Self-labelled neo-Luddites and the tech-stressed are searching for phones with fewer features. Industry experts cite precarious profit margins and a wobbly market around this need.
I don’t want a dumb phone. I want a circa 2014 smart phone that is not expected to replace my laptop and serve as a constant data stream for corporations. I want to be able to visit a website on my phone and not have it try to get me to download an app, be ads on 70% of the screen, or just be unreadable formatting. Let me call, text, do a basic online search, play a stupid flash game, and take my money. Stop being greedy and trying to make everything I do monetizable
With Firefox and unlock origin it’ll remove all the cruft from websites, and you can degoogle your phone, making it more private than it was in 2014 (unless you install apps that don’t respect your privacy)
Is fair phone (review) that? Its camera and battery are sub-par for the money, but it says that it makes up for it in many ways, like longevity and ability to swap out components that in other phones can mean almost getting a new one. It sounds kinda perfect for my use case but I’ve never owned one so can’t be positive. When my current phone dies, this is something I’ll heavily look into.
I have a Fairphone 5 and it’s… ok. It’s definitely overpriced for its specs but you can’t really expect a cheap phone while cutting down on slave labour at the same time. It’s also quite buggy. Not unusably so, but coming from a Galaxy S9 (yes, Samsung bad, that’s why I switched), it’s a bit jarring. For example, sometimes I’ll pull it out of my pocket and it’s mysteriously off. I turn it back on and there doesn’t appear to be a reason for it and it works fine. A few times I’ve had the battery drain insanely fast for some reason, despite the phone reporting no apps having high battery usage. Some apps also have issues on occasion, Discord for example tends to get stuck in the gallery view after you send a picture and it doesn’t allow you to open the keyboard again. It’s also missing some minor, but neat things, like the ability to snooze alarms by turning over the phone (Edit: tbh that’s probably a stock Android thing and not really fair to hold against the phone, but I still miss it) and the fingerprint reader is nowhere near as reliable as the one in my old phone.
The vast majority of the time it works just fine and if you don’t expect the polish you’ll get out of a Samsung flagship, you’ll probably be ok with it. But you are very much paying a premium for the sustainability and repairability, not the overall experience. I don’t regret supporting Fairphone, vote with your wallet and all that, but I definitely recognise the device itself has issues and when looked at purely on specs and software quality, it isn’t really worth the money.
I can’t comment on fairphone, but the Discord thing is likely not your phone, it’s Discord or something. The same happens to me randomly on a Pixel 6a.
As a fellow FP5 user, I haven’t come across the issues you’ve mentioned - that said, I did install /e/os pretty much immediately, so perhaps that’s why.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences - that should definitely help people!:-)
I wonder if they perhaps have some QA issues, so you got a lemon, or maybe the design itself is just that bad. You wouldn’t necessarily know, I’m just musing out loud!:-P
One thing I do want to ask if you don’t mind - b/c I don’t know how to interpret the specs and I no longer trust paid reviewers - is how smooth does it handle? Like, noticeable lags or no? If it is basically a cheapie smartphone for a sub-flagship price, I might even be okay with that but wanted to know before getting into it.
Keep in mind that my basis for comparison is a Galaxy S9. The Fairphone feels smoother and more responsive most of the time, but you do occasionally get freezes and lag spikes, mostly when you try to minimise an app that is currently loading something from my experience. Particularly heavy websites also slow it down sometimes, but pretty rarely.
And I wouldn’t really call the design “that bad”, I was listing off my issues with it, so it might have come across that way, but the majority of the time it works completely fine.
So on a scale of 1-5, responsiveness might be a 4?
About the design, I mean like a poorly-placed power button that is easily triggered (and then whatever confirmation procedure is in place can be performed by your pocket), or the sudden drainage of battery issue could be something about poor Quality Assurance when they pick batteries at the factory to put into the devices prior to shipping them out. Or worse, you could replace the battery and that effect could still happen!?
