They mention the Pixel and I just got to say, I wish someone would bring back the fingerprint reader on the back of the phone. That was seriously the best solution. Fastest way to unlock your phone, because no matter how slow the fingerprint reader is you activate it while pulling it out of your pocket. I honestly don't get why people like Face ID more (what I currently use). Someone, please bring this back
All phones eventually become obsolete, but their guts could be used in so many ways. I'd love for example if someone made an enclosure acting also as multi port docking station so that old phones with unlocked bootloader (Fairphone being one of them) could be reflashed with a different operating system then used as mini PCs, media players, IoT wall terminals with bigger screens or other uses. Seeing all that perfectly good electronics going into landfills because planned obsolescence says so just irritates me. Can we do that at least for unlocked ones? Framework did something similar for their laptop mainboards, minus the docking station.function as they already have more ports than a phone. Any chances that this could be doable with Fairphone hardware?
> then used as mini PCs, media players, IoT wall terminals with bigger screens or other uses
If they can be used like that, why couldn't they be used... as phones?
Changing phone every two years is not sustainable, even if the old phone is used as an IoT wall terminal: it's still "consuming" one phone every two years. In a sense, an old phone in a drawer uses less energy than an old phone staying powered to control a lightbulb.
> planned obsolescence
Nitpick: I like to call it "premature obsolescence". Planned obsolescence is the idea of engineering the product to not last more than some time. I think nowadays it's often not the case; rather we engineer the product to last for the time of the warranty (1-2 years) and not more. And a product dying after 1 year is "premature", even though it was not actively engineered for that.
Under the new EU Ecodesign regulation, smartphone manufacturers must provide software updates for at least 5 years after the date of last sale, not 1-2 years.
(Applies to newly released devices, not to devices which were already on the market as of June 20).
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules...
> If they can be used like that, why couldn't they be used... as phones?
To facilitate planned obsolescence, manufacturers stop providing OS updates after a relatively short time. And then they cease providing security patches after a... still relatively short time.
If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot, which is a problem for the security model of how many people use phones -- and many apps simply refuse to work with this setup (whereas the obsolete OS with no security patches is considered fine, apparently).
> To facilitate planned obsolescence, manufacturers stop providing OS updates
I don't think it works like that. Manufacturers stop providing OS updates as soon as they can because providing any kind of support has a cost. Planned obsolescence means "they care about making it obsolete" (active). But the reality is that they just "don't care about keeping the product alive" (passive). And the only way to make them provide updates is to force them by law.
> If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot
You can relock the bootloader with the FairPhone. You will still have a message saying it's a custom OS, but I don't think it compromises the secure boot, does it?
> many apps simply refuse to work with this setup
I heard that there are apps that refuse to work with an unlocked bootloader, but I haven't heard of apps refusing to work with a relocked bootloader. Is that a thing?
Manufactures care about support for as long as they think consumers will care. If phones stop working one month after you buy them consumers would revolt. They have decided that 2 years is an acceptable number for customers - long enough that most will be willing to pay to upgrade after that long. If you are one of the "cheap" customers who want to keep your phone longer they want to force you to spend money and most customers seem to be willing to pay then so they are happy.
And that is why we need regulations that force them to make phones that last longer.
Why should someone who is going to throw their phone away in 2 years (or less) anyway be forced to subsidize those who want to keep theirs longer? There is a cost to supporting old hardware and that needs to be paid by someone.
Why should someone who is going to throw their phone away in a day (or less) anyway be forced to subsidize those who want to keep theirs longer? There is a cost to supporting old hardware, and that needs to be paid by someone.
I was assuming that we as a society would rather want to survive this century, but you're right, maybe we don't. We surely act like we really, really don't.
But hypothetically, if we were to want to survive, such regulations would be some of the very easy steps to take (and by far not enough, of course).
And again, I think you're right: it's far more likely that we as a society will just collapse, so maybe it's not even worth wondering what we would do if we didn't want it.
Throwing phones away is not going to cause society to collapse.
Why couldn’t manufacturers proclaiming to espouse longevity, such as Fairphone, release the vendor source code for out-of-support hardware which are supposedly no longer relevant and so doesn’t matter if the competition can see the code? Or is it an issue of signing certificates?
I wonder, but it could be that some of the hardware they use doesn't offer an open source firmware. Qualcomm for instance isn't super open.
IMO we should put in the law that manufacturers have to mainstream their device and provide a way to flash an updated firmware. There is no way they do it without being forced, because it's a pure source of cost for them.
That's how it works: companies optimise in the legal framework we give them. Regulations set that framework.
Contracts with vendors, usually. Vendors who make not much of their profit from Fairphone and would happily cut them off if they wanted terms like that.
There's a reason Pine64's devices (which are made out of parts with available public datasheets as much as possible - they don't do the software side of things) are mostly made with parts from a few generations ago, whose manufacturer doesn't care much any more.
I haven't bought a new phone in ages. I buy second-hand phones (making them often 1-2 years old), then I either resell them after I'm done (usually I cycle every 3-5 years), or I do precisely this - turning them into app controllers or wallets or something. Or games, etc. I keep two around in case one breaks.
This isn't hard. And it saves a ton of money.
People will usually only carry one phone, and they'll want one that is capable of running recent apps, storing their photos and music, and also taking high quality photos.
If you upgrade a phone to get a new one with a better camera, well, the processor on the old one is probably decent still, it could be a mini PC where the camera quality doesn't matter.
Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.
> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.
You can choose not to upgrade.
Obtaining status symbols is a choice (and a pretty vain one too). Even if your lifestyle requires these empty displays of status, that's a choice of lifestyle that you've made.
You can be perfectly successful in life with a 5 years old phone.
Maybe we can do to phones what tech bros did to suits in the early 2000's. There's that saying, something along the lines of, "It used to be that everyone looked to the one in the suit, now everyone looks to the one in a hoodie." Maybe we can convince people that a run down secondhand phone is a display of wealth and power :P
> they'll want one that is capable of
My feeling is that phones are not evolving that quickly anymore, though.
> If you upgrade a phone to get a new one with a better camera, well, the processor on the old one is probably decent still, it could be a mini PC where the camera quality doesn't matter.
Sure, but if you didn't need the mini PC in the first place, then it's not more sustainable than throwing it away. It's actually less sustainable, because now you consume energy for a mini PC you didn't need.
Not saying people should not get their new toy. Just that they should not pretend it's sustainable :-).
> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.
Around me it's become more and more of a status symbol to not upgrade. It's sometimes almost a competition of "who has the oldest phone", and nobody is impressed by someone buying the latest iPhone. So... it's not the same everywhere :-).
> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.
This is a huge part of the change we need. I felt proud in a way to show off that I was still using an iPhone 8 until a couple of years ago, and I admire some (techy) people I know still using a phone from that time.
Is pride a healthy, wholesome motivator? May be not, but we're human.
> People will usually only carry one phone
On that note, please, someone make a phone with more than 2 active SIMs. At this point, I have four SIMs, and they're more likely to increase than to reduce...
It's certainly technically possible. Phone motherboards have limited wired IO, but USB host mode is enough for a lot of things.
The problem is how locked-down most phones are, and how hard it is to modify their software. Even for the Fairphone, you have to fill out a form on their site to get a bootloader unlock code, and they could close that form if they wished (see Asus). That all means starting an "ecosystem" of accessories and new non-phone software is costly and has an uncertain future.
Personally I think the biggest issue is the theft-prevention functionality that means a phone picked out of e-waste is basically bricked (without some exploit). There's companies making new motherboards out of salvaged Intel chipsets, I'm sure it would be possible to build a business around the reuse of phones, but right now there are just too many obstacles.
I think this could be solved with new legislation. At least here, doing anything with e-waste is already highly regulated. Giving registered e-waste processors the ability to unlock the bootloader of any device would reduce waste, and make unlocked phones something you could reliably buy in bulk. Then I think we could see the kind of aftermarket support for phones.
> Even for the Fairphone, you have to fill out a form on their site to get a bootloader unlock code, and they could close that form if they wished (see Asus).
You also need to sign up with Google to even get past the setup screen, and the phone needs to reach Google's servers and ask for permission to be used. Even if Fairphone would like to keep phones usable, Google can decide otherwise at any time.
I started a thread on this topic on their forums, and they seem to have no interest in fixing this. I wouldn't consider hardware sustainable if it needs to talk to Google's servers to be used and remains completely locked down otherwise. If you find one of these devices in a drawer in 15 years, and Google has changed their server's API, then the phone is as usable as any other brand
(nitpick: you have to "enter a contractual agreement" with Google, and not create an account. Folks on the forums seemed to be obsessed with the choice of word around this, although practically, it makes no difference).
That doesn't sound like a good sign for holistic sustainability.
I've been forming a theory about companies that want to do good. Something like, they need a C-suite executive who is a true-believer, and, figuratively, a pissed-off street fighter, who can see threats to the mission coming from a block away.
For a familiar example of when this isn't happening: most of, say, privacy efforts I see can be classified into one of: (1) well-meaning, but don't really know what they're doing, and hopelessly out of their league against the supposed threat; or (2) it's really just a product marketing angle, for individual pursuit of career or riches.
> You also need to sign up with Google to even get past the setup screen, and the phone needs to reach Google's servers and ask for permission to be used
IIRC they offer a version with a de-googled custom rom preinstalled, does this apply to this option as well?
Yeah I think you need to install a custom, deGoogled ROM (you can buy Fairphones that come with some).
If you go with the Googled-Fairphone, then it is Googled indeed.
I bought a Fairphone 3 a few years ago with /e/OS, so I don't have that problem. Also in all fairness, the "you have to log into Google before booting" is making it harder to steal and resell phones. I read somewhere that the number of stolen phones got lower since they (Google, Apple, I guess Samsung and the likes) introduced that "protection".
I quite like the idea of ruling that device sellers have to either offer software support, or allow the hardware to be unlocked
Citronics from Brussels does that with Fairphone 3 hardware. https://citronics.eu/
For what you say, the most important is that the USB Type C connector of the phone must not be an antediluvian USB 2.0, but it must be an USB 3.0 or better, and also supporting DisplayPort.
For such phones, using any kind of peripherals, including external monitors, network interfaces or docking stations becomes possible.
There are relatively cheap smartphones with such USB ports, e.g. around $400 from Motorola, but the majority of the smartphones, including many of the most expensive, for which such limitations are inexcusable, are limited to a USB 2.0 interface, which is almost useless today.
While this Fairphone seems to have good specifications otherwise, there is no word about its USB Type C connector.
I am no longer willing to ever spend money on a smartphone that does not support at least USB 3.0 and DisplayPort.
EDIT:
Looking now on Gsmarena at Fairphone 5, I see that it had an adequate USB 3.0/DisplayPort. I have not noticed this before, because when searching for possible upgrades I was not looking to smartphones with CPUs as ancient as those of Fairphone 5.
Hopefully Fairphone 6 will retain the USB interface of its predecessor. This, coupled with a relatively up-to-date mid-range Qualcomm SoC and with a reasonable price for what it offers, can make it an interesting choice.
Alas, the official website says "USB-C 2.0".
I feel that adding new hardware to old hardware might just be compounding the waste. We can slow down the obsolescence, but flash wear is a real issue after a few years; that's caused a few phone replacements in my family.
Heck, even reusing furniture in Western economies can be difficult, because the cost of handling it can easily exceed its value. It sort of survives in charity and antique shops, but only for the nicer items.
This does not scale at all. For hobbyist with no kids, sure, spend your time turning old phone for some fancy doorbell, etc. But for normals? Who would maintain such equipment, who would be in charge of testing if the battery will not get overheated once the new device stays for longer time in place X? Who would maintain and support such devices. I don't want to service myself my media player.
Sure but if old phones could be used like a really powerful raspberry pi (and they are really much more powerful, at least the high end) then the resale value would go up and more people would sell theirs to nerds rather than throwing it away. Still a net positive IMO
You can connect any peripherals including keyboard and mouse using usb-c hub. There are hubs that support external power available already so you can simultaneously charge the phone. I do sometimes use my fairphone with external keyboard case that way. Yes I would like higher quality one that better fits the phone, but I think that would be niche/bespoke expensive product.
Theoretically, it should be possible to design and 3D print such an enclosure, akin to existing video game console mods like the ‘Switch Pro’.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nintendo-Switch-Pro-kit-transf...
