What's the fairest phone that is currently available in the US?

I’m sick and tired of every phone that I’m buying failing in some way in short order (meaning at least one part of it fails in a way that is non-trivial to repair, such as non-replaceable battery degradation, a USB port that won’t reliably connect and/or hold the cable, or the screen cracking), and the fair phone seems like a decent way to mitigate this. But, the fairphone is not available in the US ­— where I live — so I need an alternative. What’s the best alternative that won’t quit working in some way after a tiny amount of time? I want something that will last indefinitely, so that there will be no need to buy a new one until new phones have new features that I care about.

https://myteracube.com/ comes to mind. I don’t know too many details, but from what I’ve read so far

pros

  • 4 years warranty
  • repairable (AFAIK some level of modularity but you should check on the details yourself)

cons

  • standard 3 years update cycle (less than the hardware warranty; and because of the mediatek chipset I assume they won’t perform above average on software support/major Android version upgrades)
  • AFAIK nothing (much) about worker rights/welfare, conflict minerals, fairtrade components etc.
  • I guess this applies to any rather new player: there are no long-term experiences with the company which may make it a bit of a gamble (which it was for Fairphone in the beginning, too)
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WOW!

If you have a friend in the EU or the UK you can ask them to buy for you, under their name and ship to you, it’s the only way you can benefit from the warranty via them maybe.

Have you checked out users from Canada to see how they get on?

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My concern with ordering a fairphone and engaging in shenanigans to get it to me in the US isn’t so much the shenanigans, but the access to cell service. The fairphone seems to not even support 4G on any carriers. I wouldn’t even mind switching carriers for a fairphone, but my research can’t find any guarantee that that will work. Just 3G service, even if fast enough, isn’t sufficient, because I’ve read that the 5G deployment involves the removal of numerous 3G towers, and that 3G service is going to be gone very soon. Is fairphone modular enough that I can get a special US-compatible cellular modem, perhaps? The market may not be mature enough for such things yet, though.

Sadly not that modular :frowning:

Have you seen this page, scroll down and open up the Network section, it shows all the frequencies and bands that it can use:-
https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-plus

This looks really interesting, but I have a concern (I’m mostly asking anyone else who is reading this thread who might have one, since you said that you don’t know too many deetails.). The CPU is pretty weak, and the ram is quiet small. I just transferred away from the LG V20 in part due to modern software being unreasonably slow on it, to the pixel 4a where everything is fast. Then again, terracube presumably has a much leaner OS. In practice, how is hte performance? Does it feel as snappy as something like the pixel, or does it feel more like a V20 where even loading webpages in Firefox (my preferred browser is unfortunately slower) takes an annoying amount of time?

Well, it’s about the same specs as a FP3, even slightly better.

I can’t tell you about how it feels though.

I’m wondering how you can get 4 years of warranty with only 3 years of software support…

Did you read this?

Ok another topic that sheds some light

I can tell you that for myself, based in the midwest united states, t-mobile works just fine.

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I had a Fairphone 2 in the USA from June 2019 - September 2020, using an AT&T pay-as-you-go SIM card. Coverage was generally 3G, sometimes 3.5G, depending on the city, but could be spotty to non-existent. Also, where we loved in Orlando, FL, we only had mobile coverage on the front porch and in o e bedroom, not the whole bouse. Plus I couldn’t benifit from any of AT&T’s voice over LTE (VoLTE) services as the Fairphone 2 doesn’t had that for their bands.

I wouldn’t recommend it for the US if you need super-reliable mobile service. If, however, you primarily use it for apps on WiFi, it’s great.

However, now that we’re back in Europe my wife has 4G coverage again on that phone.

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Unrelated to the USA but could you not use wifi calling at home, for example I have no network where I live and only ever use wifi calling ~ no problem.

Not with the FP2, as far as I can see so far, it doesn’t support WiFi calling.

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Thanks for the update on the FP2. Well l imagine the OP is considering an FP3+ so there’s hope yet.

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