I had a Nexus 5 that would dial things, like even emergency #s (fortunately I don’t think it would actually do the call, just dial the numbers) while in my pocket - it may have had something to do with turning the screen on while a headphone jack was plugged into it. I replaced the OS for other reasons and that happened to solve that issue as well:-). So I would not turn a phone away for such a thing, especially if there is a software/configuration fix.
But responsiveness is as much due to hardware as software - e.g. if Firefox runs slow b/c it was compiled for and websites (even mobile) designed for higher-end specs.
Yeah, I’d say 4 is about right. And the power button is a bit recessed (it doubles as the fingerprint reader), so it’s really hard to press it accidentally. I genuinely have no idea how it could randomly turn off in my pocket. As for the battery, I’m pretty confident it’s a software issue. It’s only happened twice in the 4 months I’ve owned the phone and a restart fixed it both times.
Thanks for the additional feedback!:-) That does greatly reassure me.
Since you said the phone would come right back on immediately thereafter, it sounds to me like it does not seem connected to the battery issue.
Unless the battery issue wasn’t “really” a discharge but the sensor somehow being tricked into thinking that the battery was dying - in which case the phone likely shut down gracefully rather than risk a brown-out situation, but then when you powered it up later it realizes once again that it has battery.
But in a more normal scenario, if you have either tap-to-wake or if hitting the power button results in a screen prompt confirmation that does not require a fingerprint or PIN, and especially if you were walking or cycling or some such, then the screen likely rubbed up against your pocket lining and managed to cause the proper combination of actions to shut it off. It could not start up an app that way - that would need your login - but turning a device off usually requires lesser security.
Fortunately the latter may be possible to fix with a configuration setting or other software fix:-).
Hmm, I do have tap to wake and that is giving me an idea. You can pull down the status bar while the phone is locked and in the bottom right corner there’s a power button. So theoretically my leg can double tap the screen, pull down the status bar, tap the power button and confirm. Feels like a bit of a stretch but who knows. I’ve never had it randomly turn off while I was using it or while sitting on my desk after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Personally I’m very happy with my fairphone. Knowing I can replace parts when they break is nice. And idgaf about camera as long as it can take a halfway decent picture, so a phone that skimps on camera for less cost is a win in my book
That is literally the top feature I am looking for: skimp heavily rather than go all out on the camera, so basically the exact opposite of a Pixel. Whatever amount I pay for a phone - $100-$500 - I want the camera to be perhaps 20% of the price, not well over half as tends to be the case these days. OnePlus especially the “flagship killers” used to be the most similar to that (or at least you didn’t pay the Premium for Pixel while getting significantly lesser specs), but after their cofounder left when they enshittified I simply don’t trust the company to ever purchase anything from them again.
Dumb phones don’t help you for tickets, boarding passes, tap to pay, etc. those things require strong security, not the latest tech. I’ve got a few teenage kids and even for them it’s not very practical to exist without a smartphone.
I don’t want a dumb phone. I want a circa 2014 smart phone that is not expected to replace my laptop and serve as a constant data stream for corporations. I want to be able to visit a website on my phone and not have it try to get me to download an app, be ads on 70% of the screen, or just be unreadable formatting. Let me call, text, do a basic online search, play a stupid flash game, and take my money. Stop being greedy and trying to make everything I do monetizable
There is something about the Palm Pre or Jolla Sailfish OS that was so endearing back then. Devices that support it just don’t exist.
Sad thing is, WebOS still exists.
But it’s running on LG televisions
And putting ads all over the screen…
While its no excuse for them to do this, I run my LG tv with no internet access for it. And I honestly prefer a “dumb” tv anyway.
Same. My TV has a netflix button and a YouTube button. 10 years ago those would have been Crackle and Joost. Look it up kiddos.
I’ve already commented on other peoples comments but I’ll say it again.
Lineage OS exists and works well with F-droid
Sadly not compatible with everything, though. My phone is off the list ☹️
I can’t use my banking app on lineage and those wonderful folk at the bank have made it so that you cant confirm online purchases without.