I’ve been experimenting in the past few weeks with an old fairphone : https://far.computer/ Still work in progress, so I haven’t shared it here yet.
When unscrewed, users are likely to be greeted with an option to remove the battery as well as it isn’t attached to the device with the help of glue but rather with additional screws.
What a horrible state of things that "not gluing the battery in place but screwing it in" is considered an improvement. IMHO smartphones have been on a horrible decline ever since ~2016. Before then, most Androids had [1] easily replaceable battery, no tools required at all; [2] microSD slot; [3] headphone jack; [4] (many) dual SIM; [5] (many cheaper models) easily rooted or unlocked by default. Now all we get are faster CPUs, more (non-expandable) storage, and far too many cameras.
There was also this memorable ad from Samsung: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hIoyb9L5g0
Do you think they're screwing it in for fun?
I'd rather my phone be more robust than worry about unscrewing a couple more screws when I need to replace the battery (hopefully a rare occurrence anyway). I don't know anyone that carried around spare batteries like in that ad, so although a good ad it doesn't really speak to customer usage.
I'd also like my phone to be as-waterproof-as-possible, and am willing to sacrifice a back that comes open without any screws or similar.
They're doing it because they don't know better, or are deliberately ignorant to a generation of actually better designs.
Waterproofing wasn't a feature people needed before the marketing told them they did.
Before my phones became waterproof, I lost multiple phones to liquid damage, so the idea that waterproofing is a marketing gimmick is nonsense.
Ah yes, people. The group of users that famously doesn't interact with liquids in their day to day lives and needed to be told that they wanted to be able to spill a drink or soup on their phone and not have it break, or drop it into the toilet, pool, lake or river and not have it break.
https://xkcd.com/641/ is true, but smartphones and liquids isn't that.
FairPhone used to be a manufacturer still doing the right things. My FP3 has all of that, including an official guide for unlocking the bootloader. At least they've kept their promises regarding updates, because I won't be buying their newer phones.
I find this comment really irritating, sorry. This is a thread about the upcoming fairphone, with people praising things done right.
Your comment feel needlessly provocative with no information other than your negative opinion. You've implied Fairphone have turned crap, whilst mentioning a bunch of good stuff they've done, and then how you won't be buying their phones anymore.
Seriously, what was the point of this comment, what were you trying to achieve or communicate? Is that fairphone are rubbish? If so, you haven't said how or why, other than cryptic hints that promises might not have been kept.
This feels like an engagement bait comment, and I can't help but engage to say that.
I guess if you're not familiar with fairphones products my comment's pretty meaningless, sorry. The parent comment implied that manufacturers stopped having all the listed features after 2016, but fairphone was still doing all that up until 2021. That's why I bought their phone. Then they removed the headphone jack in the 4, and now they're removing tool-less battery/sim replacement. That's why I won't be buying another one; I'll be keeping my FP3 until modern web bloat makes it entirely unusable (which I can only do because fairphone keeps their update promises).
That's fair, thanks for the explanation, I understand your comment a bit better now, apologies for the poor comprehension on my part.
I am a bit familiar, have been looking at the FP5 as a next phone, so will probably buy an FP6 assuming first batch of reviews aren't catastrophic.
Personally the appeal to me is the modular hardware support, but also the expected long term official software support (and inevitable community support when that ends). Also the principal that it's a company that is trying really hard to do things differently in a way that benefits everyone just seems sensible, innovative and something I want to support compared to other phone companies.
If your biggest issues with FP are removing the headphone jack, and requiring a small screwdriver to replace the batteries, then I'm genuinely interested to know who/what you're considering after as an improvement?
My original plan was to jump to a Linux phone (PinePhone Pro), but that hasn't really worked out software wise. FuriLab's FLX1 seems to hold some promise regarding Linux, but they're having trouble shipping. HMD has some offerings with the right features, but software support is lacking. So my current plan is to stick with my FP3 until it becomes unusable.
I love FairPhone's vision, and I think they do a pretty good job executing it. There's certainly room for improvement, but I've been really happy with my purchase. I also think removing the headphone jack was a direct betrayal of their ideals.
If you have a FP3, did it never fall down, throwing its battery out? I had that happen a few times to me in the past and I always wished for a tiny bit more "grip" on the battery. I would guess that I'm not the only one.
Nope, not once. It's been dropped plenty of times and had both the screen and battery replaced.
Mine neither.
I've bought the FP3+ camera, and I'm on my third battery pack, degoogled with murena /e/-OS. Works perfectly, except the screen is a little too large for me. I wish it was a Sony Xperia ZX1 compact size, but one can't have it all.
The original Fairphone was basically just a branded version of the generic common Android of the time (MT6589 reference design --- I have an unbranded one that looks very similar but with a better screen and cameras), so they were "doing the right things" like everyone else.
https://www.gizchina.com/2013/06/25/6-top-quad-core-mt6589-p...
There were tons of these little-known companies making very similar phones at the time. Unfortunately most of them disappeared within the next few years. Hence 2016 as the year I mentioned of when things started going downhill noticeably.
Well, it also had more sustainably-sourced materials (both in terms of environment and labour conditions), and they provided their own open Google-free OS. But you're right that they truly started making progress from version 2 onwards. I'm still happy to have had the FP1 to enable that, though.
It's probably going to be the end of the FP3 updates sometimes in 2026, so it will be time to change. For me, it will certainly be a by a FP6.
I was personally thinking about a Pixel phone (for GrapheneOS), but given the recent Google news, I'm not so sure where Graphene (and the Pixels) is going.
I loved older phones where you could just pop or slide off the back and replace the battery. So many people carry around portable battery packs to recharge which is large, heavy and clunky (you need to hold these two devices while the phone charges). I used to just carry a spare battery and could do a swap for an instant full charge in about the same amount of time it takes most people to get out and plug in their battery pack.
The article is misleading here in that the earlier Fairphones had removable batteries without glue.
The Fairphone 4 at least you could replace the battery without any screws at all. It took seconds and it's been extremely useful for me.
On the Fairphone 2 you could even replace the screen without screws. It made it unstable and prone to getting loose, and it was a huge improvement when the Fairphone 3 started using screws for that. It was a fun gimmick, but for something you replace that rarely, it's really not worth the sacrifice.
Screws keep them repairable and sturdy. It'll no longer be as easy to bring a spare battery to replace on the go, unfortunately, but unfortunately, it's a trade-off, and with most people already not doing that, it makes sense where they ended up.
On the flip side, the battery of my Fairphone 3 had a tendency to disconnect when it was shaken too strongly for its taste, rebooting the phone…
So I'd consider screws to be an improvement actually.
If in 2025 your unscrewed battery is disconnecting evening at vigorous shakes it is not your fault at all. So that doesn't explain the "bring in the screws".
There must be something to tighten the contact between the phone and the battery, every other manufacturer uses glue, Fairphone tried to solve this problem with plastic clips before and it wasn't reliable enough, so I'm certainly not gonna blame them for doing it with the most effective method that doesn't compromise repairability.
haven't had this problem with fp3+ even when it drops on the floor
I saw some Edifier desktop speakers the other day which listed as a feature "No built-in microphone for privacy protection".
It's sad what kind of things are considered "features" these days.
I don’t see why I should care that the battery is glued in? It helps keep the battery stable with minimal overhead, and it’s still fairly easy to replace. Apple has even made improvements to make it even easier to remove glued batteries, not that it was all that hard before. Doing excess engineering to make it easier to replace something which I might replace once in the lifetime of the phone doesn’t make sense.
The old use case of wanting to easily swap batteries to keep the phone going isn’t something people care about anymore since we got a billion options for battery banks that works for all the USB-C devices we have.
Nobody cares about headphone jack anymore. It’s dead. Get over it. Why stick a crappy DAC and a bad and single-purpose bulky port in a device where space is critical, when 99% of users are not going to use it? Just stick a USB-C adapter on your headphones. Then you have a choice in DAC. I would much rather have two USB-C ports than a headphone jack.
Dual SIM is also rapidly becoming obsolete.
Micro SD would be nice still, I’ll give you that.
I don’t miss dropping my phone and the battery and the SIM card flying away into the sunset.
if the back is still screwed low chance it will happen
Does it matter that the battery is screwed if the back is screwed too? You will need a screwdriver to access it anyway.
Batteries must be glued or screwed, otherwise sudden movements can turn the phone off.
Is this really a problem? I've had my FP3 for 5-ish years and the plastic clips have done their job without fail. Even when dropping it on hardwood floor
Was lucky enough to get my Fairphone 4 on sale, but I'd happily pay full price now - even though the Fairphones are pricey for the specs, unless you absolutely need 24 cores etc. I'd say they are worth it, knowing the company is at least trying to improve the parts supply chain, and knowing you stand a chance of fixing the devices yourself (luckily I've only had to replace the USB-C port, which was trivial)
About the only thing I'd ding Fairphone on is not communicating earlier that they were having trouble getting Android 14 out to the FP4s, but the security patches have been consistent.
(Okay I'm also dinging them on getting rid of the headphone jack, yes I know it's a lost cause... )
The removal of the phone jack is so obviously planned obsolescence, it is ironic that this project for sustainability follows the trend.
Wired headphones still have better sound quality. Don't need charging. Don't break with software update. But because of that it means less consumption.
Think about how insane it is that companies can remove the phone jack and glue in the battery with the very obvious goal of planned obsolescence. And this is legal.
No, that’s not planned obsolescence. Why would it become obsolete faster due to the lack of a phone jack?
Not delivering updates, that’s planned obsolescence.
I do agree however, that a jack is nice. Wired USB-C headphone do exist though, if you insist on wired.I am not an audiophile, wouldn’t that provide an even better sound quality potentially (digital to analog conversion happens later, not distortions due to cables for example)?
UCB-C headphones use the same USB-C connector as the charging one (there are no smartphone with 2 usb-C connectors), therefore increasing the wear every time you plug/unplug. When using USB headphones you cannot charge at the same time, and when using USB-to-{usb+jack} the behavior is sometimes strange (e.g. does not detect and switch to internal audio when unplugging the jack). Besides, in many situations (especially when walking/moving), a USB-C connector tends to unplug itself so easily while a jack connector will just stay in place. Nothing really replaces an internal jack port ! (+ in some cases, the jack connector would also provide a debug UART :).
In comparison, Moto G84 has LineageOS/Calyx support, headphone jack, 2 SIM (or 1 SIM + SD-card), 12G RAM, and 7/10 repairability score in France (although I lack the details - I hope at least it's relatively easy to replace the battery and USB-C slot) + it weight 160g => even though I'd like to support Fairphone, I won't buy again a phone without jack port !
I totally agree with previous comments which highlight that we used to have removable jack + batteries + SD + root easily 10 years ago (and we also had more options for tiny phones, such as Galaxy S4 Mini).
I do agree USB-C physically sucks, especially compared with lightning or audio jack.
But “reusing the same port for multiple purposes” can’t mean “planned obsolescence”. Making that port unrepairable, that, yes.
Minor nitpick - ASUS ROG phones have two USB C ports, I think some other gaming focused phones do as well.
There seems to be more movement in the standards space on wireless headphones. The wireless standard today could be very different in 5-10 years time. The 3.5mm jack is over a century old, it isn't being changed dramatically in any way.
Personally, I am just not a fan of something that requires both a software connection that usually isn't always the smoothest thing rather than a direct hardware connection. And having yet another battery to deal with and the down stream impact of that. Typically all on hardware with the battery sealed inside that will die long before the rest of the hardware will.
Nothing wrong with wireless as an option but mandating it, I do not like that one bit. It is now the first thing I check on a phone as it is an absolute deal breaker for me.
But what about usb-c wired headphones, as I suggested?
That is an acceptable compromise... it would be nice to have a second USB-C (for reduncancy, if nothing else).
Personally, I have several decent headphones with 3.5mm connectors. Having to buy a separate pair of headphones for phone use is dumb.
USB-C to jack adapters exists. Even USB-C to jack cables exists if you own headphones with removable cable.
Not saying it’s a good situation, I also miss the jack connector. But you’ve got the option to keep your headphones :)
Hot take maybe but I think it would be a worthwhile endeavor to come up with a replacement for the 3.5mm audio jack. It’s served us well but there’s several improvements that could be made to it that’d make it more durable and less prone to issues like becoming loose. It’s probably longer than it strictly needs to be too.
