no i meant they can charge the phone. For instance if you were to use the phone as your home entertainment system of if you were to go on a 15 hour car ride you’d have to charge the phone at some point but the dongle takes up the charge port…
But again: Very specific rare issue imho.
I concur, that would seem to be quite rare, and is not an issue per se which (currently) concerns me. And speculating, you could use a USB hub: Plug the hub into the FairPhone, your power source into one of the hub’s connectors, and the dongle / headphones into another of the hub’s connectors.
I myself could actually try that experiment (in a modified form): I have a suitable hub, I have USB headphones (rather than a dongle), and I have an external powerpack. The almost-reverse-situation, where the hub is plugged into my (Linux) laptop, and connected-to both those USB headphones and the FairPhone, does work: The headphones work, the FP3 recharges, and I can “talk” to the FP3 over the USB link (e.g., file transfers). If this speculated approach works, people with the presumed-rare problem don’t need such a recharging-capable dongle, albeit the overall size of the kit would be somewhat larger (presumably). However, in my own almost-reverse situation, it’s the laptop (which is plugged into the hub), not a power-source connected to the hub, which is powering the FairPhone, so the known-working situation is not exactly equivalent.
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Hmm! the ‘or’ is the issue, why would you think the phone requires charging after 15 hours, sometimes I don’t charge it for 4 or 5 days, very rarely less than 24 hours.
Anyway this topic is about Technologies for an FP5. The ability to charge with or without a dongle, let alone the use and timing is not really relevant, but maybe relevant to the FP4 current use and setup. The FP5 is likely to|may have wireless charging and so would not be an issue.???
I think that rather than ask for expensive engineering miracles from a moderately funded company still looking for financial success, why not be more pragmatic with the fifth design, in line with what customers are already used to paying for, but playing to the advantage that only Fairphone can offer: modularity.
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I have read on these forums that there are some looking for both a smaller and larger sized phones outside of the current dimensions. What is technically stopping the Fairphone team from releasing different sized enclosures that can cater for these customers needs, with a single logic board design ?
I wonder just how much of an engineering challenge it would be to maintain the same internals for different display output sizes ?
Naturally, the placement of specifically positioned internals would require several sized components to reach adequately, but if possible, surely there would be profit in it ?
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This also dovetails into the issue of the microphones being soldered directly onto the logic board. Surely these could be modular themselves, as I would like to physically remove the offending element(s) for security reasons. You have an ex-NSA (Snowden) whistleblower telling you to do this, what more proof do you need ?
Some opine for a “kill-switch”, which is fair enough, but being modular the answer is obvious to me.
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I still would like to see Fairphone develop its enclosures, the fairphonephone could be so much more:
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Uninterrupted rear enclosure : which brand on the market sells a security conscious smartphone with no rear cameras ? None, yet there are companies looking for such security, and the cost cuts that come with it. It would also better ensure the IPxx rating of the smartphone.
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Rugged option : let us no mess around, it’s going to be thicker and have to be fastened with Torx screws, but there is a wide market from weekend campers to those on constructions sites.
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Tool-free easy access : springs and latches work well enough keep a Glock 19 pistol together, you could even use neodymium magnets which slide apart far easier than being pulled apart.
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List item
Wireless charging : allow those whom need it to be energy inefficient, with further sales from a magnetically aligned charging puck, and possibly even a second offering that allows for reverse-charing !
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As Results45 suggested, forming a hardware standards consortium would go a long way to scaling your challenge(s) across different platforms by sharing resources and suppliers.
That’s the last of my sensible suggestions, how about some more tech heavy requests then:
*The Fairphone team seem to have settled upon the tri-camera design, up from two on the third generation phone. But those cameras could surely be switched out for further customisation, just like on Raspberry Pi with a camera designed specifically for the dark, maybe a camera with no IR filter, one in the heat spectrum…
With so much space taken up by three cameras, by removing two, a periscope option could be installed serious for optical zoom… you’re a modular company after all !
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I think you confuse security with privacy. Furthermore, speakers can act as (poor) microphones too. If you want ultimate privacy; don’t use a smartphone. Fairphone builds their devices with sustainability in mind. Wireless charging is beyond stupid. Try to do your part to limit climate change.
You also suggest niche things, like making it possible to remove the rear cameras without leaving a hole. At the same time you want wireless charging to satisfy more people. It’s quite impossible to satisfy such a wide range of people, both niche enthousiasts and the mainstream. Their goal is fairness and sustainability. They do this well. I suppose they found their market already.
Standardization throughout the industry is indeed great! But as you are aware, Fairphone is relatively small and is only now making a profit. It may happen when their resources allow it. The same goes for releasing different FP sizes. FP is big because it’s modular and people have high expectations. Making it smaller is hard. They dropped things like a notification LED to manage the available space and not make the phone bigger.
But who am I of course. Best is to ask these things to Fairphone. We are just users, like you.