You have to make it pass safetynet. Iirc there’s some magisk modules that let you do that
Well, if you can unlock the bootloader you can port it assuming the device manufacture is in compliance with the GPL.
Might be easier to just look into a supported device when the old one breaks.
Yeah I don’t know what any of that means so I’m stuck with good ol’ daddy Samsung for now 😂
Most people can port anything. And most of the ones who can have better uses for their time.
That’s why I said it might be easier to find a device that already has maintainers
With Firefox and unlock origin it’ll remove all the cruft from websites, and you can degoogle your phone, making it more private than it was in 2014 (unless you install apps that don’t respect your privacy)
Is fair phone (review) that? Its camera and battery are sub-par for the money, but it says that it makes up for it in many ways, like longevity and ability to swap out components that in other phones can mean almost getting a new one. It sounds kinda perfect for my use case but I’ve never owned one so can’t be positive. When my current phone dies, this is something I’ll heavily look into.
I have a Fairphone 5 and it’s… ok. It’s definitely overpriced for its specs but you can’t really expect a cheap phone while cutting down on slave labour at the same time. It’s also quite buggy. Not unusably so, but coming from a Galaxy S9 (yes, Samsung bad, that’s why I switched), it’s a bit jarring. For example, sometimes I’ll pull it out of my pocket and it’s mysteriously off. I turn it back on and there doesn’t appear to be a reason for it and it works fine. A few times I’ve had the battery drain insanely fast for some reason, despite the phone reporting no apps having high battery usage. Some apps also have issues on occasion, Discord for example tends to get stuck in the gallery view after you send a picture and it doesn’t allow you to open the keyboard again. It’s also missing some minor, but neat things, like the ability to snooze alarms by turning over the phone (Edit: tbh that’s probably a stock Android thing and not really fair to hold against the phone, but I still miss it) and the fingerprint reader is nowhere near as reliable as the one in my old phone.
The vast majority of the time it works just fine and if you don’t expect the polish you’ll get out of a Samsung flagship, you’ll probably be ok with it. But you are very much paying a premium for the sustainability and repairability, not the overall experience. I don’t regret supporting Fairphone, vote with your wallet and all that, but I definitely recognise the device itself has issues and when looked at purely on specs and software quality, it isn’t really worth the money.
I can’t comment on fairphone, but the Discord thing is likely not your phone, it’s Discord or something. The same happens to me randomly on a Pixel 6a.
Never happened on my old phone. Might be some issue with the stock Android then, idk
As a fellow FP5 user, I haven’t come across the issues you’ve mentioned - that said, I did install /e/os pretty much immediately, so perhaps that’s why.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences - that should definitely help people!:-)
I wonder if they perhaps have some QA issues, so you got a lemon, or maybe the design itself is just that bad. You wouldn’t necessarily know, I’m just musing out loud!:-P
One thing I do want to ask if you don’t mind - b/c I don’t know how to interpret the specs and I no longer trust paid reviewers - is how smooth does it handle? Like, noticeable lags or no? If it is basically a cheapie smartphone for a sub-flagship price, I might even be okay with that but wanted to know before getting into it.
Keep in mind that my basis for comparison is a Galaxy S9. The Fairphone feels smoother and more responsive most of the time, but you do occasionally get freezes and lag spikes, mostly when you try to minimise an app that is currently loading something from my experience. Particularly heavy websites also slow it down sometimes, but pretty rarely.
And I wouldn’t really call the design “that bad”, I was listing off my issues with it, so it might have come across that way, but the majority of the time it works completely fine.
So on a scale of 1-5, responsiveness might be a 4?
About the design, I mean like a poorly-placed power button that is easily triggered (and then whatever confirmation procedure is in place can be performed by your pocket), or the sudden drainage of battery issue could be something about poor Quality Assurance when they pick batteries at the factory to put into the devices prior to shipping them out. Or worse, you could replace the battery and that effect could still happen!?