Regarding the length, the smaller 2.5mm jack used to be pretty common on smaller devices. Now the only thing that I know uses it is the input on Bose QC headphones.
Wireless headphones use lossy compression, so the sound is of worse quality. Also some of them use low bitrate profiles like 256 kbit or even 128 kbit to get longer battery life. Also as I understand they are a pain to use because you need to charge them daily.
I was suggesting usb-c wired headphones
I don't think it's about planned obsolescence. It's about cutting costs and having one less hole water can get in.
Also wired headphones are a very niche market. If you care so much there are wireless DACs that can feed your wired headphones better than any phone in history.
> It's about cutting costs and having one less hole water can get in.
That's a lazy excuse. Every single IP68 rugged phone has a headphone jack. And the ones that are more waterproof even made for diving with them also have one.
Those rugged phones are also thicker and more expensive for what you're getting. Mainstream companies have tried offering the headphone jack in some phones and every single time, those phone have undersold their jackless competitors.
> Mainstream companies have tried offering the headphone jack in some phones and every single time, those phone have undersold their jackless competitors.
What, when?
I hope you don't mean when the flagship phone has no headphone jack, and a mid tier phone does. It's not the choice between the headphone jack and 3% more battery making the decision in that situation.
> Those rugged phones are also thicker and more expensive for what you're getting. Mainstream companies have tried offering the headphone jack in some phones and every single time, those phone have undersold their jackless competitors.
Yeah… the budget Moto G3 from 2015 with IPX7 says hi. To the limited surprise of anyone who was familiar with the brand back then, the top model (16GB/2gb) sold out in less than a week.
You can’t tell me it’s harder to waterproof a headphone jack in 2025 than it was in 2015. And could you please tell me how a rubber gasket adds appreciable thickness to a phone? Because I find that a bit hard to believe.
Blackview n6000 has no headphone jack.
I'm wondering now how much time you used to find that single one that has no headphone jack and is also IP68 certified.
Congrats, I guess?
I just happened to have that model on my desk when I read your comment.
My hotter take is that this is the same problem as IR blasters, and relative to the old normal -- when device makers like LG were specifically advertising how awesome their built-in DAC was -- this whole thing could be solved in a much more elegant, flexible way if anyone at all would just give us a second fucking USB port.
> just give us a second fucking USB port
So much this. I had an nVidia (Tegra?) based phone with USB, headphone jack, HDMI.
While I don't think a USB port would allow for FM radio using the headphone cord simply having more would be fantastic! But if laptop designers can barely fit two USB-C ports I'm not sure what chance we have against the phone designers...
Sony tried to compete with the best camera, best DAC and I don't think those phones sold. Manufacturers build products the market wants. Wired headphones are not what the market wants. If you are a true purist you buy stuff from fiio and carry more then one device.
This is the same thing as with small phones. A vocal minority cried far and wide that they wanted them. Apple made them.. and they did, not, sell.
I don't know if you meant it but you seem to imply that that vocal minority only cried but didn't buy the small phones?
You know a minority is a _minority_, even if everyone in that minority bought a iPhone Mini, the sales number is still not going to be high.
(Edit: just checked, in 2022, 3% of iPhones sold were 13 Minis. not high but surely someone out there can run a sustainable business out of that 3% of mobile phones)
There is a market, fiio is capitalizing on it.
I remember seeing something like this for over ear, you just stream tidal to them so there shouldn't be compression issues. Might be a delay idk.
Sony's problem is not their device; it's software/marketing/price and their release process.
> Manufacturers build products the market wants.
Every single person wants smaller phones. What do we get? No small phones.
Apple doesn't count… they are priced at 3x 4x what an android would cost.
People want small phones but don't want to spend their whole salary on a phone.
I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone after having a bigger one (though also don't know anyone who bought a phablet, so maybe that's too big). As people moved most of their computer use to phones, bigger phones where you can see more of the web on your page, while still fitting in your pocket or purse, have won decidedly.
By and large, the only people who want small phones are those that still do most of their computing and media consumption on a PC or laptop. And that's becoming much, much rarer (and gaming doesn't really count here - lots of gamers have a separate stream or something on their phones while playing).
>I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone
It's difficult to do that when the available phones are just getting bigger. Ten years ago you could still find sub 6" phones easily. These days, not so much.
> I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone after having a bigger one
Consider how small the overlap is between devices in a product lineup in the first place and an audience that can buy them -- whether that's through carrier availability to put them on plans if in the US, or the resources to spend on them up-front.
That trend also is based on touch as the primary method of interaction -- but given the tethered AR devices we're starting to see trickle out, and Android's desktop mode finally hitting prime time, that assumption might not hold long-term. I'm not saying this will be the timeline we live on, but considering some of the experiments with dedicated, external devices for powering them, it's not hard to envision the pendulum swinging back toward smaller phones that focus more on things like the compute and sensors and less around a screen you look at all day.
Think of the (modern) Moto Razr. You could, hypothetically, have a compute device that more so resembles the folded-down version of this -- aimed more toward external displays, and less toward being regularly looked at.
> I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone after having a bigger one
Similarly, I don't know a single person that likes to eat dodo eggs.
> Sony tried to compete with the bet camera, best DAC and I don't think those phones sold.
They were also priced like it -- and worse, many of them weren't available through US carriers, which is prohibitive to a market that often won't spend Kaz Hirai money all at once on a phone.
You're otherwise restating my point, though. Many of the niche hardware features don't have to be built into the device if you just offer more baseline extensibility.
> If you care so much there are wireless DACs that can feed your wired headphones better than any phone in history.
Don't they all have 50-300ms of latency?
If you have a quality non-bluetooth suggestion, or I'm wrong about the latency of bluetooth, I'd be excited to hear it.
I have no idea if those numbers are correct, but I'm curious - why would latency matter for high quality audio? Jitter is the only thing that impacts audio quality, unless you are doing two-way communication.
Because I press buttons and want immediate feedback.
And I want it to work with calls were any extra latency is bad. And I want it to work with my desktop where I play games and extra latency ruins things.
How do they avoid lossy compression?
By applying Psychoacoustics. Lossy compression is a problem long solved.
that's not avoiding lossy compression, that's choosing a form that people (hopefully) won't notice
By that logic, so is using 16 bits and 44khz sampling rate.
16-bit 44 Khz almost perfectly reproduces human hearing. It wasn't a coincidence that the makers of CDs chose it. Anything above is studio-grade stuff to give extra headroom for editing (applying filters in studio editing can amplify noise which is unwanted, for just playing audio there are no advantages).
With standard Bluetooth codecs you get nowhere close to that and there is a significant noticeable delay for video content. Headphone jack is easy to make IP68. All rugged phones have it and all non-rugged ones have a USB port which is bigger and more irregular than a frigging circle.
> Wired headphones still have better sound quality.
High-grade studio quality wired headphones have better quality than wireless ones. But anywhere lower than the highest tiers, they're both in the same ballpark.
For the devices used by 999‰ of the people, the difference is unnoticeable.
> Don't break with software update.
Why would headphones break when you upgrade your phone? It sounds to me like your phone broke. And an audio jack can also stop working with a botched software update.
I've been using cellular phones since 2004. I've never used a headphone jack. Most people haven't either. Sure, some people would use it, and some people would use a DisplayPort connector if present (I would), but it's hard to justify putting one in every single phone when an adapter is so cheap.
Shipping a 3.5mm audio jack on every single phone in the world is more wasteful than just manufacturing an adapter for people who actually need it.
After years of a Fairbuds XL (never again!) and Bose QC for my Zoom sessions, I've ordered a Sony MDR-7506 because it does not need to be charged, and bluetooth doesn't need to be reconnected etc. Hurray for headphone jacks.
I'm generally a fan of wired-everything but headphones are the one thing that I love to have wireless. Not only is it not a tangle with the cord but I can go grab a glass of water without any interruption even still listening to a meeting while I do.
The biggest downside is worrying about the battery level. But they last so long on a single charge that it isn't even an issue if you forget to plug them in many days in a row and the battery charges fast even on a slow charger.
Mine don't last an 10 hour day :-(
Two yen: buy Sony phones before Xperia gets shutdown. Sony obsesses about sound quality to the extent that they try to develop specialized solder materials (!) for the DAC-Jack pathway.
Bonus: Sony's AOSP program also releases images, and even oddballs like Sailfish release images spec. for Sony devices.
I just took a look and the most recent Xperia looks to be 3x the (already high) cost of a Fairphone 6? I buy my phones outright and that is quite prohibitive.
I'm not sure if comparing Xperia 1 to Fairphone makes sense. Xperia 10 is probably the fairer comparison, but I don't think Sony is releasing them outside Japan :(
I've almost pulled the trigger on a Sony phone multiple times specifically because they are the last non-camera-cutout, headphone jack phone on the market. Unfortunately, they don't work on Google Fi, and I don't (quite) care enough to switch my carrier for it....but I'm really close.
I would pay $2000 without a second of hesitation, if that's what it took, for an Android phone with
* headphone jack
* usbc port
* removable, large battery
* under 5 inch screen (with phone body size to match)
* dual sim
* sd card slot
* cameras just good enough to take pictures of license plates on illegally parked cars
* 5g antenna
I don't care if it needs to be hella thick to accomplish this, I don't care if the screen is OLED or has a >60hz refresh rate, I don't care about telescopic cameras or faceid or anything like that. I just want a small fat phone that I can plug my IEMs into and use as a wifi tether for my laptop without the battery dying in a couple hours.
Samsung Galaxy Xcover 4s
Olympia Neo Mini
Slightly larger:
Samsung Galaxy Xcover 5
Cyrus CM17 XA
None with 5G though.
> None with 5G though
Exactly. I should have added "up to date security patches, and functioning google and banking apps" to my list as well to cover my bases on why I can't just use an old phone with a custom ROM. Otherwise I'd just use the Galaxy S3 for the rest of my life.
I use my USB-C port to listen to my wired headphones all the time, no problem. Phone jack is now redundant now that USB-C can output audio
A proper headphone jack will always and forever be superior to needing a dongle.
Unfortunately there are major, intentional, compatibility problems with USB audio.
During early COVID, USB audio worked perfectly, but an Android update disabled, supposedly for "security" reasons.
That USB-C jack is not nearly as strong and robust as a proper headphone jack.
I do not think I have owned a single device where the headphone jack was the first item to have issues or fail. Even unused debris would trigger switches changing sound sources. I am happy to be done with wired headphones being yanked off my head.
And wired headphones have less latency if you want to play music (although touch screens usually have huge latency).
> The removal of the phone jack is so obviously planned obsolescence
I'll keep repeating it; I worked in a hardware company (and one with very toxic upper management) and really, I don't buy the "planned obsolescence" for most products.
Employees are usually not villains (I know, it happens, as proven by Meta recently where engineers essentially built a malware into Meta's apps, and as proven by printers - if that's still the case, I don't own one). Most of the time they are not.
What happens most of the time is more likely "premature obsolescence": the product could have been engineered to last for 10 years, but it would have taken more development time and it would have cost more, so the company chose not to invest there. Regulations enforce a warranty period, so the company optimises around that. But it's not the same as planned obsolescence.
The result is the same: we need regulations that set the framework into which companies optimise. But the intention is different.
Also specifically for the jack, the reality is that nobody cares. You want a phone with a jack? Congrats, you're part of a small minority (don't worry, I am, too). How does it feel? :-)
My headphone cables (usually Sennheiser CX 300 II In-ear) would break consistently within about 2 years. Airpods have been going strong for much longer than that. I use my AirPods with my iPads, my Linux Laptop, my Kids' Android tablet.
Expensive yes, but planned obsolescence? Meh.. I also got an (Apple branded even) USB-C to headphone jack plug which also work flawlessly, so I really don't see the issue here.
Nothing stops you from using wired headphones with USB-C.
I had to settle for a phone with no headphone jack. I thought it can't be that bad, I got a usbc adapter. It's a strictly worse experience:
- It disconnects easily
- It's much more uncomfortable to keep in the pocket with it plugged on, since it's longer
- I feel like I'm stressing the usbc port much more
- I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)
- If I don't have the adapter on me, I can't plug my phone in some music system that doesn't have bt. This has bit me in the ass twice already in four months.
