Well, it will probably be announced in a week or so (August 30). Already too late for your needs?
I admit this might seem different and reassuring, but even if the person selling them is a friend, in absolutely good faith, and totally honest, the problem remains: He doesn’t build those batteries him/herself, they still are cheap Chinese knockoffs, and thus akin to Russian roulette. They might work as well as the originals, or they might ruin your life. And this changes from batch to batch, so prior experience is irrelevant. You might get the first of the faulty batch… 
(It’s just about risk management, I know the capacity of Chinese manufacturers to re-build about anything can be a big boon. For instance, I had an old but perfectly working laptop, and when its power adapter died, Toshiba (which at this point had ceased building laptops) didn’t have any spares left, so I ordered some “replacement” power adapters in China, from two different websites actually (so I have at least one good one), which were both built on request, took their sweet time to arrive, but worked both just fine ever since. But then again faulty power adapters usually don’t catch fire, at worst they’ll blow the fuses…)
And how is this different to the original batteries? Even a 3rd party manufacturer can have quality management (or not). Therefore I’d rather trust a bigger player in that market than buying at some unknown seller at Alibaba or whatever.
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Fair question. The difference is that the bigger player will not want to risk their reputation and thus will tend to be more careful about that.
But indeed not always successfully, given we’ve seen lots of Apple and a whole series of Samsung batteries (Note 7…) go up in flames.
Let’s say manufacturer certified batteries are lower risk.
yeah I already moved on. And the A13 update hasn’t even arrived for my FP3 yet… So I guess I was too early in more ways than one 
My thoughts exactly.
For me, the most puzzling thing is that the FP5 seems to be a direct replacement (in terms of specs and market positioning) for the FP4.
I would understand if this was a much higher spec phone – a “flagship”, TBH – and not “just a better FP4”. Just my 2 cents…
With the new CPU in the FP5, Fairphone has solved the biggest issue with continued support for new Android versions.
So, it’s really something “new and better enough” to bring out a new phone.
If they made a FP6 in two years, that would be a different issue leading to questioning the sustainability part of the phones.
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This is a carelessly unspecific statement.
What if the Fairphone 6 is small, has a headphone jack and a notification LED 
?
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Ok. That’s a point.
But where will it end with new products, which only have small differences?
It’s still a phone with about the same functionality, even if the size is a bit different.
You can say the same about the FP4/FP5 situation, but as I pointed out:
One of the biggest problems for continued support was the core. In regards to sustainability through continued support I’d go so far as to say that FP1 - FP4 have been alpha and beta products and with FP5 they reach the stable version (up to 10 years of support).
Please be aware, that I do ignore all small technological improvements (camera, speed, …) which are valued differently from person to person (from a very small change to a groundshaking change in the personal perception of the new phone).
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I’m not sure, the important for continued support is mainline linux kernel support, if the kernel remain old, will be deprecated on new android releases.
I honestly don’t think it’s a bad thing to release a new version of the Fairphone every 2 years or so. The proplem only starts when support for the older ones begins to suffer because of this. (Also there are some other reasons that may cause support to degrade after some time that are completely independent from a new version being released.)
Actually I would argue that the opposite scenario of a longer wait time would actually be worse in terms of sustainability. Imagine you have some phone that breaks down and cannot be reasonably be repaired. Or imagine there’s some other independent reason you’re looking for a new phone. In that case it’s of course possible to buy a two or three year old Fairphone model, but this would automatically mean that you’re already two or three years closer to its end of life when buying the phone. In that context it’s obviously better to buy a younger generation of Fairphones instead. (Unless you’re picking up a used one maybe, but that’s also not always an option.)
The mere release of a new Fairphone does in no way require anyone to upgrade to the new version in that instant. Of course it would be stupid with regards to sustainability to jump to buing the new Fairphone 5 and give away your old one the instant a new model is released, if you’re in possession of a fully functional Fairphone 4. You can easily skip a version every time. But new Fairphones are important for Fairphones to stay relevant in the grand scope of things. And if you want to get more new people to use Fairphones, you will still need regular new releases. Not everyone’s Smartphone-Rythm is in sync.
Don’t get me wrong: I fully support many of the arguments made with regards to the support and EOL of older Fairphones made here or in other threads. I just think the mere release of a new Smartphone is not necessarily inherently related, and is actually important for the Fairphone ecosystem to thrive further. The problems we’re facing lies elsewhere.
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I have the FP3, I was not satisfied with the new android version, it’s laggy due to Google everywere in it. I try the main and well supported alternative, /e/ OS and now I have a fast phone again.
FP should also sell Murena FP because /e/ Android OS is much more optimised than Google Android so the phone is still reactive with the actual ecosystem (android, app/alternate app, website).
So what I expect from FP is the long term supported hardware (spare parts) now and the distribution of updated drivers, firmwares. software is secondary (because /e/ is here doing an excellent job providing support and optimisation).
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Which it inevitably will, since Fairphone is a small company: They only have so much support staff (I mean the ones actually working on fixing things).
