First of all, I want to mention that I’m still a huge Fairphone fan, which is exactly why it’s a bit painful for me to point out some of the negatives I’ve experienced with both the FP5 and FP6.
I’ve always been a bit of a tech geek (technology was also part of my job), but at the same time, I really want to see some features come back to smartphones that nowadays practically only Fairphone can offer.
My smartphone history looks something like this: … Nokia 701 → Xperia J → Galaxy S4 → Note 4 → OnePlus 6T → 7 Pro → 8 Pro → Fairphone 5 → Galaxy S24 → Fairphone 6.
Hardware
The Fairphone 6 looks much more modern than the FP5, but some of those changes also brought compromises that I started noticing over time.
Replacing the battery isn’t as straightforward as it was on the FP5. I really liked being able to just remove the battery completely. Not only because swapping it was easy, but also because you could be 100% sure that the device was physically powered off.
The SIM tray is another weak point for me. It’s made entirely of plastic and I’ve already had the SIM tray break twice. I’m not someone who normally damages devices by dropping them or through improper use — I just swap SIM cards between my S24, FP6 and PC from time to time, especially because the microSD card shares the same tray.
I was also disappointed to find out that the FP6 only has one physical SIM slot. I use two phone numbers and I’d rather have two physical SIMs than depend on an eSIM. If the phone dies, I don’t want my second SIM to basically die together with it until I can transfer the eSIM to another device. In my situation, using an eSIM actually makes my life more complicated than it seems to for most people.
If a SIM tray is designed to be opened more than once in a while, I think at least the important structural parts should be made from aluminium or some other more durable material.
Another surprising downgrade is USB-C. The Fairphone 5 supported video output, so I could use it with a basic desktop setup. Then I moved to the newer FP6 only to discover that it has USB 2.0 with OTG, but no video output at all. That was a pretty big disappointment.
I understand that every device has some design compromises, but when you buy a newer model, you don’t really expect features from the previous generation to disappear. And this is exactly the kind of downgrade you may not even notice in the product description before buying the phone and actually using it every day.
Software
I used to be a huge OnePlus fan — not really because of the brand itself, but because of the performance and the clean OS they offered for years. It was a great alternative at a time when Samsung started pushing Knox and making rooting and custom ROMs more difficult, with things like the Knox warranty bit that could be permanently triggered by modifying the device.
With Fairphone OS, I still see a lot of Google apps that can’t simply be uninstalled through the normal interface. You can disable them, but actually removing them means using something like ADB.
At the same time, I feel like Fairphone has spent development time on things like Fairphone Moments, which is basically a secondary launcher (and you can find quite a few similar alternatives on Google Play), while some much more basic functionality is still missing.
The main Fairphone launcher is an area that really needs some attention. For a phone that’s supposed to last for many years, the launcher has surprisingly little customisation. There are no proper categories or folders in the app drawer and no simple option to hide apps. This becomes pretty annoying when you have a lot of apps installed, including web apps.
There’s also still no native Circle to Search functionality without using third-party alternatives.
I’m glad they’ve finally announced their own Gallery app, and I really hope it eventually gets functionality similar to Google Photos or something like Aves Gallery.
Personally, I’d much rather see Fairphone focus on making one really good and customisable launcher instead of having two different experiences with Moments. Even the Moments hardware switch could simply be configurable — I’d personally use it as a Do Not Disturb switch.
Privacy and security
I was also surprised when I started looking into why Fairphone devices aren’t supported by GrapheneOS and why GrapheneOS developers don’t recommend /e/OS.
That sent me down quite a rabbit hole about the difference between privacy and security.
From what I’ve learned, /e/OS is mainly focused on privacy and reducing your dependence on Google. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but privacy shouldn’t automatically be confused with security or security hardening.
GrapheneOS takes a very different approach and also has hardware security requirements that Fairphone devices currently don’t meet.
Even stock Fairphone OS doesn’t seem to put security quite on the same level as Google’s Pixel platform or Samsung’s flagship devices. That honestly surprised me, especially when Samsung releases so many different phones with different hardware configurations every year.
My ideal Fairphone
No matter where I look, there simply isn’t a perfect smartphone.
But if I could build my ideal phone from Fairphone’s existing ideas, I’d basically want:
the philosophy and repairability of the FP5, the performance and hardware improvements of the FP6+, proper USB-C functionality, dual physical SIM support without a fragile SIM tray, and one genuinely good and customisable launcher instead of two.
Fairphone is still one of the few smartphone manufacturers doing something genuinely different, and that’s why I still like what they’re doing.
I just wish that some of the compromises in newer models weren’t happening in areas where the previous generation actually did things better.
Fairphone 6+ ?
And after today’s unexpected launch of the Fairphone 6+, I’m honestly not convinced that moving from the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 to the 7s Gen 4 is worth all the effort and attention around a new model.
This isn’t really the kind of upgrade I associate with Fairphone. A good example was the Fairphone 3 → 3+, where existing FP3 owners could simply replace the camera modules with the improved ones from the 3+ instead of buying a whole new phone.
That’s the kind of upgrade I’d like to see more often from Fairphone — improving the device through replaceable modules rather than making you consider replacing the entire phone for a relatively small hardware improvement.
) in the meantime and find some replacement.