- The adapter already seems to be breaking down (I didn't get the cheapest one available) and sending weird inputs to the phone which pauses the music or causes the assistant to tell me the time
So yeah, nothing's stopping me, but my experience is worse now for the sole reason that Apple decided they wanted to sell Bluetooth headphones
> I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)
Well, that's better than things used to be...
I had a Zen Stone that I used to play music in the car by plugging a cassette tape adapter into the audio jack.
For convenience, I bought a cigarette lighter adapter to power it, so that I wouldn't have to take it out of my car when it needed charging.
Except it turned out not to be able to play audio while charging. Not because it charged through the audio jack. It charged through a USB port. You just weren't allowed to do both at once.
I also had a Zen Phone (if that's what you meant) and it definitely played audio while charging.
All the phones that I have had with a audio jack would charge and play audio without any issues, ranging from a lot of different Samsung Galaxy to Wiko phones.
> I also had a Zen Phone (if that's what you meant)
No, that's not what I meant. I said Zen Stone. Turns out, I meant Zen Stone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Zen#ZEN_Stone/Stone_P...
>Wired headphones still have better sound quality
I don't know about that, I still get analog noise all the time. Maybe it's just due to using a cheap DAC?
They also sell wireless earbuds and headphones with replaceable batteries.
I think the solution is to ship wireless earphones with a usb-c capability, and ship smartphones with multiple usb ports.
A more accurate statement would have been "you can get better sound quality out of wired headphones at every price point". But you definitely aren't guaranteed to get better quality.
However much money you are willing to spend on headphones, with a tiny bit of research, you will find a wired option with dramatically better quality.
But also, the very low end of wired headphones are truly, truly abysmal, but getting wireless at those price-points is just literally impossible.
$20 is enough to get pretty decent sound quality (better than my ~$100 Samsung Galaxy Buds)
Still no headphone jack in fairphone 6? Damn, I was almost sure it will by my next phone :(
I'm curious. Why is this such an important thing for you? I seems like a usbc to 3.5mm jack would solve most of the issue.
I've been very happy with my Fairphone 4 that I've had for 4 years now running CalyxOS.
I could probably use it for a few more years but I may upgrade to the 6 if the speakers/microphone are better (and to support the company).
> I could probably use it for a few more years but I may upgrade to the 6 if the speakers/microphone are better
I don't get this. Isn't the whole concept of the company modular parts? Shouldn't you be able to put the better speakers in your existing phone?
It's not modular, and each fairphone is not compatible with the previous one. FP3 had an update camera if I remember well but it was the exception.
Yes, people often get that wrong, it's not modular or upgradable, it's repairable, which is already great.
IMO we are far past the point when we should have decided smartphone hardware is good enough, and stop having people upgrade over and over. But I guess capitalism needs to be fed and everything is made to make sure that never happens (including making sure everyone thinks we do need better hardware)
> it's not modular or upgradable, it's repairable, which is already great.
Well, I was going to observe that I broke my phone recently for the first time out of more than 10 years of having a smartphone.
But I remembered that while I didn't break it, my Nexus 5 spontaneously broke and couldn't be fixed, causing me to lose about a year of chat history that I would like to have back.
That said, if the parts are replaceable, there is no good reason to prevent you from replacing them with upgrades. That is by far the highest-value use of the ability to replace parts.
Since 2019, I replaced once the battery of my FP3.
I often see people with broken screens. USB ports can get damaged by too many plug cycles etc. None of these reason should justify buying a new phone, but in practice if replacing the part is not relatively cheap and straightforward, this is what happens.
And yes upgrade can be cool too but much harder and probably unrealistic for a small company like this one. Look at how well it works for PC, after 10 years you have to still change everything to upgrade anything (your new CPU socket forces you to change the mother board, and the CPU fan, then your old ram is not compatible, etc and at the end you keep the case and maybe the PSU. And this is on a relatively open ecosystem compared to the mobile world with their SoC/SoM, high space constraints and a single supported kernel etc...)
> None of these reason should justify buying a new phone, but in practice if replacing the part is not relatively cheap and straightforward, this is what happens.
The reason that is what happens is that you can't upgrade the old phone. But you have to upgrade the phone anyway, so you take advantage of the only way to do that, buying a new phone.
I wasn't upset when I smashed my phone screen recently, because that phone already needed to be replaced for other reasons.
+1 for headphone jack. At least they got the MicroSD correct!
I've replaced the USB-C port on a few Samsung devices as well, recently a Note 10 Lite (my second, I loved that phone enough to replace it with the same model). It was trivial, even opening the back case was not too difficult. And the battery was right there had I wanted to replace it as well.
These things are not as difficult as tech writers make them out to be.
I will not buy another phone without a headphone jack.
Either I will have to buy Xperias or stock up on old Pixel 4 phones.
Not really a lost cause in general, there are a bunch of regular phones that have a headphone jack. But fairphone seems unwilling to listen to all the feedback they are getting telling them this is a blocker, so yes, in that way it is a lost cause there.
A shame really.
Security patch once every 3months... I regret buying a FP4.
Yeah, last patch is from 5th March.
I regret buying FP4 too. Unfortunately the hardware is very sturdy and does not break justifying buying a different one. But the software feels half ready in a few critical parts (GPS and phone/sms in my case) and the support is non existent (very bad) for my two issues I had (still have).
I am still waiting for Fairphone and Graphene OS collaboration. This is match made in heaven.
Any Fairphone/GrapheneOS developer reading this? Just do it, document if something is not secure enough for you, but do it. Nothing to think about, you fit together like hand and a glove and any seconds thoughts are depriving the planet of THE PHONE!
Pick the cash we will throw at you and make second generation with the cpu GrapheneOS wants, that will make the /r/GrapheneOS members eyes shine, drooling and crying of joy at the same time. +throw them in a few hardware switches for camera, mic, connectivity,... disabling. No need to wait to be perfect in first iteration (and due to that craziness and perfectionism will never happen), to gain the possibility to be perfect in second or third.
I would love so much to stop buying Google Pixel phones just to install Graphene OS and protect myself from Google and its ecosystem, it seems so counterproductive.
Fairphones consistently doesn't support a quarter of what graphene os requires. See their FAQ:
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Unless Fairphone becomes significantly better in their security and update policy and integrate a whole lot of new features it's not gonna happen.
>Fairphones consistently doesn't support a quarter of what graphene os requires
I expect it's not just a matter of feature support: Fairphone in general seems rather horrible on security, doing things like using test keys for production signatures [1].
[1]: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro...
To be fair that's from 2022, I thought they fixed those issues on newer devices.
This is the whole point, they should stop nitpicking and start to do it (GrapheneOS side), even if it is not going to be THE most secure phone, there is enough of features that are far more useful then just security (like privacy). I don't mind if they make it payable. With money they will get (I suspect there will be quite a bit less pixels sold) they can make a new phone that will have all the bells and whistles GrapheneOS wants and on the other side, Fairphone developers will figure out it is $$$ worthy to do it.
GrapheneOS has bunch of requirements that are expensive while Fairphone has zero chance to figure out, if investing would make any economical sense, while their normal users dont really care about that security but might regarding privacy. This is a stale-mate position.
Found info about GrapheneOS installations, 250k users(1). Lets say 25% are on old pixels. This is 60k sold pixels.
All Fairphones sold by 2022 were 400k(2).
1. 2024, https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12281-how-many-grapheneos-u...
> This is the whole point, they should stop nitpicking and start to do it (GrapheneOS side), even if it is not going to be THE most secure phone, there is enough of features that are far more useful then just security (like privacy). I don't mind if they make it payable.
This feels super entitled to me. GrapheneOS Devs have a mission and they get to make that. You get it for free and if you like it you can give them money. If they don't support the hardware you like you are free to fork it and get it to run yourself.
And if security isn't something you care about but privacy is and you feel like there's a difference here you can still install /e/os or lineageos and similar on the fairphone.
Sure they have a mission. But sometimes mission can be done by taking 1 step back to later make 2 steps forward in fast pace.
At the end all profit. While in current state, the culprit, Google profits.
And please keep fallacies like "do it yourself" for yourself, I am talking about collaboration, feel free to open another thread on top level about forks.
Same goes for /e/ ... they just dont compare.
GrapheneOS has two use-cases that are they excelling with, security and privacy.
While security is not really my threat model (some rubber-hose cryptography aka large wrench, solves this issue for any attacker), privacy violations are everyones issue. Even if they dont care.
[flagged]
This went far enough. I have stated my thoughts, if the view doesn't change, GrapheneOS will continue to sell Pixels (lol, SAMSUNGS! Still rather buy them than Pixel) and I will be forced to buy them.
>Please consider the level of retardation this comment requires, it's impressive.
Yes, thats why I have stopped discussing with you and I dont know why I even started - futileness discussing with GrapheneOS evangelists is well known over the internet.
> Please consider the level of retardation this comment requires, it's impressive.
This is not how we have civilized discussions. To say this just because you disagree with someone about the security of an OS...
Hope the mods see this.
You're conveniently ignoring everything that came before that, where they deconstructed why the idea does not make sense.
[flagged]
> Has nothing to do with rudeness. And "deconstruction" was rather narrow mindedness, that is locking GrapheneOS to corporation made phones.
Corporation made phones as opposed to organically grown phones?
Again, no one is locking down GrapheneOS you can literally download the source and try to get it to run on any device you like. You just want someone else to do the work for you because you lack the skills and it's not available for the particular phone you want.
> Again, this is a fallacy.
Okay, maybe you are not a native speaker, so you might mean a different thing with fallacy.
Here's the dictionary definition of fallacy
> an idea that a lot of people think is true but is in fact false [0] > a false belief [0]
My comment was
> Again, no one is locking down GrapheneOS you can literally download the source and try to get it to run on any device you like. You just want someone else to do the work for you because you lack the skills and it's not available for the particular phone you want.
Here is the link to the GrapheneOS Source: https://grapheneos.org/source
Here's the GrapheneOS FAQ regarding other Devices [1]
> Many other devices are supported by GrapheneOS at a source level, and it can be built for them without modifications to the existing GrapheneOS source tree. Device support repositories for the Android Open Source Project can simply be dropped into the source tree, with at most minor modifications within them to support GrapheneOS. In most cases, substantial work beyond that will be needed to bring the support up to the same standards. For most devices, the hardware and firmware will prevent providing a reasonably secure device, regardless of the work put into device support.
[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/fall... [1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Where's the fallacy?
---
Now after editing he makes this argument instead:
> And while I am searching for a way for GrapheneOS to grow, you are searching for a way to keep it limited to corporation made phones. And it is corporations that have the most interest to make it insecure trough hardware, SOC is just one day to do it. So you are failing even on security perspective.
There are no not-corporation made phones on this planet. Every conceivable part of a phone is made by a corporations from parts extracted from this planet by corporations, shipped and assembled by corporations. Do you think that the Fairphone, made by the fairphone corporation is not made by a corporation? From There Wikipage [2]
> Fairphone B.V. > Company type Privately held company
> And it is corporations that have the most interest to make it insecure trough hardware, SOC is just one day to do it. So you are failing even on security perspective.
So google, spending literally billions [3] on cybersecurity with a direct interest and industry leading track record in keeping pixel devices secure has an interest to make it insecure?
I stand by judgment: The required retardation for this kind of argument is amazing.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairphone [3] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/why-were-comm...
---
So, i'm dealing with a first grade tech student that learned some cybersecurity words. Here's how you can prove me wrong, answer the following simple questions:
1. Why should the GrapheneOS Developers do the work you want them to do? They seem uninterested and I don't see you paying them the 100s of thousands of dollars to hire someone to do the work for them.
2. Name a Phone that's not made by a corporation.
[flagged]
Okay, i have to admit you got me. 10/10 Ragebait until that last edit I was thinking you were serious, but you cannot be. Thank you gave me a good laugh and I haven't been this triggered in a while. Before he edit's let me copy his last edit for posterity, it's amazing.
---
> 1. Why should the GrapheneOS Developers do the work you want them to do? They seem uninterested and I don't see you paying them the 100s of thousands of dollars to hire someone to do the work for them.
They dont do any work regarding security that would matter. As hardly anyone is using GrapheneOS. Most people use it for privacy, I don't know a one single person that would use it for security, I have bootloader unlocked as I don't care, its not something that would be a reasonable threat to me, while government actors are not something, I can defend against as they will break my legs and I will beg them to allow me to enter pin.
> 2. Name a Phone that's not made by a corporation.
