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Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, and enhanced modularity with 12 swappable parts

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    • They are expensive. You can get wired earphones for 2 euros that actually work and are reasonably durable. It's not a great loss if they fall in a puddle or if I step on them.
    • They are a lot more failure prone. Half of those I tried didn't work or only half worked, and those that did work didn't last very long.
    • They have shitty range. I can use a 10 meters extension cord with wired earphones if I want to.
    • They require charging. And it's a law of physics that everything that requires charging always run out at the most inconvenient time.
    • Also THEY ALWAYS GET LOST. Wireless earphones, mouse, controllers... it doesn't matter, if it's not attached with a cable they'll just disappear.

    LOL, 10m extension cord. I mean you've already established that you don't give a crap about sound quality with your first point but that's just ridiculous. Not to mention the 10m cord that your dragging around the house.

  • I respect your opinion, but I lived through 90s computing and think dongles died the death they deserve and these phone manufacturers can go to hell for bringing them back or thinking that bluetooth audio is good enough.

    Additionally most of the droids I have bought that have a jack are the perfect thickness in my mind. Weighted enough to stay in my hand and take a couple dozen drops without accident. Plus the headphone jack is used as an antenna and provides radio capabilities so I can listen to local news instead of whatever the tech industry wants to feed me. Which is a nice option.

    It depends on what dongle and for what it is used, for something like headphones or earbuds I just leave my dongle on the cable, the same for in my car. I used a Redmi Note 13 Pro for a while which has an audio jack, but it was TERRIBLE so bad that I bought extra dongles before I switched back to using an iPhone.

    I also already dispise looking for an Android phone, since I have terrible experience with Samsung Phones and Google products and don't want either of those. Having to look for a GOOD audio jack on one is not worth the hassle for me, if it is for you then more kudo's to you.

    Ill just use an old school iPod or a USB-c cable

  • Just out of interest, because I too love the jack, then what are you buying in the future?

    I have no idea, I'm hoping for my F3 to still last a couple of years.
    I'm honestly pretty tired of Android, and that's another can of worms.
    Maybe I'll try with a linux phone, but I'm still undecided.

  • Read through the whole report, sum up all the money they mention. It comes out to $16 000. Double that for the stuff where they don't mention money (because they surely would mention anything that costs more than the things they do mention). Double it again, for a safety margin. Double it again, because we are really generous. Now we are at €128 000. Divide that by the number of devices sold in 2024 and you get $1.24. Now add the $1.20 (Page 29) they pay as a living wage bonus and you arrive at $2.44 per device.

    And now let's be super generous and double that guess again, and you end up with the <€5 per device that I quoted above.

    The picture becomes clearer when you look at what they say about their fair material usage.

    Take for example the FP5 (page 42 & 67). Their top claim here is "Fair materials: 76%", which they then put a disclaimer next to it, that they only mean that 76% of 14 specific focus materials is actually fair. On the detail page (page 67) they specify that actually only 44% of the total weight of the phone is fairly mined, because they just excluded a ton of material from the list of "focus materials" to push up the number.

    The largest part of these materials are actually recycled materials (37% of the 44% "fair" materials). The materials they are recycling are plastics, metals and rare earth elements. That's all materials that are cheaper to recycle than to mine. You'll likely find almost identical amounts of recycled materials in any other phone, because it makes economical sense. It's just cheaper. Since these materials cost nothing extra to Fairphone, we can exclude them from the list, which leaves 1% of actually fair mined material (specifically gold), and 6% of materials that they bought fairwashing credits for.

    Also, the raw materials of phones are dirt cheap compared to the end price. The costly part is not mining the materials, but manufacturing all the components.

    With only 1% of the materials being fairly mined and only 6% being compensated with credits, you can start to see why in total they spend next to nothing on fair mining/fair credits.

    Yeah, I see, thanks a lot for taking the time to read through the report and write this.
    It's fucking sad but honestly thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't even read the report.

  • Ok but what about a headphone jack ?

    Yeah I find a fairphone 3 to be powerful enough so I might just keep repairing it

  • Wirelessly.

    FairPhone doesn't do wireless charging.

    Didn't know that, thanks.

    It's kinda tough sell without wireless for such price, for me. Though I guess it's maybe a tough fit with their modular design ambitions, and corners have to be cut somewhere to keep their higher costs down.

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    How well do these connect to Canadian cell phone towers?

  • FP would be a good choice for Graphene.

    many rom developers stated before, that fairphones have a pisspoor security

  • Yeah, I see, thanks a lot for taking the time to read through the report and write this.
    It's fucking sad but honestly thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't even read the report.

    Yeah, it is sad. Turns out, Fairphone is just yet another fairwashing company. People spend lots of money and suffer through using this phone with its trash quality software because they think that they are saving the planet by doing so, and in the end they actually just indirectly donated maybe a few Euros to some random fair credit mill.

    Keep your eyes peeled and read what's beind the marketing, because even companies that look good rarely are.

