain devices (i have no idea really but it seems so) and Sailfish OS roadmap to opensource their mostly closed source UI.
And finally i would be interested how they think their missions aligns with the Fairphone project.

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Quite some interesting stuff already.

I’d be generally interested how companies (including the large ones) are dealing with the call for conflict-free resources, including legislation. What are new developments there, for the whole industry? What happened policy-wise in companies? The industry had a cooling off period, I remember, of two years after the Dobbs-Frank act - what’s happening today? What’s in the greater picture, compared to two years ago?

Of course, since I assume there will be some MediaTek people around, FP could try to lobby them a bit to support the communities call for opening their codebase. We want to be able to keep our phones as secure as possible, i.e. to get updates for the OS.

In addition to Stefan’s and Ben’s questions, the “open” baseband questions springs to mind - you could try to get into a discussion about that with both the Ubuntu/Sailfish people, and Blackphone. I’m sure that @Herve5 as a supporter of OpenMoko would like to get some info there, too. :smile:

Talking about Ubuntu, there’s the Aquaris 4.5 of bq, allegedly the first Ubuntu phone on the European market. Those guys must face some similar problems as FP is, minus the general social responsibility/ecological responsibility issues. (They chose a MediaTek chip as well, BTW. Actually, the specs are pretty comparable to a FP.)

Some people form Project Ara will also be there, I presume. Would be interesting to get some news from them. While they seem to be “too big” for a cooperation, FP should still have a go and see what you can achieve.

Last, but not least, I’d like to know how FP’s initiative for a workers representation is perceived by other (small) producers.

If any other company or project would move to raw materials from more sustainable sources, and/or more social responsibility because FP showed that there are some options for it, that would be quite an good. Go for it, @anon90052001. :sunny:

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I’m adding myself to this. @anon90052001 would be really interesting to hear

  • how they made Ubuntu happen on the Mediatek chipset.
  • what Canonical has to say about this (e.g. are they cooperating with Mediatek?)

Would be really cool to plug the FP into a display and use it as a PC. :sunglasses:

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Thanks for the comments, everybody. MWC is about to start tomorrow!

I will be writing a blog post about the trip and outcomes, and hope to add some visuals to the forum during the week.

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