I had a Nexus 5 that would dial things, like even emergency #s (fortunately I don’t think it would actually do the call, just dial the numbers) while in my pocket - it may have had something to do with turning the screen on while a headphone jack was plugged into it. I replaced the OS for other reasons and that happened to solve that issue as well:-). So I would not turn a phone away for such a thing, especially if there is a software/configuration fix.
But responsiveness is as much due to hardware as software - e.g. if Firefox runs slow b/c it was compiled for and websites (even mobile) designed for higher-end specs.
Yeah, I’d say 4 is about right. And the power button is a bit recessed (it doubles as the fingerprint reader), so it’s really hard to press it accidentally. I genuinely have no idea how it could randomly turn off in my pocket. As for the battery, I’m pretty confident it’s a software issue. It’s only happened twice in the 4 months I’ve owned the phone and a restart fixed it both times.
Thanks for the additional feedback!:-) That does greatly reassure me.
Since you said the phone would come right back on immediately thereafter, it sounds to me like it does not seem connected to the battery issue.
Unless the battery issue wasn’t “really” a discharge but the sensor somehow being tricked into thinking that the battery was dying - in which case the phone likely shut down gracefully rather than risk a brown-out situation, but then when you powered it up later it realizes once again that it has battery.
But in a more normal scenario, if you have either tap-to-wake or if hitting the power button results in a screen prompt confirmation that does not require a fingerprint or PIN, and especially if you were walking or cycling or some such, then the screen likely rubbed up against your pocket lining and managed to cause the proper combination of actions to shut it off. It could not start up an app that way - that would need your login - but turning a device off usually requires lesser security.
Fortunately the latter may be possible to fix with a configuration setting or other software fix:-).
Hmm, I do have tap to wake and that is giving me an idea. You can pull down the status bar while the phone is locked and in the bottom right corner there’s a power button. So theoretically my leg can double tap the screen, pull down the status bar, tap the power button and confirm. Feels like a bit of a stretch but who knows. I’ve never had it randomly turn off while I was using it or while sitting on my desk after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Personally I’m very happy with my fairphone. Knowing I can replace parts when they break is nice. And idgaf about camera as long as it can take a halfway decent picture, so a phone that skimps on camera for less cost is a win in my book
That is literally the top feature I am looking for: skimp heavily rather than go all out on the camera, so basically the exact opposite of a Pixel. Whatever amount I pay for a phone - $100-$500 - I want the camera to be perhaps 20% of the price, not well over half as tends to be the case these days. OnePlus especially the “flagship killers” used to be the most similar to that (or at least you didn’t pay the Premium for Pixel while getting significantly lesser specs), but after their cofounder left when they enshittified I simply don’t trust the company to ever purchase anything from them again.
2014 phones also fit in my hand. I miss that size, you can’t even find them now.
Dumb phones don’t help you for tickets, boarding passes, tap to pay, etc. those things require strong security, not the latest tech. I’ve got a few teenage kids and even for them it’s not very practical to exist without a smartphone.
I would absolutely love a linux smartphone that didn’t suck.
I want to be able to pull up an 80% version of a website on my phone, and have a button to open the full website on my computer for when I get home.
If you use Firefox, you can transfer tabs between your phone and computer.
Firefox can do something like this with the “send tab to device”, not sure it is what you want
I’m starting to miss my iPhone 4
As long as you didn’t hold it wrong.
I got it long after the Antennagate problem got fixed. I believe iOS 4.3 was out when I first bought it.
Was Antennagate fixed? Or did people just learn not to hold it in the wrong place?
I thought it was about physical placement of the antenna, I’d be surprised if a software update fixed it.
It’s probably a mix of both.
I loved my LG v10 and galaxy s5. Those phones just worked and worked great for a long time.
I wonder why companies can’t just make something as good as these again.
This sounds good, but I’m still not downloading Tapatalk…