So they can immediately stop doing it. It is futile, insecure and worthless even from perspective of privacy unless they give people a chance to use it. And currently they dont with excuse of security.
---
Something about gay fish.
[flagged]
>Please consider the level of <slur> this comment requires, it's impressive.
It'd be nice if you blatantly didn't break HN rules.
[flagged]
An OS which focuses on security and privacy with slightly imperfect hardware is much better than an OS which focuses on spyware and tracking from an adtech company on the same hardware.
I recently suggested that GrapheneOS support devices with average security on Mastodon. Much like yourself, I think "moderately okay security" is better than "just use Google's spyware infested OS".
The GrapheneOS folks replied in disagreement, insisting that this is a terrible idea because security would be less than perfect. They then started making up stories about me and throwing around unfounded accusations. I don't trust them in the slightest, and strongly recommend staying away from them.
> I recently suggested that GrapheneOS support devices with average security on Mastodon. Much like yourself, I think "moderately okay security" is better than "just use Google's spyware infested OS".
For most use cases, like mine, I agree. But I understand GrapheneOS disagreeing with that statement. "average security" is not their goal, nor the use case they are working for. GrapheneOS' focus is security. They just happened to make the best AOSP version there is out there. So lots of us wish they better support our use cases disregarding the use case they work for. But they obviously don't want to spend resources on it, and I'd assume they wouldn't even accept extra resources to do those things, as it would dilute their "most secure mobile OS" brand by having less secure versions of it.
For those of us who don't need the best security, another fork of AOSP that incorporates many of the features GOS has, like sandboxed Google Play and contact and storage scopes would do. But we can't expect GOS to be the one doing that.
I'm the community manager for GrapheneOS. That isn't what happened, and it is very weird to not only see that on Mastodon, but also that you're going around saying it in other places, too.
People involved with the project you're working on have a history of making attacks on GrapheneOS, but what I mostly want to focus on is your suggestion because my goal here isn't to get in a back-and-forth with you or convince you, but rather provide context for others reading this.
Our hardware requirements are not arbitrary. They are what we need in order to be able to provide usable security to people who depend on it. There's no "average security" for devices that are missing patches for known vulnerabilities for months. That's a non-starter, not something imperfect that an OEM can work on improving. Multiple OEMs have reached out to us and actually want to do the work of improving their devices so that we can use them to provide security for people. It's very weird for people to be fixated on this idea that GrapheneOS should instead be supporting devices which can't actually provide what the OS is known for.
Without a secure element, a 6 digit PIN is no longer secure and can be bruteforced. What average person is using a long diceware passphrase to unlock their phone? Our device requirements are reasonable, and can be found at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. Every time people ask us to support another device, we have to point to that explain that we cannot, because to date, no other devices meet them, and those who do purposefully go out of their way to cripple third-party OS support (Samsung chief among them). Then, we ask people which of our requirements we should drop in order to support that other device, and why people think that requirement is unreasonable. To date, we have received no convincing reply to that.
You think we're chasing "perfection" but Pixels are just the best that exists right now and is extremely far from perfect. Our requirements aren't a wishlist, they're based on what is possible and reasonable today, not in the future.
> Without a secure element, a 6 digit PIN is no longer secure and can be bruteforced.
Thanks for providing an actual example which we can use as a realistic reference.
Right now such device can run OSs which ship first party spyware. If GrapheneOS supported those devices, they’d be usable with an OS without that spyware, which is a net improvement. The security issue of “a PIN can be brute-forced” exists regardless of OS.
It has always been the goal of the project to provide security and privacy features while maintaining usability. People are expected to acquire a device to use GrapheneOS rather than us supporting as many devices as possible where we cannot offer the same protections.
We're hoping to have a non-Pixel device that actually meets the projects requirements in the near future, potentially. Our requirements aren't exotic and OEMs are confirming that they're well within their capabilities. We'll focus on working with OEMs interested in shipping secure devices in order to expand our offerings, which should offer more choices for potential users as well.
That's like suggesting to Formula 1 World Champion to accept not being at the pinnacle of excellence and despite their talent to voluntarily move to a mid tier team because having a moderately okay car is better than not being in the sport. Same for cycling, tell last years Tour de France winner to stop using that light high end carbon fibre bike and just use that heavy 1960s steel bike instead, they both have wheels and get you from the start to the finish after all. Don't aspire to be more than average or the best. Just settle.
> They then started making up stories about me and throwing around unfounded accusations.
That sounds oddly similar with Louis Rossmann's video when in disagreement with some (the?) project owner.
Hi there, I'm the community manager for the GrapheneOS project. To you, and perhaps others seeing your comment, I would just like to ask that if people are going to watch the video, they should watch it in context, and also read the material that Louis is linking to in the video description, as I'm getting the sense that he's relying on people to not read them.
Our perspective is that Louis was upset with Daniel because we wouldn't do content with him, which resulted in a lot of jabs in his videos preceding that one, along with him expressing support for a video and a creator who has created what is essentially a hitpiece video on the project and its founder.
The main context that seems to be missing is that a supporter of the creator of that hitpiece was raiding our community rooms not longer before Louis' video happened, which culminated in the GrapheneOS founder being swatted by that person 3 times in the span of a few days. Louis Rossmann expressing support (with his large following) for that creator lends credence to their claims and leads more people to attack us. That should hopefully explain why Daniel was upset at Louis (in private, which Louis decided to livestream and leak). If Louis really thinks Daniel is some mentally ill person, is broadcasting him like that really the compassionate thing to do? Even in his version of events, this seems cruel.
Louis is a kiwifarms user, a website dedicated to harassing people (including Daniel). Daniel's thread what started by a self-admitted fan of Louis, shortly after his video, so it has directly led to a bunch more hatred. You can find all of that out yourself.
So for you, and those reading this comment after the fact, I'd encourage you to do your own research, and also to not take what a YouTuber says at face value just because they said it.
What about alternatives like CalyxOS or /e/OS?
GrapheneOS is aiming at the best possible security, so they won't compromise. CalyxOS and /e/OS run on FairPhones (though it seems like /e/OS is more into privacy and less into security).
There is no alternative. /e/ and others dont even come close.
Security is one thing, the privacy they(GrapheneOS) provide is another. You can have privacy without every detail of security they require. While they refuse to provide privacy without security.
Thats why I buy Pixels and feel more and more dirty each time I do it.
Had sailfish in between but that is another set of problems, Jolla failing to realize, they need to have strong compatibility Android layer (to use everyday stuff like bluetooth - in my case for paying public transport) until there is enough software for Sailfish. In any case, Sailfish is my FAR prefered option, over GrapheneOS. But unfortunately the spin of the world and my wishes are not aligned.
> There is no alternative. /e/ and others dont even come close.
Can you elaborate on that? Say I install LineageOS without Google Services and without microG, would you say it's bad in terms of privacy?
Or are you saying that microG is the issue?
In your given scenario (no Google Services, no microG), compatibility is the issue.
I dont use Android because I like it. I use it because I am forced to use it, without it I cant connect to corporate VPN, cant even take public transport (actually I can use NFC card and take a lot of care never to lose money on it, to drive to first place where I can charge it). Banking software. Update firmware for my headset.
Then there come the fishy practices of applications, full of advertising kits stealing information, where HelloWorld app is 90MB apk, as it has Facebook SDK included. You can partially protect yourself with https://netguard.me/, but even I can avoid it (wont explain how, typical android developer doesnt know much beyond java and I dont want to shoot myself in a foot helping them).
Respectfully, you did not really give an answer to my question, you elaborated on the complaining.
What is it that makes GrapheneOS "good enough" (Would you say "perfect"? You seem to want "perfect") in terms of privacy, and /e/OS / CalyxOS / LineageOS unbearable?
That part is simple, install it and check the settings.
I use /e/OS without the Google Play Services. I don't use any app from the FAANGs, and /e/OS uses a custom location service and blocks thousands of trackers.
Surely that's better than "nothing", isn't it?
GrapheneOS is more secure, but you're talking privacy here. With GrapheneOS I could run the Play Store or Google Maps in a sandbox, but it would probably not be better than not running them at all, would it?
Good for you, I was also doing it when I was a kid. Actually was even cooking roms and removing everything that I didn't need.
Then I got my first banking app and was decompiling it on each new version, removing checks for root, "compatibility" and security checks, and compiling it back. Then another app came, this time for public transport, and I was reversing two apps, once every 2-3 months. Became quite efficient with it.
Then I deliberately bought pixel for GrapheneOS, installed it and never looked back.
As I have already mentioned: I am not using Android because I like it or I would want it. Sailfish has everything, I will ever need. For myself.
But not for living in this world.
Either you can't stay on-topic, or you don't actually know what ROMs like /e/OS or CalyxOS are. They don't require any work: you can buy a phone running one of them and use it just like you use a normal Android. If anything, it's probably closer to Stock ROMs than GrapheneOS is.
I am not interested in your complaints, really. I was interested in your take about the privacy issues on other custom ROMs, but it really feels like you don't know. And that's okay.
Sure you are not interested in my complaints and I am not interested in arguing with another fanboy (there is wealth of knowledge on the internet and I am sure you are able to google a bit - but then there is no arguing with me, so no point in doing that, right?), had one IlikeKitties enough for a year. If you are interested, install GrapheneOS and compare it, and in worse case, argue with yourself.
> You can partially protect yourself with https://netguard.me/
Looks good. Another alternative would be TrackerControl.
I use a Oneplus 9 pro with Iodé OS (based on LineageOS). It comes with Aurora store and MicroG pre-installed. It works very good and I'm very happy with. It is regularly synced with security updates from LineageOS.
I, for one, would buy one.
Make it small and I would buy 3.
Me 3.
It looks like they really won't though: [0]
It's such a shame, vision-wise the GrapheneOS crew must be much closer to the FairPhone team than they are to Google and Samsung, one would guess... But the GrapheneOS people find security tech (such as secure enclaves) and update cycle very important. After the bad Pixel news, they find Samsung to be the best fit: [1]
I would (as many here) also hope that they could somehow make the FairPhone crew step up in their security practices, help them do it. They would be the golden combo, except perhaps for things like camera quality and raw speed/AI chips. And possible the niche is just to small to be profitable.
But a man can dream... I'd pay 1.5 to 2x normal price for a FairPhone/GrapheneOS combi, it would align with my values in almost all dimensions. And then I'd buy a Pebble and just be happy.
I really don't know what to do when my iPhone 12 mini dies. I do like the iPhone, but I also liked my OnePlus3 with LineageOS. I was originally planning on a Pixel/GrapheneOS after this phone, but that dream has shatter I think...
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114721751616786103
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114721967328643999
> It's such a shame, vision-wise the GrapheneOS crew must be much closer to the FairPhone team than they are to Google and Samsung one would guess... But the GrapheneOS people find security tech such as secure enclaves etc very important.
I seriously doubt that given fairphones track record in regards to updates and security. GrapheneOS Devs value timely updates and integration of security tech. Fairphone does neither.
FairPhone has such limited resources and needs to extract money from such a small niche, that they have hard choices to make. And it's sustainability above all.
But if another party would help with the security aspects, that might change the equation for them.
FairPhone may not be the most attractive partner security-wise but I think that the FairPhone team is much, much less likely to rug pull them like Google did (and Samsung may). Which has got to be worth something.
[dead]
Why phones are so huge nowadays? How are you people carrying them? Oh how I wish for a compact sized phone, something like iPhone 13 mini, but with USB-C connector. And those camera bumps, don't get me started on those. If you cannot fit camera into phone, why not make whole device a bit thicker.
People are not buying small phones.
If you want a small phone, the best thing are flip-phones, there is tons of them now.
These are not smartphones. You cannot do anything with them except phone, SMS, some alarms and make pictures with very crappy quality. So these are effectively just phones, like 20 years ago. They are not extensible by any app, just what the manufacturer adds for factory provided programs.
I would be small (lightweight) phones. I cannot bare these 180–220g devices. If I want something heavy I buy a tablet.
No? Galaxy Z Flip is a smartphone. Razr is a smartphone.
> People are not buying small phones
How can one buy what is not being manufactured?
The few small-ish phones that have existed have mostly been cheap and underpowered.
> The few small-ish phones that have existed have mostly been cheap and underpowered.