    Especially for stuff like fair/eco/green, where it's really hard to objectively measure how good something is and where legal standards are ridiculously low.

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    headphone jackn't 😞

  • I posted this elsewhere but the tech specs for the Fairphone 6 say the following:

    USB-C 2.0 (OTG capable) can be used to connect USB Sticks/SD-Cards/Audio Amplifier/Network-adapters directly

    I was really looking forward to use this with a pair of display glasses, like the XREAL One Pro, but this seems like the Fairphone 6 might not support display output? That's sad. Especially since the Fairphone 5 had this in their tech specs:

    USB-C 3.0 (OTG capable) can be used to connect USB Sticks/SD-Cards/display (also Android™ desktop mode)/Camera/Audio Amplifier/Network-adapters directly

    But maybe it was not used enough?

    When I read that, it decided me on the phone. I was almost completely certain my FP4 replacement would be the FP6, but the USB downgrade makes it a no-go for me.

    Too bad, because I love the easy repairability.

  • A big problem they have is that they have to rely on Qualcomm for security updates, and the flagship chips simply don't get 8+ years of support. Fairphone uses Qualcomms IOT chips, which come with much longer support.

    Qualcomm will have to change that, what with the EU now mandating a minimum of 5 years of updates after the phone is no longer sold.

    So if Qualcomm expects their SoCs to be on the market for 2-4 years, like they do right now, they will have no choice but to provide updates for 7-9 years.

    I wouldn't be surprised if, given this development, Fairphone turn to the more conventional chips other OEMs use, which would likely also be a win for battery life.

  • Can anyone recommend this? Is the camera any good?

    You can also look at the MKBHD 2024 smartphone camera comparison test with the FP5. I would suggest taking the test yourself if that is still possible.

    I would guess that the camera will be comparable. (Everything below if FP5 assuming about the same performance with the FP6)

    For me, daylight pics were after all of the pixels but before anything else. I like the more neutral not supremely over-saturated over-sharpened/smoothed pictures that many phones take nowadays.

    For me, it was middle of the pack for dimly lit photos.

    For the overall ELO with everyone, FP5 was on the mid-lower end (of a comparison of all flagships + pixel A series), but perfectly usable for people who aren't doing social media as a job.

  • It's 6.3" because of the lack of top/bottom bezels. The phone itself is not much bigger than a Galaxy S7.

    You are genuinely the first person I've seen online who understands screen size != Phone size, because bezels exist and are different sized from phone to phone.

    My current 6.3" screen phone is virtually identical in size to the 4.2" one I had in 2012.

  • What about people who already have a BT headset, or people who are looking to buy their first headset and don't own one yet? You just straight up assume everyone still had a headset with wires lying around and that they somehow never break.

    Having to buy something makes it bad isn't really an argument. The very post you are making right now is made from a devide that has been manufactured at some point in time. If you start reasoning like that its better to start living in the woods with no possessions at all.

    Before BT headsets even existed, all of them were wired and none of them required lithium batteries or chips inside.

    Having to buy something makes it bad isn’t really an argument.

    It costs resources to produce. It is one of the main missions of FP to reduce this by having to not by a new device if your current one breaks. If buying a new one wasn't a problem, why are they trying to make it repairable?

    They are easily repairable and you don’t have to throw them away if the battery goes bad (just replace it).

    You get it.

    If you start reasoning like that its better to start living in the woods with no possessions at all.

    Taking my argument to the extreme naturally makes it absurd. But living in the woods isn't my point.

    If you look at FP's yearly financial statements, you can see how they are struggling. In 2021 and 2022 they were roughly at a breakeven point, turning basically no profit, in 2023 their operating loss was 37% of their net turnover.

    See previous comment:

    I’m saying it is very hypocritical and goes against their brand. If they simply came out and said: Look guys making phones sustainably cost too much, we need to sell higher margin items like dongles, BT earbuds and cases to have enough cashflow to continue manufacturing and R&D.

    Ok, fair enough. I would say.

    But trying to justify and greenwashing the whole ordeal is insulting. The tactic is straight out of Apple’s “Think different” book. Paying more for reduced functionality. Only for them to sell you more accessories for even more money.

  • What features would that include that the phone doesn't already have?
    I'm currently an iPhone user, but I'm looking to move to a more open source alternative.

    better cpu, 2 sim slots, a programmable button cause this dumbass launcher switch is a joke, at least 5000mah battery, at least a sceen mount fingerprint reader or even a working face recognition like in pixel phones.

    a 2 year old motorola phone has all of these for some reason, for only 300 bucks. i can pay 40 bucks for a battery change every 4 years, thats still a better deal to be honest.

  • That's what they're doing. That's why they remove the headphone jack in favour for a slimmer, lighter phone. Their market research showed that's more important to a bigger portion of their customers.

    I've never met someone that cared about a thinner phone, they've been too thin since 2015..

    People that want their ducking hradphine jacks? They are everywhere.

