This has several issues, among which the fact that I never said that, and also that I fail to see the oh-so-obvious contradiction you’re talking about. Contradiction between what?
Sorry, I’m clearly too stupid to discuss with you. Have a nice day.
I’m trying hard to understand you and try to get some kind of reaction out of you up to the point where I ask very specific questions in order to find out why some stuff that seems to be obvious to you isn’t to me and vice versa. I’m even signalling where I’m in agreement with some parts you wrote. And my impression is that I don’t get any of that in return from you.
I would really appreciate if you wouldn’t simple ignore other people’s arguments. A simple “I think you’re wrong about XY because of ABC” would do. Instead you produce more wall of rhetorical phrases and revert to what I would call “online disinformation/trolling 101” like that “Young whippersnappers don’t know, the rest doesn’t remember…” paragraph that’s just rude and doesn’t have nothing to do with anything.
Edit: I apologize if you didn’t explicitly say that a 2 year cycle would drive people to replace their working phones. But you did say that a 2 year cycle creates more e-waste and I really don’t see any connection unless people stop using their working phone. Where is the additional e-waste coming from when 50k FP model N are produced now and 50k FP model N+1 in 2 years from now compared to 100k FP model produced in the same time interval when there is no model N+1 after 2 years?
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I’m actually encouraging that just like the brand Framework, Fairphone should be able to upgrade your phone motherboard. Basically allowing you to upgrade your CPU and RAM, while using the same phone.
But what’s the benefit? An unusable SoC or whole mainboard lying in your drawer after you swapped it?
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The benefit is, that you don’t have a whole phone in your drawer after buying more computing power.
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That‘s no benefit in my eyes. The complete phone can be used by someone else, or you can keep it if something happens to your main phone.
The bunch of single spare parts is merely useless.
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I see your point, but I do see potential benefits considering the average user’s habits: Realistically most old phones are not reused. So if the availability of new parts causes people to reuse their phones at least partially by upgrading instead of completely replacing them, that is already a win in my eyes.
Also what if the main module breaks? If the Phone is a bit older already, you might face the choice of either buying a new one or repairing it. The ability to upgrade gives you a third choice in that scenario that is equally sustainable and could even help if some older parts are out-of-stock.
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If you think of it like with discarded and handed on personal computer parts, then it makes sense again.
The parts I don’t need anymore in my FP might still be an upgrade for my mothers FP.
That doesn‘t change much, it only shifts the problem.
I think it’s great that the support lifespan of a Fairphone is 5 years, but the release cycle is more frequent. If the release cycle would follow the support lifespan, even with a 1-year offset, people who are not “in sync” with the release cycle have a problem.
E.g., my phone breaks beyond repair / gets stolen 4 years after the release of a new Fairphone. I have to buy a 4 year old model, only to replace it 1 year after. Most people would not buy a Fairphone in that situation, and it wouldn’t be sustainable anyways. With a 2-year release cycle, the worst case is buying a 2 year old phone with 3 years of support left, which is much more feasible.
And even if you are perfectly “in sync” with the release cycle, buying a new Fairphone every 5 years just when it comes out, your phone breaking or getting stolen after 3/4 years can still put you in above situation.
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This is not comprensible by me, it’s totally different from my mental attitude.
Replace a new phone 1 year after have bought it is nonsense. But I’m a strange case probably, my previous smartphone was a samsung s5 mini that have hardware problem on antenna, but I have used it 7 years, and honestly will use it today if in good condition.
But I can understood your point of view.
That’s the point about longer product cycles, from a safety point of view it is necessary, if it is not supported anymore.
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Ingo needs to read the tread again… several people gave an answer…me included … repeating the same thing doesn’t make for a good thread
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Hey there!
When Fairphone 5 was announced my mouse was already hovering over the “buy now” button to use it as a replacement for my smashed up P30. The specs were nothing to write home about but definitely “good enough” for my use-case (although I would love it to be smaller…). I love the possibility to replace parts by myself and up to 10 years of software updates sound great! Only judging by the specs it’s surely not a cheap phone but I would have been ready to pay the price to get a “fair” phone.
However, after investigating a little more, here in the discussions and on the official page, I was asking myself if Fairphone as a company would really be able (= have the resources) to provide hardware and software support for multiple generations of phones. There are some quite disturbing cases of flaws in the older phones that have never been fixed (at least it seems that way by reading the forum). The availability of spare parts (especially for FP3) is very problematic (the shop lists many essential parts as not available). What good is a modular phone if I can’t get the parts? Support also seems to be rather slow. I also find it strange how disconnected the company is from the community. Why isn’t there an open issue tracker or a more direct exchange with (possible) customers in this community forum? A lack of resources?
I’m not sure about software updates. How fast are they at rolling out security updates? I don’t care too much about feature updates but at least security should be high up in the list.
Some side developments, like a not really fitting protective case, are also rather unfortunate and wouldn’t be a problem with a “mainstream” phone as there are 50 other options.
Am I just being too pessimistic?
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Hi and welcome, I moved your post, there was some discussion, please read above
Hi, @AnotherMike!
I understand and share many of your concerns. I think sometimes it is te commitment to do things in a non-majority way, the “toll”, the “risk” you take to be “different”, “fair”.
However, keep in mind that people on the forum come in many cases because they have problems, and not to say how good they are without any problems. Therefore, there can be an overrepresentation of the first group, a kind of “bubble” can be created in which it seems that everything is worse than it really is.
I suggest you to take a look at these two surveys in which people vote on how happy they are with their FP3 or FP4:
- FP3(+): 📊 POLL: How satisfied or unsatisfied are you with your FP3 or FP3+?
- FP4: 📊 POLL: How satisfied or unsatisfied are you with your FP4?
Greetings and welcome to the forum! 
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Hi @Mixigodo
Thanks for the warm welcome!
Yes, I get that. Most happy customers are silent so you just read about the complaints.
According to Fairphone they have about 70 employees. I myself am a software developer and I have worked in companies with about they same number of people. Only providing enough support for our software could be a challenge at times (after all, the engineers often make up the smallest part of the company). I imagine doing the same thing for the software AND the hardware can’t be easy. That’s the origin of my concerns. I guess a more open communication would help a lot in that regard. But I guess that’s the difference between being “fair” and being “open”.
Anyway, I get it why they had to release a FP5. You just can’t stay in the market selling a 2 or 4 year old phone - sadly I guess that’s a tradeoff you have to make.
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helo, I’m a new customer here, and also I spent considerable time reading the forum before committing myself to a purchase. and while I do agree that some of the issues discussed at the forum might be worrying, I do not agree that the company is detached from the community, in fact I have never experienced such a positive cooperation, and the quality of this amazing community was one of the reasons of me wanting to become a fairphoner 
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The software is not developed by Fairphone for most (all?) the models so you can guess how many people work on software at Fairphone.
Of course Android isn’t developed by Fairphone but someone still has to track down device specific problems and the basic parts of the different models have to be designed by a bunch of engineers. The hardware has to play nice with the software - even if it’s developed by someone else. They might very well be external experts but someone still has to pay them.