I would say that for last years it was quite the opposite… Asus Zenfone was a bit smaller, and few others… all of them being on the more pricey range. I do not remember anything <€500 worth buying…
I remember having few years ago phone from "Note" series… and yet - it was smaller than "normal" nowadays.
I am still angry at Apple for dropping the mini line. I know it wasn’t popular, but if there’s anyone that can afford having a line that “only” sells a few hundred thousand units it’s Apple. I guess that’s what happens when the company is run by a bean counter :(
You don’t even have to make it thicker.
My Samsung A40 is less than 8mm thick. It has a FullHD display, 440dpi sharpness, weighs only 140g and is less than 145mm in length. The cameras support 16Mpx back and 25MPx front (not that it’s needed much). The quality is not the best, but very suitable.
It has support for fingerprint, microsd, 3.5mm jack – everything necessary. (Only thing missing is esim, but that can be added by an adapter.)
So it IS possible. The manufacturers just don’t WANT.
Agreed. I'm still hanging onto my 1st gen iPhone SE, there's been no worthy replacements.
The market has decided the benefit of a bigger battery and screen outweighs bigger size.
The market? The manufacturers or the people?
Phones that were biggest size/weight only six or seven years ago are now not even available anymore. Why? I cannot imagine that all(!) people want phones that now weigh at least 180g (most even 200+g) and have huge displays.
Do people need to play games all the time? I don’t. I just want a phone to support me with some helpful apps like train/bus timetables, play music, do a quick internet search, make a picture, do alarms and notify about things. Nothing fancy, and nothing where a really need a 7" display nor a 5Ah battery.
When my current phone (Samsung A40) will die someday, I will be very sad as there is nothing today even remotely comparable to the compactness and usefulness of this device.
>The market? The manufacturers or the people?
The latter, because AFAIK iPhone 12/13 minis sold rather poorly, and apple discontinued them.
I love concept but the only thing that's keeping me from buying it is that it's too big. They don't make small phones anymore:( the last perfect model i had a chanc3 to have was huawei p10- a perfect 5.1 display
I feel you. A repairable phone that's 5 inches would be so perfect. I miss my the Xperia X Compact so bad, I loved that phone, I had Lineage OS on it and it was great. It wasn't easy to repair though. Now I've got a Jelly Star, and it's pretty much the same problems, plus no updates in a while.
Yeah im still rocking ip13 mini, the last true flagship small phone. I was having such high hope for the 16e to be successor of 13 mini. But oh boy...
unihertz makes small phones!
Indeed. But sadly, they don't update them. The Unihertz Jelly Star is stuck on the June 2023 (yes... 2 years ago!) Android security update.
Yeah not ideal… then again… samsung actually pushed an update with an overlay that shows ads on some old models. I had one I used to show the forecast, attached to a wall. I had to reset and to factory and forbid all updates or ads would appear on top of my app.
Dreams:
>Framework-like upgradability / repairability / modularity
>Support for GrapheneOS
>Sold in USA
GrapheneOS support for Fairphone is unlikely to ever happen. Their hardware is too insecure to satisfy GOS's reasonable requirements [1] and have stated that they aren't interested in improving it [2]. Software is also lacking and they've partnered with Murena [3], who has been slinging shit at GOS [4].
On a more positive note, due to the AOSP/Pixel drama there now is a real possibility a different major OEM will be supported: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114711328082841462
[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
[2] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114733211017800480
[4] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114235396540176085
I think that secure elements pose a greater disadvantage to the consumer due to vendor lockdown than the advantages in physical security make up for.
> On a more positive note, due to the AOSP/Pixel drama there now is a real possibility a different major OEM will be supported
I really do not know which other major OEM other than exynos-based samsung that comes near GOS' checklist, but here I am hoping if he is talking about Nothing phone.
That's excellent news that they're partnering with an OEM to make something. Here's hoping it's someone like Framework that has sustainability in mind as well.
Why not Framework themselves? By now, they have brand recognition to certain extent and a ready customer base - I think a Framework phone with choices of GrapheneOS or LineageOS or standard Googleized option could be a very compelling product.
That is if they can sort out their availability gaps.
Massive cost.
Their phones are sold in the USA through Murena. I've bought a fairphone 4 through them. It was preloaded with eOS but I loaded calyxOS on it, which is similar to GrapheneOS.
https://murena.com/products/smartphones/
It also supports a lot of linux distributions, including UBPorts and postmarketOS.
I wish that they would just stick with one form factor and do the "framework computer" approach though.
Still no headphone jack makes this a nonstarter, lame.
How often are you listening to music on your phone while it's charging? (because otherwise you can always just attach an adapter onto your headphones to make it USB-C). Seems like a weird hang up.
So when I reach the trailhead and realize that my dongle is back at home, I can still use my headphones to listen to a podcast as I hike.
Or maybe I'm out in public with others and want them to listen to something but my dongle is at home so I now need to play audio over the speakers in a public setting.
It comes down to having choice and not being funnelled into overpriced wireless earbuds. Which Fairphone began selling with the release of the Fairphone 4, their first phone without the jack.
What else are you plugging your headphones into? Again, the pitch here is leaving the dongle basically permanently attached to the headphones, effectively turning them into a set of usb-c wired headphones. I was hesitant about abandoning the headphone jack, too, until I realized that the higher-end phones I'd effectively locked myself out of charge in 10% of the time.
> What else are you plugging your headphones into?
My Macbook, my work laptop, my e-piano, my Note9, my BTR7, ...
Don't get me wrong, I understand far too well why no new flagship offers the jack anymore and wireless/USB-C is truly amazingly convenient for the vast majority of users, even audio quality wise, but sadly we are still very far from either being universal, either because the standard is still 1/8 or 1/4 inch or latency is key (in the case of instruments both). Also, USB-C ports are finite so using the small 3.5mm port is often preferable. So just keeping the dongle plugged in, sadly not an option. Apple Dongle DACs are easily lost too, ask me how I know.
Am very far removed from the mainstream customer and accept that in any case, my dream phone would likely bankrupt whoever was dumb enough to bankroll it, so I'll just deal with the compromise.
Seems like there is a market for wired headphones that have built-in split 3.5 and usb-c ends.
Swap the dongle for a pd friendly y cable.
First, that's almost all the time for me because my primary use case for listening to music is in the car. Second, adapters are not a good solution because they can easily be lost.
I use a Bluetooth audio receiver in my car. It has a Jack output that you can plug into your car's amp. You connect your phone to it through Bluetooth, and then you can play music in your car. It's very convenient, because your phone automatically connects when you turn it on, and you don't have to mess with cables. They're also pretty cheap.
You shouldn't have earphones on when driving.
Plug the phone into the car, listen through the car's audio system.
My phone is not the only device I use my ear buds with. Having to contantly attach and remove a usb-c adapter would be a complete pain in the ass. It's not just a matter of plugging it in — which would already be bad enough. I'd also need somewhere to store it, and I'd need to pack and unpack it each time. All that, or I could just buy a phone with a standard headphone port.
I felt like it was a weird hangup too until I realized that the lifespan of my phones has dropped to a third since that damn jack disappeared. Every single phone since then the point of failure has been a worn out / chewed up USB port.
Turns out, when you have to use the same port for all music streaming as well as charging, you end up using that port (in my case) something like 1000% more often, and it absolutely demolishes the phone.
Reading all the comments here about small phones and after recently receiving Google's info about my pixel 6As battery downgrade I took a look at Unihertz again and they apparently made a pretty good looking new 5G model "jelly max".
What do you guys think? Should we give it as go? Apparently it's funded via s Kickstarter...
They should switch to an SOC with mainline Linux support so you don't have to throw it out in three years.
They intentionally chose a Qualcomm QCM6490 for the FP5 instead of the rumoured Snapdragon because Qualcomm will offer longer support for that chipset (which is supposed to be used for IoT/industrial applications). We don't know what chip is in the new one yet, all we have is rumours, but I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled the same "Snapdragon but industrial" trick here.
Many mainline supported SOCs are unavailable to a company like Fairphone, which only produces a tiny amount of phones (less than 50k for the latest and greatest model). CPU manufacturers aren't going to waste time sending their top-end chips to some small company when Samsung can pay more per CPU and can take shipping containers full of them. That's also why F(x)tec phones come out with such outdated processors. Small companies will have to make do with whatever niche products are for sale in low quantities.
> They should switch to an SOC with mainline Linux support so you don't have to throw it out in three years.
Starting 20th of June this year (so 3 days ago) every new phone released in European Union will need to have software updates for at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market. This might be the first one released under new regulations. Also looking at Fairphone's history it looks like they really support their phones for a long time.
The problem is that it's not really up to Fairphone. Qualcomm and Google have to collaborate to provide the artifacts that Fairphone packages and signs for their devices. If for any reason they're unable or unwilling to do that there's nothing Fairphone can do. (and they have pretty consistently failed to do this after just a couple years. In the past it sounds like Fairphone has managed to hack around it with varying degrees of success.)
This is why using SOCs with poor support and closed drivers like this is a terrible idea.
It is for all the phones sold in EU. So Qualcomm has to provide them for all other providers too. They might release updates for Fairphone SoC as well.
I agree that the platform should be open. I played with PostmarketOS on one of my old devices and I really wish I could just install Linux on my other devices to make it really usable for the years to come.
I wonder if I am alone in thinking 5yr is way too short. It should be 10, if not 20 years.
This is software, not hardware. It is ridiculous to pretend it is ok for a phone to artificially stop being useful after just 5 years simply because the vendor won't give software support or even provide the necessary documentation, source code and keys for the community to do.
True, longer would be better. And if the platform was truly open, we could just treat phone like PCs. You can still install Linux on a 20 year old machine and it will work.
At least this is 5 years from "the end of placement on the market". So more realistically it should be around 7 years from release.
This.
Why can't we enforce that they mainline their hardware?
I agree with you, but still, 5y is better than nothing.
Which SoC should they switch to? Google's Pixel phones for Android 16's release just updated[0] their kernels to 6.1, which means the bleeding edge kernel version for Android phones is a release from December 2022. What Qualcomm SoCs are supported by this kernel, and how fast are they?
[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-linux-6-1-android-15-...
If the drivers were upstreamed it would be supported by the latest kernel.org kernel even before release.
AFAIK outside the Pinephone and Liberem 5 no hardware manufacturers explicitly target this and only 10 year+ old Qualcomm (other vendors such as Freescale tend to behave much better) SOCs have open source graphics drivers because the SOC vendors themselves often refuse to support their own hardware.
Google is able to do this because they build their own SOCs (probably because they got tired of being jerked around by Qualcomm) but still don't merge their stuff upstream (or at least they don't last I checked.)
Android 16 uses the latest LTS branch of Linux which is 6.12.
Fairphones have never been like that. Eg FP3 got 7 years of updates (extended from 5 promised at launch).
phone wishlist:
- user-replaceable battery
- 7+ years of security updates
- iPhone 13 mini size
- iPhone 13 mini camera quality
- plastic exterior
- headphone jack
- fairphone-style sustainability, repairability and part availability
- GrapheneOS compatibility
- fingerprint reader either on the back or on the power button
The size is not coming back. Anything else might or might not but the size is not and it's sad.
My only guess is - some kind of bespoke/niche phone maker with a good profit margin might make it "on demand". Of course not "one order from customer, one order to their factory" kinda setup - you get the drift. Some kind of blocking/reserving fee for priority shipping etc.
I had kind of hoped Nothing could be that OEM. But naah! Why would they! They literally are "yet another smaller OEM" in the crowd of other smaller OEMs with that gimmicky backlight as the only differentiator.
> My only guess is - some kind of bespoke/niche phone maker with a good profit margin might make it
Unihertz makes some very small android phones. I've never purchased one so I can't vouch for their quality.
They are about what you expect. Durable yes, long battery life yes, small screen, crappy camera, bad modem.
The one gigantic downside is that the software gets updated never. They launch with the bugs they launch with and those are the bugs you get forever. They have no interest in allowing any sort of custom rom support, so you get what you get.
I assumed that with “considerably raised cost” it would be implicit to have great phones and great security/OS updates/upgrades. Not merely a very costly small Android phone for the sake of it :-)
> - fingerprint reader either on the back or on the power button
How about both: do it like the LG G6 and put the power button on the back and make it the fingerprint reader :)
(unironically though it was probably my favorite fingerprint reader I've had so far)
Still wish I could actually buy one. I know the market for a phone like this is probably quite small in the USA, but I'd still love having the option.