Their commercial support length promises determine how often they can release a new phone (FP2 support has ended earlier this year, so they can support the new FP5, but to support a FP6 they would need to first drop the FP3).
That is, unless their support department gets bigger and bigger, but since it’s a pure expense and not a source of profit, they would want to keep it as small as possible.
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You don’t need to increase the team size if you pay another company to look for the software. And in this case, you can pay different companies for different phones.
Do we know which models Fairphone update with its own team ?
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Sure, you just need to pay that other company more money… 
My point still stands: More different models to support = more expenses = less revenue.
And less revenue means that at some point the company withers and dies (I’m sure they all have got that bad habit of eating 3 meals/day, and some even support families!).
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I’m curious what people who think 2 years for a new model is too early see as an acceptable gap between two devices. I need a number Ideally with some kind of reasoning behind it.
And when the answer is “X years”, are they still willing to pay 699€ for the FP5 with the same specs and features of today in X-1 years from now, knowing that one year later there will be an FP6 (assuming they would buy the FP5 in 2023 were they in need of a new phone right now)?
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I already explained it further up. For me (but I admit this is a wildly unpopular idea), if you want to respect the environment (i.e. destroy it slower) you would only buy a new phone every 5-6 years (or even more). Which means an eco-friendly phone company would release a new model around those delays too, to reduce electronic waste.
(Besides, it doesn’t make much commercial sense to have several similar models running concurrently: Who will buy a FP4 now the FP5 has been released? Nobody, so the FP4 has all of a sudden become a pure source of expenses, and this for many years.)
Anyway. Young whippersnappers don’t know, the rest doesn’t remember, but not so long ago expensive high-tech devices (think watches) were bought for life, and even passed down to your children, sometimes for several generations…
Now? The yearly smartphone refresh cycle is creating stunning amounts of landfill: All those suddenly unloved “last year’s phone” land in a drawer – until one day that drawer is emptied and all those (still working) phones land in a landfill (usually in some 3rd world country outside of Europe).
(Yes, yes, recycling. Pull the other one, it has bells.)
Actually in 2023 they would had a 67% chance of buying a FP4: For 2/3 of the year the newest phone would had been the FP4. The FP5 only appeared in the last third of the year, so only a 33% chance of getting one in 2023. Just being pedantic… 
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Curious how you always avoid the important question
In your world (where e.g. the FP4 and FP5 wouldn’t exist), if your current phone gets lost or stolen today, would you buy the FP3 for 450€?
Edit: now that the FP5 has come out, did you feel the urge to buy it immediately even though your current phone still works?
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Sure. Goes without saying, but if you really want me to say it: Yes, I would had bought a FP3.
Funny enough, for me the phone isn’t a status symbol but just a tool, so if it does work it’s fine with me. If I cared for raw power and shininess I would had gone for a Galaxy S23 Ultra anyway, not for a Fairphone.
Actually no. Even if I ever felt the urge to buy a Fairphone again, I did buy my FP4 specifically because I wanted a phone I can keep for many, many years without it becoming a liability (meaning security-wise and battery life).
Jeez, why do you people don’t get it? Some people don’t need the latest and shiniest. My car is 16 years old, my personal laptop might be new, but I bought it after using the previous for 15 years, and I hope to keep that one just as long before changing it. It does do what I need to do, and that’s all I care about.
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I agree with your first point, that buying a new phone every five to six years should be sufficient.
I do however strongly disagree that your second point, that it follows that the release cycle by a phone company should be just as long or longer. As stated above, I think this would be counterproductive, as anyone wanting to use their phone as long as possible and falling into the second half of that release cycle would probably be better advised to go for another option, than buy a phone that has already lost a few years of its life cycle.
I rather see it as a problem of planning and proper pricing. A sustainable company with the goal to provide a long lifecycle of their devices should make their plans accordingly, so that the profit from making the initial sale will cover the cost of a devices maintainance during the second half of its life cycle. A sustainable company will NOT just sell you the device and tell you to screw-yourself once the device sales drop, but they will also sell you a guaranteed period of support that is sufficiently long.
Congratulations, you have just discovered that a purely capitalistic model of the world is incompatible with true sustainability. So if you’re operating under the assumption that the company you’re dealing with operates in such a model, and that maintaining the image as a sustainable company does not provide enough marketing value to keep up support for older devices, you will have to resort to either getting states to enforce sustainability regulations or having the company sell you a guaranteed support contract as part of the device sale. But modifying the release cycle is not a solution to this problem as I see it.
Additionally the longer release cycle does not deal with support-issues out of the phone companies control. What if the hardware manufacturer stops supporting their firmware? Then everyone using the device is sxrewed either way. So the company once again either needs a sustainable supplier with contractional obligations to provide long-term support, or the company needs to control the whole supply chain on its own. And if something goes wrong anyway and support becomes impossible due to third parties? Well, if now newly released devices are available in that situation people will once again go for different solution to replace the current one. Not ideal either, is it?
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