  • better cpu, 2 sim slots, a programmable button cause this dumbass launcher switch is a joke, at least 5000mah battery, at least a sceen mount fingerprint reader or even a working face recognition like in pixel phones.

    a 2 year old motorola phone has all of these for some reason, for only 300 bucks. i can pay 40 bucks for a battery change every 4 years, thats still a better deal to be honest.

    The dumbass launcher switch is programmable and the battery is close to 5000mAh?

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    It is an android, which is moving towards an ai for everything trajectory which might be a privacy nightmare, I wonder if the next step of the fairphone journey is to break from android

  • Unfortunately Graphene have said they will only use pixels (or potentially their own phone in the future) because no other phones have the Titan M2 security chip.

    It's a shame though, because I'd love to have Graphene on it.

    Yea but with the recent news (see his Mastodon) he's looking for other vendors.

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    AFAIK, you have the option to enable ads on your lock screen. It's not something that's forced upon you. Last time I took a look at the functionality, they "paid" you for the ads and you got to choose which charity to support with the money.
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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
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    I see your point but also I just genuinely don't have a mind for that shit. Even my own close friends and family, it never pops into my head to ask about that vacation they just got back from or what their kids are up to. I rely on social cues from others, mainly my wife, to sort of kick start my brain. I just started a new job. I can't remember who said they were into fishing and who didn't, and now it's anxiety inducing to try to figure out who is who. Or they ask me a friendly question and I get caught up answering and when I'm done I forget to ask it back to them (because frequently asking someone about their weekend or kids or whatever is their way of getting to share their own life with you, but my brain doesn't think that way). I get what you're saying. It could absolutely be used for performative interactions but for some of us people drift away because we aren't good at being curious about them or remembering details like that. And also, I have to sit through awkward lunches at work where no one really knows what to talk about or ask about because outside of work we are completely alien to one another. And it's fine. It wouldn't be worth the damage it does. I have left behind all personally identifiable social media for the same reason. But I do hate how social anxiety and ADHD makes friendship so fleeting.
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    Sure thing! So glad I could be helpful! I don't blame you. It's the only thing I'm keeping a Win10 dual-boot for right now, and to their credit, it does work quite well in Windows. We've had a ton of fun with our set. In the meantime, I'm keeping up with the project but not actively tinkering with it myself, because it's exciting but also not quite there yet. It's at least given me hope that it can be done though! I'm confident we'll see significant gains sooner rather than later. Hats off to them. (Once my income stabilizes I'll gotta pitch them some funds...) Envision has made it VERY convenient to get set up, but the whole process still saps more time than "Fire it up and play." So maybe play with it at some point, but either way definitely keep your ear to the ground. I'm hoping in the future we'll get to use it for things like Godot XR or Blender integration.
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    Only way I'll want a different phone brand is if it comes with ZERO bloatware and has an excellent internal memory/storage cleanse that has nothing to do with Google's Files or a random app I'm not sure I can trust without paying or rooting. So far my A series phones do what I need mostly and in my opinion is superior to the Motorola's my fiancé prefers minus the phone-phone charge ability his has, everything else I'm just glad I have enough control to tweak things to my liking, however these days Samsungs seem to be infested with Google bloatware and apps that insist on opening themselves back up regardless of the widespread battery restrictions I've assigned (even was sent a "Stop Closing my Apps" notif that sent me to an article ) short of Disabling many unnecessary apps bc fully rooting my devices is something I rarely do anymore. I have a random Chinese brand tablet where I actually have more control over the apps than either of my A series phones whee Force Stopping STAYS that way when I tell them to! I hate being listened to for ads and the unwanted draining my battery life and data (I live off-grid and pay data rates because "Unlimited" is some throttled BS) so my ability to control what's going on in the background matters a lot to me, enough that I'm anti Meta-apps and avoid all non-essential Google apps. I can't afford topline phones and the largest data plan, so I work with what I can afford and I'm sad refurbished A lines seem to be getting more expensive while giving away my control to companies. Last A line I bought that was supposed to be my first 5G phone was network locked, so I got ripped off, but it still serves me well in off-grid life. Only app that actually regularly malfunctions when I Force Stop it's background presence is Roku, which I find to have very an almost insidious presence in our lives. Google Play, Chrome, and Spotify never acts incompetent in any way no matter how I have to open the setting every single time I turn Airplane Mode off. Don't need Gmail with Chrome and DuckDuckGo has been awesome at intercepting self-loading ads. I hope one day DDG gets better bc Google seems to be terrible lately and I even caught their AI contradicting itself when asking about if Homo Florensis is considered Human (yes) and then asked the oldest age of human remains, and was fed the outdated narrative of 300,000 years versus 700,000+ years bipedal pre-humans have been carbon dated outside of the Cradle of Humanity in South Africa. SO sorry to go off-topic, but I've got a big gripe with Samsung's partnership with Google, especially considering the launch of Quantum Computed AI that is still being fine-tuned with company-approved censorships.