Fingers are still crossed that the upcoming announcement mentions other countries.
I (US) have had a fairphone for a year. you can puchase one from murena and it works just fine.
I heard about Fairphones and really wanted one. I was disappointed to find that they have poor support in the US.
I think by 'poor' you mean 'none'? Last I knew if you bought one in the USA (from eBay, having a friend ship it to you, etc) you have zero support from Fairphone. There was actually an entry in a FAQ about this.
I can't blame them, I just wish it were different.
Yeah hard to justify a repairable phone when sourcing parts for repairs is going to be a major headache :/
Man, would I ever love to buy one of these. But last I checked, even if you import to the USA, you won't have most of the bands you need. :(
I use a Fairphone 5 and plan to stick with it for a while (after all, that's the point!) but this does look very nice.
I do wish they would sell them in the US and had more US band support. I got mine on a trip to Europe and it works here, but not always consistently. :) That's probably the one thing that'd get me to upgrade and repurpose this one with PostmarketOS.
Really wish they’d make a 5,5” version of this. Desperately holding on to my 13 mini.
Always interested in new Fairphone releases! I cannot justify a new phone while my Samsung S10 is still alive and kicking but I do think a bit about what I will replace it with when it finally dies. I am very much drawn to the Fairphone, but the price to quality ratio is quite high compared to the mainstream flagship phones (of course, I understand why). And when the company is young it is hard to know how credible the repairability promise is. The other phone I lean towards is a second-hand Pixel (somewhere in the Pixel 7-9 range most likely).
Would be very interested to see how much of an improvement it is over the FP5. Fairphones seem to get negative reviews but I think that is due to people not really being able to look past the price-to-quality ratio compared to phones that don't care about ethics.
> Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
GPU: Adreno 810
- 895-1050
- 256 shaders
CPU cores: 8
- 1x2500 (Cortex-A720)
- 3x2400 (Cortex-A720)
- 4x1800 (Cortex-A520)
I don't see anythng more "sustainable" in this phone compared to mainstream ones. Making it a bit more modular or repairable does not make it "sustainable".
They have a post about some of the reasons that the 5 was sustainable. It's not just the repair and modular parts but the whole supply chain.
It' rarely gets talked about here as this is a mostly tech audience who focus on features, which are important, but Fairphone is more focused on the impact of the manufacture.
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/08/30/is-the-fairphone-5-t...
That article subtly shifts from "sustainable" to "most sustainable"... It can be so while not really being sustainable.
"Fair materials" means nothing.
"100% e-waste neutral" is the same as claiming that you are "100% carbon neutral" because you buy carbon "offsets". It's dubious.
There are real positives, though: "100% recycled tin solder paste, 80% recycled steel, 75% post-consumer recycled plastics in the battery frame"
> So, for every Fairphone 5 we make, we responsibly collect and recycle 212 grams of electronic waste. And a lot of that waste is taken from countries where e-waste recycling is not a reality yet.
It does not seem like they are buying offsets. Also why would Fair materials mean nothing?
They are claiming that they are recycling something to offset their phones... that's nice but it tells us very little.
"Fair materials" means nothing in itself and certainly nothing in relation to sustainability.
They have made extensive blog posts about their supply chain and material sourcing over the years.
And they're claiming to recycle e-waste proportionally to the weight of each sold phone, what more specifics would you want?
It's not "a bit more repairable": it makes it repairable for people who would not be able to repair a mainstream phone.
I have many friends who never repair their phone: as soon as something is broken they buy a new one, because the repair price is often very high. With FairPhone, you get 5 years of warranty and after that you can repair it yourself at a low price.
If some people can repair their FairPhone instead of throwing their mainstream phone away, then that's a win.
I had my local Apple store replace an iPhone battery for £69. If I Google "Fairphone 5 battery" it comes at about the same price (£45 - £65) just to get the part.
Of course, warranty won't cover aged battery or damage (which probably are 99% of repairs) in any case.
> I had my local Apple store replace an iPhone battery for £69
What about changing the screen? Or USB port? Or camera? Or speaker?
> "Fairphone 5 battery" it comes at about the same price (£45 - £65) just to get the part.
45 is still cheaper than 69, and you don't need more than "getting the part" because it's trivial to change it yourself, right?
My dream phone is a Fairphone running GrapheneOS
The GrapheneOS developers had this to say about Fairphone back in 2021:
“It's not possible for GrapheneOS to support @Fairphone devices because they're far from meeting even the most basic security requirements. They haven't come close and it doesn't appear to be a priority for them.“
I also would love a Fairphone-like device running GrapheneOS, but I don’t think Fairphone is going to be the company to deliver to GrapheneOS’s high standards.
I remember them saying that. I would've hoped Fairphone would up their hardware security standards since then.
From a couple days ago:
> It's not feasible for Fairphone to make a device meeting our requirements any time soon.
Curious who the OEM they are talking to is.
But will it support VoLTE with USA providers ?
The problem might be the replacement parts availability in the future. My 10 years old phone battery stopped working but it is impossible to find a new one and so otherwise perfectly working phone is unusable.
I think projects like this are really cool, and I think "oh cool, I should get this sustainable phone." But then I remember that there's a bajillion phones in perfectly acceptable condition in secondhand shops around the globe, and probably the most sustainable thing I can do is just only ever buy secondhand phones for the rest of my life. Honestly the globe could probably survive a couple years on secondhand phones alone if everyone stopped making new ones.
I bought FP4 three years ago and had a decent run with it until an update happened that made my phone unable to connect to my carrier (no calls or internet :( ). After a lot of back and forth with support they admitted that LTE on my country (Greece) was not officially supported ! They did refund me after that admission so I bear them no ill will. I hope they succeed in their mission and if their phone worked for me, I d still be using it.
I have to buy such a smart phone hardware: issue, I won't run android for sure, probably something based on a super custom linux. I will need open source and _LEAN_ drivers (including their SDK) with complete hardware programming manuals for at least the modem (the critical part, and the drivers on complex hardware is NEVER enough, not to mention the official list of known hardware bugs) and the remaining hardware blocks.
Lemme know when you get all that.
To be fair, I am more interested in a 4G/5G modem to connect some modular computer. A smart phone is an expensive one.
Do you know of a simple modern 4G/5G modem, USB? Only IPv4/IPv6 bridge, I guess you need USB CDC or something for that (NDIS is deprecated)?
Any tip?
This looks like the chip that was used in the Pinephone as well as the modem card in the machine I'm typing this on. It works well on Linux although sometimes it's not available after waking from suspend (I think that was fixed although I've gotten used to not expecting it to be so I haven't been checking it.)
It's pretty easy to dial the PPP (IP) connection with network manager + modem manager, doing it from scratch with expect scripts is awful, I got that to work once but haven't been able to do it again.
https://www.amazon.com/EXVIST-Dongle-EG25-G-M2M-optimized-Mo...
In theory you can actually make phone calls with it, I've enabled the usb AC device on mine and dialed out with it but haven't actually gotten the loopback set up to work. It's hard to tell if the issue is with Pulseaudio or something in the modem firmware or a regulatory issue or what.
SMS works OOTB with modem manager. MMS works if you're willing to hunt down the MMSD source and build it yourself.
Need a driver?
I think there are a few USB standards for IPv4/IPv6 bridges (CDC and more), namely, it should not require a specific driver.
No. It's just PPP over USB CDC. In theory you could even use it with the FreeDOS USB drivers and Windows 3.11's network drivers if you were willing to write the appropriate modem script.
I wonder if the 4G/5G PPP commands are well "standard". For instance, network scan, network selection, mode selection 4G/5G/auto, SMS, pin, etc. Or you have to pass some custom AT commands via PPP.
Is everything documented and public for this modem?
>Is everything documented and public for this modem?
LMAO I've found typos in the manufacturers documentation. It's actually terrible. It's one of those situations where so many people use it though you can usually find what you need on a wiki.
>I wonder if the 4G/5G PPP commands are well "standard".
Absolutely not but modem manager and network manager is pretty good at figuring a lot of it out these days.
2025, clean and complete hardware programming manual still an issue, even on medium complexity hardware.
Sad.
Buying a phone because us sustainable would be better served if you did something else in place of it. There is a huge trade off between sustainability and the usefulness
ahhh I wish GrapheneOS was supported on these!
CalyxOS support Fairphones. It is a better option anyway, also supports bootloader relocking etc.
Is the combination proof against pre-unlock attacks with Cellebrite?
(I would like the answer to be yes, and I would like the answer to be yes for many more phones and OS combos. I don't think it is.)
I don't know. It seems unclear to me which capabilities those attack devices have and which security measures would be required. The locked bootloader, short update interval and the security option to block unknown USB devices might protect against that, might not. I saw no statement in either direction from the project.
From a software engineering and security perspective the GrapheneOS team does better work.
In which ways is CalyxOS "better"?
This comparison is pretty damning: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Calyx is _not_ a hardened OS, and runs on devices with insecure hardware and firmware (like a Fairphone). Additionally, app compatibility suffers because they use microG instead of proper sandboxed Gapps, and also lacks many QoL features that guard against hostile apps (storage scopes, contact scopes, ...).
Why would you call the Fairphone an insecure device? It has long update support and can re-lock the bootloader, which is like the one criteria ROMs like that pick as the security feature. What is your attack scenario, what your security criteria here?
microG is not a drawback, it's a proper FOSS implementation, which I vastly prefer to running Gapps in a sandbox. App compatibility has been perfect for me.
The main criteria for it to be strictly better is that you do not give root to a dev that hallucinates enemies and then send their goons to attack them. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4To-F6W1NT0. It's nice that Graphene has a hardened kernel, that helps nothing if you can't trust the developer - different attack scenarios.
The requirements are detailed on the GrapheneOS website [0].
I think the main issue with FairPhones was lacking a secure element and not receiving (anywhere near) timely firmware updates.
Thanks for the vid. I've been down the rabbit hole now. Looks like he departed the project though?
Last I checked he announced his departure only to rescind that announcement later. For example in the discussion about the shutdown of the Mozilla location service he was active and spoke for the project, completely derailing the issue with versions of the accusations the video depicts as well, which was afterwards.
I am always a bit sorry when I have to bring this up, that is why I only mentioned it when prompted. Mental health is a sensitive topic and hammering the problem won't help him, but it is just so relevant when users rely on the security of their system, even pick Graphene because of heightened security needs.
It's a shame. He's clearly very talented. Mental health is no joke, you're right.
Micay did not fully leave the project [1]. AFAIK he is the only senior developer left, after their other senior developer was forcibly conscripted earlier this year [2].
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12565-is-gos-development-sl...
[2] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/21819-impact-of-ongoing-war...
The insecurity is freedom.
All my smartphones lasted 4+ years, except ironically the FP3 that only lasted 2 years. I really wanted to like it, but assembly quality was terrible, battery was falling on the floor all the time, and max volume for calls was almost unaudible, an apparently rare problem they have been unable to solve.
I hope they have improved since and wish them the best, but as sick of Apple I am, I am also too afraid to try FP again...
It makes sense that as the insane levels of innovation tail off and phones are becoming commodities again, this sort of thing will start happening.
The only missing thing would be the ability to swap motherboard like framework laptop when you need to upgrade in 5-7 years from now.
I will repeat again what I'm saying since they announced the Fairphone 4: being able to repair the phone is good, but what I really would like to see is for them to go the framework route and design a phone with a standardized form factor. It doesn't need to be crazy modular, I'd just like to be able to upgrade mainboard/camera/display/storage/battery independently, and I'd like to push product development around these components instead of coming up with yet another iteration of an ethical-but-full-of-compromises device every two years.
Promising 8 years of upgrades is only useful if your hardware is not sub-par. The Fairphone 3+ I bought was already "meh" when I bought it, after 3 years it felt sluggish. I wanted to upgrade parts of it, not a whole new device.
Your phone feels slow either because you are now used to faster devices or because the software used is becoming bloated. There is no reason a phone feels slower except for these two reasons (or maybe if thermal got worse over time but it should not). Personally I don’t care if a phone feels slower compared to other devices as long as it is not becoming slower because of crap software updates.
It is not just the CPU. The camera was sub-par, the display was just okay, storage capacity is always important if you are like me and don't want to be dependent on the cloud... all those things can be improved independently, and consumers would benefit if they could upgrade them whenever the price/performance/availability reached a satisfactory point.
