I’ve had the Fairphone 3+ for a year now and I’m mostly happy with it.
The biggest selling point for me was it’s modular function - the idea that the phone could be repaired and upgraded without having to buy another whole phone is a game change (financially, environmentally etc)
Will the upgrades to the new phone be made as spare parts for fairphone 3+? I am desperate to upgrade the camera on my phone and it currently looks like I’d have to buy a whole new phone to get that - if this is the case, what makes this phone different from others? What stops me buying another phone if you still have to buy brand new phones every couple of years to upgrade the tech?
I do not work for Fairphone, but I guess the answer is no. They primarily want to sell their current phone and not older models or spare parts for those.
If you haven’t done so yet, I’d strongly recommend that you look into other camera apps. Software makes at least as much difference as pure hardware specs. You can give “Open Camera” a try, or have a look here:
I doubt this very much. The FB3 /FB3+ is intended to be repairable with FB3 parts, the problem is when to replace your FB3+ with a FB4. A FB4 hardware update is intended for the FB4.
Hi,
Although I understand it is not possible at the moment this is a feature I would expect from customer view for future Versions. This would be sustainable!
It seems incredibly unlikely given how little space there is in a phone. Making new modules for new components.
The core module/motherboard is the key. This has to be made as small as possible, yet with each new model there are new features. Then there are all the peripherals, like the jack socket missing from the FP4 etc. although that save space it was a water/dust issue too.
The best I can hope for is that the current modules are available for a long time.
OH! and the OS has to be updated.Each OS is tailored to the hardware. It is unlikely that mixing parts from different versions of phones would work without an updated OS which would be an incredible amount of work for the variety of phone version and module mixes possible.
The closet I have seen is the new frame.work computer, and will see how that works out.
This is just my wish as a customer. You should understand this as feature request for the developement to sell more devices in future.
There’s always a gap between design and product features. This is normal I guess. I cannot design devices, but I can tell you what I would like to have
Why do we need a new device?
CPU is to slow
Apps are growing → need more RAM and external Memory
Camera replacement
Battery life reached
This are the major points for me as a customer. If I always have to buy a complete new device I can although buy a “cheap” one because I have to throw it away in 2-3 years anyway.
That is the case for the majority of consumers, but this phone is based around fair trade, sustainability is secondary issue.
Fairphone was built around sourcing minerals in a more worker freindly manner. This has now been applied to a manufacturing fair wages policy and the phone is the outcome.