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I see my post has been removed.
It’s that kind of place is it.
No, your post is not removed. Your post is relocated to the thread Modularity, ethics and Fairphone 5. As explained in my previous post.
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Yes, I noticed after I posted.
Fair enough.
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I’m still wondering which components of the fairphone 4 could be removed in the Fifth version of the Fairphone.
In a household or company with a lot of different phones, the advantages of wireless charging may actually outgrow the backsides, like so:
- you only need one type of charger, regardless of usb or lightning plug type. So in most places, only one charger needs to be available/running, instead of at least three. The others don’t need to be bought and even manufactured. Actually at our place, we still use some QI charging points bought when usb-c phones were not even a thing. And still they all charge happily on those old buggers.
- in the car, one single charging phone holder can be installed and used by all drivers, regardless of their phone type. Previous to that they were continuously changed which not only broke quite a number of holders but also ruined the dashboards.
- on a desk the QI charger keeps the phone charged while it always can be taken single-handedly for use without plugging/unplugging.
- providing charging points for visitors is pretty much a no-brainer.
- we didn’t have one single broken charging port at our home or company of 25ppl - in YEARS.
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Regardless whether you want to charge wireless or wired, you only need one charger. Only the cable is different. And a cable is necessary to connect the QI base to the charger too.
I never broke a USB connector on any of my devices too. Even without wireless charging.
As already said in this thread several times, QI is handy and convenient, but not good for the battery and the environment.
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Everything you mentioned can be solved with magnetic cables/adapters. I use them for all my gadgets (phone, wireless earphones, e-book reader, power bank, bluetooth keyboard, dash cam, etc.) and I just need to bring one charger and one cable with me.
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Yes, that would theoretically be possible and actually almost can be for a very limited number of persons who seldomly lose or break parts.
In reality though, there is no single standard like QI for magnetic adapters and I have yet to find any vendor that sells one system with interchangeable parts for more than a few months at best.
Result: either you buy loads of spare parts in one single take or - every other year - you would run out of spares and have to switch to a new system that uses magnets which happen to be like 0,5mm wider than before or have differently placed pogo pins. Not feasibe at a scale of more than five users, roughly, and would leave quite a bit of waste, too.
In case of our company, for example, at the point where USB-C came up, there would have been a lot of magsafe cables from far ago MicroUSB times and all the shiny new ones that support USB-C now would not fit to them. As mentioned in my original post, we still use QI charging points that go back to like 2016 or so.
So your solution comes close and it has potential, but the lack of any standard sort of ruins it.
P.S.: I even suspect it would be impossible to get something long-term sustainable to market in this area, because when people realized it and started to buy that at large, Apple would sue the manufacturer to Alpha Centauri and back with their magsafe patents. What a great world to live in. Where mega-corps are allowed to own generic ideas.
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Yeah, I agree that it should definitely get standardized. But I doubt that Apple could actually sue anyone. They’re not the only ones using magnetic connectors (Microsoft does it too with Surface laptops) and the lightning connector will hopefully go away in a few years thanks to EU.
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I am glad for you, but on a company level we experienced different.
Before we introduced QI, we got like 4 to 6 devices a year (company of 25-30 ppl) with charging port problems. And as it is with current “normal” phones, that mostly would mean replacing the whole phone. For us, this alone was worth the switch.
And I dare say it would be interesting to weigh the ecological footprint of at least 10-15 non-replaced phones at our company in the course of the last years against the loss of a few kWh of power through charging points…
As a side note, we intentionally install charging points with 5-10 watts transmission power at most. They don’t introduce any noticeable heat.
Well, and now, with the Fairphone having reached the point of real-life usability I’d really like to introduce them at our company… but since QI is now mandatory for us due to the history explained above, it won’t make it on the list in the foreseeable future.
Yea… and guess what, Microsoft got patents on their connectors, too! 
If that ain’t a reassuring enough environment for any new manufacturer to come to market with a system that could become standard, I don’t know… /s
I understand, but for a different company, maybe a special 5G frequency band is mandatory, or a special screen body ratio, or the position of the finger print sensor. The Fairphone is still a niche product and will never be able to fulfill everybody’s requirements.
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Bit of a weird one, but I wonder could you produce a connector which is shaped to fold around the base of the 'phone so that the cable comes up behind the device, flush against its body. I’ve had a good number of connector failures, and it’s obvious why: the connector sticks out like a sore thumb and is subject to a lot of stress in a pocket or bag. With a new mag-type connector you could even have the whole connector surface on the rear of the 'phone, but I don’t imagine FP can afford to create a new connector standard; I’m just thinking of something more like making cables with a U-shaped housing for their USB-C connector.
A Fairphone with an e-ink screen could be nice (dedicated model or choice at the time of purchase).
Some manufacturers offer such models but either it is incomplete or it is not available outside the country of origin (LightPhone, Hisense A3 → A9, …)
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