A better camera would be nice. Or better software.
But what I really want to see is modules produced by third parties. Then the phone becomes modular for real. Are there any?
Welcome to the Fairphone community
No, at least as far as I know. What are you searching for? Spare parts or enhancements?
And what are you missing from the original camera?
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I am missing (optical!) zoom.
And a better battery.
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Optical zoom is very rare, only the Sony Xperia 1 line has it in the current line up of all Smartphones, as far as I know. SomI wouldn’t expect something like that in a Fairphone.
And the battery can be swapped or assisted by a powerbank. The space is limited anyway, so without changing to a different technology, the battery can’t hav more capacity.
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I always wished for a wireless charging add-on. The Fairphone 4 had the NFC with contacts on the back cover. I hoped someone will create a back cover that includes wireless charging, but I have had no luck.
I want the same for the Fairphone 5, but the NFC coils are now part of the battery, and there are no contacts on the back cover… I assume it will be hard.
I think the modularity is mostly for repairability purposes, not for improvements/add-ons. If I remember correctly, you could upgrade the Fairphone 3 camera module with the camera module from the Fairphone 3+. Still, other than that, I’m unaware of any other case where modularity allowed improved parts.
Also, if any add-on module requires some software adaptation, it will have to collaborate with Fairphone to work on phones that do not run custom ROMs, and probably that’s why no one is doing it. I see the zoom camera you want as being such a case. It needs support in the firmware (drivers and camera app).
It will be cool if modules can be made more like the Framework laptop module. With open-source designs, anyone can implement them.
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I agree a modular smartphone would be great. And there have been attempts.
Some years ago there was project ara.
As you can see fairphone is in the list. Even though i wouldn’t fully agree with that, since there is only one module of each type the FP3 camera beeing the exception. Some other phones in that case you could consider also modular. Even though the modules tend to be more fine grained than for FP.
The main issue for a fully modular phone like project ara, is standardisation of the interface [power and data] and the limitations and extra cost (money space and power) that would come from it.
The wireless charging like you propose it would be an option however I guess the market of FP is too small for someone to make this tailored investment.
Having modular HW is essentially what puts Microsoft in such a big disadvantage in terms of user experience to apple. Compatibility issues, sw problems, third party drivers, etc.
This is why Apple users can say: It just works.
To be honest i don’t get excited for a crashing phone, with my bank details and 10 parties supplying drivers for it, who I all have to trust.
And the Fairphone 2 camera module (even though there was no Fairphone 2+ marketed back then, newly produced Fairphone 2s simply got the new module and users with the old module could buy the improved one and upgrade) …
https://www.fairphone.com/de/2017/09/20/new-camera-modules-make-the-fairphone-2-upgradeable/
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/new-fairphone-2-camera/32608
And they had to design and use a different Fairphone 2 display module (requiring different software then), too, because the initial display vendor stopped producing …
https://www.fairphone.com/de/2017/11/16/supply-chain-stories-what-happened-to-our-displays/
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/how-to-recognize-the-new-fp2-display-module/35519
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