• 3 Posts
  • 121 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: January 24th, 2025

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  • I don’t think they blindly follow the trend to remove the headphone jack. They said they did it cause it free up space, make it a bit cheaper, and make it a bit easier to engineer the device for their small team. I think those are fair arguments and better than apple just saying “it took courage” and do little else with it.

    They have literally kept repairability the same throughout their phones (and now other devices). They have also kept replacements parts and sending out some software updates for their old phones too. Imo, they have yet to compromise on their core promise.

    One day Bluetooth may not be backwards compatible but to my knowledge that has not happened for over 10 years. I have a Bluetooth speaker from 2014 that still connects to every Bluetooth device. Unfortunately the battery on that is shit now and I can’t replace it… So it will go to the landfill soon. If fairphone made that speaker then I could still use it. Playing down replaceable batteries in fp’s headphones is crazy. I would agree, however, that their headphones (especially the in ears) should be better so that people actually want to keep them.


  • The headphones they sell are actively the least disposable ones you can buy. That being said, it’s not the most sustainable way to listen to music. Imo, they removed it too make engineering the phone easier. If that means they can reduce the price from what it would have been and make the phone more repairable, then I’m happy for that compromise.

    Have you owned a fairphone? From experience with my gf’s fp4, she has not had to keep sending it back in due to hardware issues. If it was such a big issue as you seem to think, they would have gone out of business with all the replacements they would need to do…











  • To start with, China bad.

    However, if they are willing to inject money into European companies and their influence on those companies is kept in check meaning they are never allowed to solely control those companies, then I think that’s fine. They make some money and EU companies get some investment that they hopefully use to be more competitive. Maybe there is information I don’t know but sounds like how Pirelli is managing it is good. In the case of Pirelli, going further would just be placating the US which we need to stop doing all the time in my view.

    This should not be allowed for all companies (military, IT security, other sensitive stuff…) and I think the unbalanced competitive landscape in China itself makes things unfair too. But it’s not something the EU can practically change. We don’t have many carrots/sticks we can use to stop dumping their products and stealing IP.






  • I’m a bit more hopeful that this situation might finally open people eyes to this scumbag. For me, it seems he’s dug his own grave since he hyped up that he would release this document and it’s importance so hard that everyone expected him to release it. Of course, when he u-turned so hard that he claimed it didn’t exist his base does seem to have realised this hypocrisy. I’m hopeful that once it is released and people see his name in it (at least I assume his name is in it, why else would he not release it?) then maybe he will get a big backlash.

    That said, I also think there is a 50% chance that once the list gets released people may just shrug and move on. Like you said, there is other evidence they were best mates but since that came out through the courts his supporters don’t believe it to be true/damning enough. I’m sure there will be plenty of names he can shout from the rooftops to distract people. Maybe he even drops more tariffs to add to the distraction. Maybe fox news happens to not mention if he is in the list and people don’t bother to look at any other source.


  • I don’t know much about designing a phone motherboard but it’s my understanding that it’s not price of the materials for the traces themselves that adds cost but actually integrating it with the design as a whole. Smartphone PCBs are crazy complex so if not including 3.0 speeds meant the board was easier to design for them and thus cheaper then that’s fine for me. Ultimately they have made the phone cheaper at launch than last gen so they have managed to do that somehow.

    I’m a photographer and I don’t find SD card slow for photos and video storage/transfer at all. Obviously they aren’t great for running applications off of but they work very well for transfering files.

    Obviously, I can’t seem to convince you that the other benefits fairphone bring outway the fact that they don’t offer usb 3.0 speeds. It is a bummer and weird they had it on the last gen but I would give it up in a heart beat to be able to replace the battery, screen, usb-c port, etc. of my own device on my own with very little hassle. We can agree to disagree on this one