I’m extremely sad to have reached the decision not to buy another Fairphone. I feel like I’m the ideal target audience for this brand. I had the FP2 for a few years, and happily replaced the battery and upgraded the camera. My wife was rocking an old Motorola, and when it died I decided to buy 2x FP3s. The FP2 was converted into an audiobook player for my mother in law, and it’s still alive. I bragged about the Fairphone’s repairability to anyone that would listen to me (and I’m sure I’ve bored a lot of people who had zero interest in it). And I’m a certified tree-hugger (vegetarian, no-fly, no car etc).
So why is the FP3 my last fairphone? And why am I posting here?
Well to answer the 2nd bit first, I want to know if there’s anyone else who feels this. I’m overall disappointed with the phone industry’s design choices recently. While I don’t think I’ll be getting another Fairphone (simply by looking at the design trends from FP3 > FP4 > FP5) I’m honestly finding it extremely difficult to get any device that I actually want.
OK, but why not another Fairphone? Two reasons:
- Performance
- THE FP5 IS HUUUUGE. If you look at the sizes of each edition of the FP it’s only going in one direction: BIGGER, HEAVIER and IMPOSSIBLE TO USE ONE-HANDED.
#1 has become important to me in a way that I didn’t think it would. I don’t use my phone for gaming or heavy-duty AI / number crunching etc. It’s just a comms device. WhatsApp, Slack, a bit of browsing. But Android 13 absolutely destroyed the performance of the FP3, and broke a bunch of stuff like fingerprint auth. While it has gotten a little better (after factory reset, format SD card, only install essential apps, and about 4 successive updates) it’s still nowhere near as good as it was on Android 12. So while I’m still rocking a 10 year old Macbook Pro (running linux) and have a bunch of extremely low-powered computers around the house doing home automation, multimedia etc, I can’t rely on a reasonably recent phone to perform if an Android update can destroy its perfomance. Honestly, even taking a photo on this phone is such a horrendously laggy experience. The fact that the very latest Fairphone, the FP5, rocks a sub-par chip upon release doesn’t give me hope. Android 14 might be fine on the FP5, but what about a forced Android 15 upgrade?
There isn’t much more to say about #2 (size issue), except that it’s sad that we’ve lost the range of phone sizes that were available 5+ years ago. There used to be choice. But all the manufacturers have phased out small phones, including the last holdouts, Apple and Asus. I already don’t like the size of the FP3 - it’s barely usable one-handed - but I draw the line at the FP5. Just look at the weight/size increases:
189g → 212g
158 x 71 → 161.6 x 75.8
That’s a hard no. So after reading hundreds of reviews, tech specs and doing a lot of soul searching, I’ve decided that I’m either getting an Asus Zenfone 10 or a Sony Xperia 5 v, and hoping that performance and battery hold out. The IP68 ratings gives me hope that they won’t die stupidly, like the phone I had pre FP2, which got a little wet and vibrated itself to death in front of me. The Sony is a little larger but has SD card and USB 3.2 DisplayPort. Apple can sod off completely, tbh.
In my opinion the usable lifespan of the FP3 is now over. In fact I’ve held onto it for at least a year of hating it. Its performance hasn’t lasted long enough for me to care about spare parts or OS upgrades. Can anyone do anything about this? Who knows. I know that Fairphone are already fighting a tough battle to produce a modern phone that is repairable and ethical. Going completely against the industry and doing that in a small form-factor with a decent CPU is likely impossible. But ultimately I don’t want an enormous phone and I don’t really believe that an older CPU will survive the next forced OS upgrade.
Discuss?
[edits: lots of typos]