Fairphone’s latest repairable device is for people who hate saying goodbye to an old smartphone more than they like buying a new one.

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    As someone who knows a good portion of the Fairphone staff in person, and knows they have a great atmosphere and are mostly great people: Fuck you @Fairphone for leaving my perfectly working FP1 dead in the water without SW updates, and removing the spare parts for the FP2 from the store around the time my FP2 needed them (USB charging port, battery), and for making every new fairphone larger, not offering a SINGLE phone in a proper pocket size (like the FP1).

    For users who can live with the tablet-size of modern smartphones: Yes, repairability and longterm support for more recent phones appears not too bad, certainly better than most competitors, but still - if you are someone like me, who treats a phone well, you can not expect to be able to find spare parts by the time wear & tear from normal use will make it necessary.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      If you can’t buy parts a decade after something is purchased, the repairability is a gimmick, a sales trick.

      I’m not making a joke, that’s the truth of it, imo.

      That’s how old the fairphone is.

      My lgg3 is a year younger, and it’s a pain in the ass to find a real battery, but LG didn’t sell the thing with the idea of users being able to repair and upgrade. You expect an LG phone to have poor parts availability after a decade.

      Like you said, a phone under normal use should last a decade plus. Barring failure of the main board, which is kinda where replacing that part means it’s a new phone rather than a repaired phone, if you’re still left with a device that you can’t get parts for, it’s landfill waste. Kinda puts a damper on sustainability as a factor.

      Fairphone is a gimmick, and it always has been. A good gimmick to be sure, but a gimmick.

    • Fake4000@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      That’s interesting. Can parts be found on other resellers or sites or is Fair phone the only suppliers for these parts?

      This kinda defeats the purpose of buying one.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        From other people you would only get used parts. To be fair, the Fairphone community is quite good and supportive, and there are people there that collect broken phones from users, salvage them for parts & repair phones for users. But if you would like to procure original, new parts, you should not count on the FP company to provide any beyond the support duration that they promise in writing (not sure what that is right now).

        • Carobu@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Why would anyone ever expect any company to provide more support than they provide in writing? They are still trying to make a profit and not supporting a more than 10 year old device is perfectly reasonable. They only shipped 60,000 of the thing and it’s got a GB of RAM. The second model, the 2 still has parts available ~9 years on. I’m really not seeing the issue here.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I have a feeling you did not read my comments. The second model does NOT have parts available, that’s just plain wrong. They’ve been out of stock for more than 3 years.

            And as for the why, that’s because not everyone is a capitalist piece of shit, and that’s exactly the image that Fairphone is aiming for, and therefore when they advertise for sustainability, not supporting old devices is a dumb move.

            Companies and people who put profit first are a cancer to this world.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            If I pay about a 100% premium for the service, over a comparable phone, I expect service.