And it sorta hurts to compare its specs and looks to our beloved FP3:
The price for the Nord in Europe is €399, btw.
For my usage pattern that phone seems quite overpowered 
I stumbled a bit over
comes with two years of major OS updates and three years of security updates; although, like other OnePlus phones, they won’t be monthly.
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Updates for Fairphones are not released monthly, too.
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20 character limit
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This is true. But then Fairphone will give 5 years in total instead of 3. In this regard the OnePlus Nord offers less than the FP3. And why would I be willing to take a step backwards? I wouldn’t give money to a smartphone manufacturer in 2020 who - software support wise - offers just the average. I’d rather help pushing the limits.
Edit: as Stanzi already pointed out, people typically don’t ask why other phones are so cheap/more powerful for the same price, and a support duration of 5 instead of 3 years is exactly what always gets overlooked. And later people complain that their software support was dropped so soon.
Edit2: yes, I also want Fairphone to provide the updates on a monthly basis. For the stock Android that is. From what I understood, /e/ will release monthly updates.
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Do we all want /e/ on our Fairphones just to get monthly security updates? I doubt it.
No one buys an FP3 to get the best specs for the lowest price - it’s dead easy to list a dozen mid-range smartphones that are superior to the FP3 in that regard. I don’t see why this particular phone stands out?
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Could you please stop picking those parts that you want to attack while completely ignoring the rest?
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More people would buy an FP3 if it had better specs. It is a group of potential customers that is a bit left behind by Fairphone.
You have answered your question from your point of view, and that is respected.
Just because I did not reply to the rest you mentioned does not mean that I completely ignore it…
Other people would buy it.
If it had better specs, it would also be more expensive, and that would prevent another group of potential customers from buying it, so whether in the end more people would buy it is uncertain.
As a price reference … how about 800 EUR instead of 450? Apparently the SHIFT6mq is finally out, there are reports in their forum by people who got it.
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I agree to everything you say, but that does not make the FP3 attractive to me either.
Well, it can’t please everybody.
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Unfortunately, this is not the average support but the maximum in the Android world except for Fairphone.
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Yes, the FP3 is expensive but I see at least 3 reasons for this:
- small quantities so more expensive components,
- better paid workers,
- a longer update and upgrade support (you need to pay programmers).
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The last point on your list is relative: There are issues (especially regarding audio and Bluetooth) that are not solved, although they have been existing since the phone hit the market. Fairphone confirmed that these issues shall be resolved with firm-/software updates. Does the money paid for a FP3 go directly to the /e/ foundation, because it has been able to fix some issues which Fairphone obviously cannot?
This debate was aleady seen many times on the forum I think.
I would tell you to go and found a phone company with fair conditions for workers, modular phone, etc and let’s see how you do, but it’s not really an argument.
Yes FP doesn’t work as well as other brands, and I’m trying to understand why people complain so much. There is room for a lot of improvement, sure, but FP are still “learning” and I consider they already managed quite a lot. I’m even surprised a phone such as the FP3 exists.
If you bought it from /e/ on their website yes. But /e/ is an open source project, so what’s your point?
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Plus (or a bit more elaborate):
/e/ is independently developed from Fairphone OS.
So it’s not, that they solved problems that Fairphone does not solve. They are working on their own track/software; and since they are doing a Google-free OS, the architecture/software is not exactly comparable.
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Actually I have two points:
- Fairphone have not been able to fix some issues for almost a year now.
- When users experience these issues, they are advised to switch to /e/ in the forum.
That makes me think Fairphone let the (/e/) community solve these issues. And when someone claims that there is no solution after almost a year, all you hear is “Fairphone is a small company, …”, and “Found your own company!” So annoying! If Fairphone cannot do it but /e/, they should team up with the Fairphone developers and integrate the fixes in their OS. That really would be a fruitful collaboration.
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Isn’t teaming up essentially what they’re doing? Users have the option of installing /e/ or even ordering an FP3 with /e/ pre-installed, after all.
As for fixes, I’d be surprised if FP weren’t closely looking at /e/'s code to look for improvements to their own. What makes you think they aren’t? Sure, their development process is slower than /e/'s as they have to produce a guaranteed-to-work-or-your-money-back version of Android that will be used and abused by neophytes and nerds alike, but that’s hardly an indictment, more a statement about how different types of software development work.
The “guaranteed-to-work-or-your-money-back” version of Android does not exist, because Android has become the new Windows. (I wonder if any Windows user ever got back the money.)
However, the situation about the FP3 definitely is a bad one, because audio or Bluetooth issues are not fixed in the OS, but allayed. Regarding audio, users must reboot the phone to be able to use it again. Fairphone has been aware of these issues for almost one year, and they have made themselves scarce since several months.
Fairphone OS and /e/ OS are both Android 9, so there is not that much difference to apply and to implement specific code from /e/. It already exists, that is what I meant when I said that developers from both sides should team up and “enlighten” each other.
But the partnership with the /e/ foundation seems to be exclusively unilateral. They market the FP3 with their own OS and support for it. So, if /e/ OS is the “better” (because stable) software for the FP3, and if the “better” code snippets from /e/ are not applied from Fairphone to their factory OS, why would they have any further interest to proceed its software development when the /e/ foundation does it for them anyway? The message Fairphone are sending to their users basically says: “When you experience stability issues, try /e/ OS, we just cannot fix our own one!”