Please do not mix the issues fair production / trade with the issues open source vs closed source software. Jerry answer is right at it’s core: These are simply not comparable issues and impacts.
Yes, Fairphone tries to improve phone production on a multitude aspects, even on software / operating systems. Calling Android “unfair” misses the point (on what basis actually software can be unfair and if android and google actually are unfair is something we should discuss elsewhere). Implying choosing Android as OS contradicts or makes the other interventions of FP worthless – is a little bit over the top.
What I intend for a fair phone is a phone (or a pocket computer to be more right) fair in all aspects: this include the fairness of the chain production, the conflict free material and the workers condition in first instance AND the fairness of the software; Android + google apps IS NOT fair at all under this aspect: it doesn’t respect the users privacy and the software freedom, an issue that could be (for me definitely IS) secondary respect the other but that has it’s importance. So, every time I read an intervention of Jerry that commenta on every one that underline this aspect I want to stop reading. It’s very annoying for me, I respect all the argumentation (if founded and related with the topic) but his continue off topic sometimes boring me, and kills my interest about the forum. Fortunately he isn’t a Fairphone crew member.
I am new here, and I am about to buy the Fairphone 2, bringing it closer to the 15,000 goal (so my post fits in here in a way ) .
But if those people succeeded who think that the Android software is “unfair”, and I would have to go for one of these unripe “independent” open source software systems, I would definitely not buy the Fairphone.
My main incentive is the environmental aspect of Fairphone, and while this does not seem to be the primary focus of Fairphone, they do a better job than any other company that sells phones in this regard.
You hit the nail on the head. My response was fully fueled by another poster entirely dismissing the worth of the FairPhone project based on the fact that the phone runs Android. Such extreme comments are becoming more and more common here on these forums and I feel the need to give a bit of throttle in the other direction. It’s perhaps a bit of a personality flaw in me that I approach such things with a (un)healthy dose of sarcasm and irony.
I think it would boost sales, if there was a new blog post each week (I somehow recall that being promised by Fairphone in the beginning). A lot of people read the post entries (at least it seems so, judging from the comments on the Disqus platform.)
I’m getting too old to stay up until 12:00 am every night. If anyone buys a phone in the final quarter of an hour of the day, feel free to inform me…tomorrow morning!
Back on topic, it’s very nice to see the recent re-acceleration of sales seems to stay for a while now. I feel still very much in the dark about what has changed around the turn of the month. Maybe it’s that mysterious phenomenom sometimes referred to as “Pay Day”.
The following is probably only interesting if you use Linux or Mac.
Since it’s going to be very exciting, I think I have to share my small bash alias with you. I don’t keep track of all sales in a nice chart, but when working on my computer I can always know the current status by typing a few characters in bash:
$ fp2sold
Thu Sep 10 01:42:51 CEST 2015
10526 of 15000 sold
All you have to do to get this magic trick working is
a) Having curl installed and
b) having this following function in your ~/.bash_alias
function fp2sold {
date && curl -s http://shop.fairphone.com/media/counter.json | sed 's/{"total_sold"://;s/,"total_to_sell":/ of /; s/}/ sold\n/'
}
At the beginning there had been several new Fairphones sold in between the times of me typing fp2sold. Now the pace has slowed down a little. However that makes it even more exciting whether we will make it.
Of course the issues must not be mixed. But both have to be seen. It’s about how you wight production and software. Is it 50/50? Or is production all and fair/open software is just something on top, a nice-to-have?
Form my point of view the people from Fairphone did a great job which needs to be done (relay! thank you for that!!), but they just focus on half the problem.
I’ve been using open software for about 17 years now, and i don’t want to go back behind that. Thinking in the terms of open software, open access, open ideas and even privacy is maybe nothing many people are used to. So the ideas sound strange ans risky in their ears.
From my point of view saying: “I want a fairphone with Android” is the same like say: “I want fair production, but it must be cheep”.
Odd, for me the counter showed the number of sold FP2s that I entered into my graph (10520) – at 23:40 (CET). I hope I’m not getting a special “Keep Urs happy” version of the counter
I just wanted to tell you why I did not preorder the fp2 by now:
I did not find a good/long review on youtube. If something costs more than 500 bucks, I first want to touch it, feel it, try it. Or at least I want to watch a person on youtube doing so.
I think they should have made more final prototypes and have handed them over to some youtube-testers.
I don’t think there is even a single final prototype. And thats kind of how crowd funding works: They want to raise the money before they start production, so they don’t have to take a loan and instead can be financially independent
I also were wondering about the number, @Lidwien gave us. Mine showed 10520 before midnight.
A lot of news companies had a look at FP2 prototypes, maybe you’ll find more info in this post:
Well, at least there was the FP image video of taking apart the phone (easily repairable screen, modules). Software- and speedwise it will be comparable to an HTC ONE M8, since this phone and the FP2 share the same chipset and GPU. There are a lot of hands on videos about the M8 on Youtube.
True! However I’d have wanted a prototype in Vienna so badly!!! Not even a working one, just one to touch, and feel, and … well, that’s going kind of intimate now…
) .