It’s a funny place to be where the color of the power button is news, though not a headline.
When is it switching to compressed starchy architecture? Nothing more sustainable than something I can bury next to an anthill at EOL.
I'd love to buy one but I'm seeing they are reeeally slow at software upgrades
Honestly, with the current phone prices, cpu performances and software support, I've replaced my phones either because they became "too slow" (ie. the software got bloated) or because the battery died and the replacement cost was just not worth it anymore, especially due to labour cost of replacement.
In case of modular phones, i'd be very interested in stats of how many people buy a new replacement battery after a year or two (especially if it can be replaced with just using your nails or maybe a screwdriver, without heating stuff and losing waterproofness) compared to every other replacable component.
Add e-sim so I can use it as my all-around planet travel phone and I'm sold.
Pretty sure it has eSIM (at least my FP4 has it...)
At this point, having such a tiny screen I'm sure adds to the price.
Fairphone has yet to figure out how to deal with updates in a timely and stable matter and we are 5 phones in. And all their phones consistently had hardware issues of some kind or another.
I wish them good luck, their phones are the kind of device i'd like to buy but i'll do that after they have proven that they can actually deliver what they promise.
it reminds me old android phone that you can replace the battery back then
funny that we've come full circle
Any <>Phone or <>Fone is pretty much useless for someone like me if it requires me to being logged into the "whole device" with a Google A/c and the irony is without that almost anything important on my phone (banks, payment/transfer, stock/investments, WhatsApp, delivery, transport, Govt services) will JUST NOT WORK in most cases so it becomes a non starter.
Or Force Google to not track things out of certain apps and giving customers choice to not use those apps at all e.g Gmail, Google Maps etc (or use w/o logging in like you can do on iOS. A good way would be to letting OEMs decide the "Android Account" in Android OS instead of the mandatory Google Account.
Not only opening up of the play store (I am not sure how helpful that would be) but another crucial criminal hurdle here is Play Integrity API [0] and apps using it. By this Google made it apps choose between the notions of "be secured" or "actively decide to remain unsecured".
[0]: Call the Integrity API at important moments in your app to check that user actions and requests are coming from your unmodified app binary, installed by Google Play, running on a genuine Android device
----
Yes, Apple does it too but they have proven to not yet started tracking and god as much as I hate Apple and it's walled garden they are still far less distracting and cluttered. Besides they don't just log me into everything and anything like mail etc.
---
And the size. Naah, if you are making yet another phablet then I am not even looking to switch. Good luck thank you bye-bye.
Does it have QI2 wireless charging?
article doesn't mention if it does, does not
Manufactured entirely in China and no headphone jack, that's a pass for me.
I'm curious to know your current phone that passes that test.
Happens a lot: if the more ethical choice isn't perfect, I might as well stick with the very unethical choices.
This isn't binary, the virtue signaled "ethical" choice does not offset the things you have to give up for it.
If you don't care about phone manufacturing being basically completely in China, then all power to you, but as I live in country that has been illegally trade embargo-ed by China just five years ago, I do care about this a lot.
My current phone isn't asking me to make a lot of sacrifices for the sake of "ethics".
I am willing to make many of them, but the least requirement for me is at least a good effort of moving off China for manufacturing (Ideally EU, of course, but we all know that's unrealistic).
I already have picked up standalone music player to deal with missing 3.5mm jack, I also have picked up a small camera with a pancake lens that I carry daily to account for not having great camera in phone, but I'm not willing to spend high mid-tier phone money on an entry level hardware if it is fully manufactured in China, sorry.
I used to run Xperia's, despite horrid software, but now I'm on Google Pixel for the lack of better options.
Some Sony Xperias were until recently manufactured in Japan (and still have headphone javk & sd card slot)
Librem 5 or Liberty phone?
Samsung phones are mostly made in Vietnam.
TINA.
...what?
There is no alternative.
I don't think there are fully non-chinese alternatives, but there absolutely are other phones that are not fully manufactured in china. Hell, even some iPhones aren't entirely made in china.
Can it actually take and make calls, and hold a battery charge yet?
The backside fingerprint reader could even be used as an input device on some models for scrolling, or pulling down/up the notification bar. Great for scrolling through content or swiping through screens without having to cover your display for gesture input: https://www.androidauthority.com/miss-rear-fingerprint-scann...
This is one of the big things I miss from my Pixel 5a; it was so nice to be able to unlock the phone and pull down the notifications bar with one hand. There's a lot I like about the Pixel 8 Pro I replaced it with, but that's one thing I miss.
At some point, somebody is going to have to bring back the "track pad" aspect of the fingerprint sensor at least.-
(Heck, I'd buy it even as an add on, that one could stick to the back of the phone ...)
Seriously!
There's so much design innovation that's been pushed off the table in an effort to make everything look the same.
What bugs me is there's so many Android phones but so few differences
There was a "healthy" phone called the Bloc Phone which had the screen in Black & White by default but allowed you to use the fingerprint on the back at any time to give you a few minutes of colour when (say) looking through your camera roll. Really cool idea.
"Choose your dopamine [fix]" :)
Exactly--this plus the usability original commenter communicated made this why I did so much work to keep my Pixel 3 alive for so long. I still think about the rear fingerprint sensor after a Pixel 3 -> pixel 6 -> S21 Ultra -> S24 Ultra journey, and further how much fun i had back in the ROM + kernel + modding + undervolting days.
Ironically, some devices (Pixel 9 at least) have now added a tiny little touch sensor exactly where the fingerprint reader used to be - it doesn't read the fingerprint, but you can regain this functionality by mapping taps to actions.
I can't even imagine why they decided to keep the fingerprint sensor on the front but add a whole separate sensor on the back.
Are you talking about the feature "Quick Tap" in the settings where you can double tap the back? There's no sensor for that, they just use the accelerometer to detect that input. It's been incredibly unreliable for me.
I suppose so! I didn't realize that's how it was implemented. I guess that explains the... less than stellar reliability.
Yeah! I use that quite a lot on my Pixel 4a. It's particularly useful to close the system quick settings, since I can just scroll once instead of 4 times x)
The fingerprint reader is one of the things I most love about my iPhone SE; I don’t see any reason to get a new phone.
Apple’s declining software quality and walled garden incline me more and more towards ditching iPhone for GrapheneOS or a dumb phone like the Punkt MP; I find far more joy reading on an eReader, taking photos with a camera, or taking notes in my notebook than I do using the phone for any of those.
Especially for notes, keeping journals for the last few years, I find such peace and even connection with myself and my thoughts in my journals; I write down passages from books that are meaningful to me, and seeing my own handwriting, the ink I wrote it in, even the shading in the ink – it all adds up to a deeply meaningful, physical experience.
The answer is not more phone, it’s less!
I used iPhone SE 2020 temporarily when my main android was in repair and I loved it so much that I made it my daily driver.
It fits perfectly on my dwarf hands, fingerprint for security and just the apps to get things done.
Credit where it’s due to Apple for still supporting the phone with SW updates.
i still use a first gen SE. got updates up to ios15. given that it's almost 10 years old the battery lasted more than my pixel 6a.
I hate iOS but in terms of hardware quality and software updates its unmatched.
Mail on iOS stopped working properly months ago, touch on this particular device sometimes does not work. Photos app is ridiculous. Software quality is declining. Even very average user like me can notice it.
The Mail thing was weird. I thought it was maybe an update or even a network issue as I had recently changed my router. I eventually gave up and replaced Mail with another email client.
I'm about 30 seconds away from doing the same. It's honestly woeful how bad it is. Probably just going to move to the Fastmail client directly, I suppose.
was? is!
They still haven't fixed it.
I don't use emails enough on my iPhone to make the effort to try another client, but the unread bubble is still stuck at 2, no matter how much unread emails I actually have. The app randomly shows or hides some emails...
Genuine Question: What problem did you encounter within the Mail App?
Where do I begin? I guess saying that using thunderbird or neomux is a huge upgrade. Just the ability to filter or add tags is huge. But I don't know an alternative in iOS which frequently doesn't even update and inline displays pdfs making it easier for scammers
Not the original commenter, but it regularly fails to update emails unless it is restarted. Last 2 major iOS versions have had the same problem for me. That’s a fundamental functionality failure in my book.
This! Continuously restart app to read new mail.
Thanks! I didn't notice it because I only have manual mail fetch. But I did notice frequent crashes of the app when you open heavy email (e.g with lots of images)
It's pretty embarrassing that Apple doesn't bother fixing this issue.
You need to block Siri in it and then it works fine again.
An issue I have with my SE is that ever since the last major iOS release in September, I think they forgot how tall the device is. Notification Center pushes notifications so far down, that I’m unable to scroll down to see them. It feels like it was designed for a taller phone. However, I think this was fixed recently, which is great after months of being unable to use it to check notifications.
Devices like the Punkt MP would great in an ideal world (if they had support for something like XMPP). But in practice, a huge amount of people use Telegram, or WeChat or some other network for which you need a native phone app.
In practice, that's me as well; while here in the US texting is big, in years abroad I don't think I had a single conversation via SMS - everything was in apps.
That makes phones like the Punkt an ideal more than something practical. But I still want one. It appeals to the minimalist in me, big time.
I guess this is highly subjective, I was just talking with my girlfriend last night about how much I dislike when the fingerprint reader is not on the front. Specifically because only if it is on the front I can easily use it when my phone is lying on the table.
Also, my current phone phone has it on the back and I can only configure one fingerprint, so if for some reason I am holding it in my left hand I am out of luck.
Definitely subjective. But popular enough that it should exist in the many many versions of Android phones that exist. What's the point of having so many varieties if they're all the same?
Fwiw, it I'm at my desk it'd usually be on its face for flip to silent. Then I pick up and it's natural. Or I'd be using scrcpy because if I'm in front of a computer why are my hands moving from the keyboard? I guess I'll compromise with the mouse lol
Single fingerprint registration is weird. Iirc I could do 2 on my pixel 2
Why not both?
Let's also stick an extra USB-C port on the side of the phone so that you can charge from whichever port is more convenient at the time. Or use an accessory like wired headphones and charge at the same time without carrying around a USB hub. Or if one breaks (charging ports are one of the most common things to fail on the phone) you can continue using the other one (either temporarily until the other is repaired or indefinitely).
My current phone actually has this (ROG 9) and it's really nice! I had to put my phone in a cupholder recently and the side charging port saved me from having to balance it on the charging cable. (It also has a headphone jack.)
Agreed, the front fingerprint reader works perfectly fine.
Maybe they should provide both options.
Not every phone needs to be "opinionated" ...
Have you tried phones with it on the power button? That was the best for me by far.
Yeah it's great! I want to put off the screen and instantly after going off, it reads my finger and goes on again!
Who came up with that idea?
Reading this on my Fairphone 5 and can't reproduce this issue. But I admit that sometimes I just want to see the lock screen and accidentally unlock the phone. Therefore, I still agree. The back is the better position for the fingerprint reader.
It rarely happens right when locking the phone, mosty because I already developed the habit to press the power button not with the tip of my thumb but lower down, where the joint is. But when shoving it back in my pocket it still happens on a regular basis, even when I try to avoid it. The button is just located in such a way that it's very hard to avoid touching it while doing so. Then I pull it out a while later to find I changed 20 settings and made a dozen in-app purchases. ;)
The digitizer chip vendors get a percentage of every app purchase.
Can you use double tap to wake when you just need to check the screen? This will also reduce the mechanical stress on the physical unlock button.
Not sure if there was an option, but I would not want to enable it anyway. I want to avoid baby fingers to enable the screen ;) I remember I enabled it with my previous phone, though, so could work for some.
that also never happened on any of the string of cheap chinese phones I installed lineageos on before deciding the world was sketchy enough to mean grapheneos was the minimum viable level of hardening for my phone. I miss the power button fingerprint scanner dearly.
I'm sure it's manageable with proper software, as I had no such issue back in the day with my Xperia Z5(?) compact.
(That said, I get similarly cranky about various gestures that just don't reliably work in some cases. I despair of the eventual day they (google in my case) no longer offer the 3 button home row on android phones)
With many phones these days you can suspend by just double-tapping the screen, or the status bar. Sometimes this works for resume too, other phones require a physical button press.
Coming from a Pixel ~5 to a Fairphone 5, this is by far my biggest gripe. Constantly finding it unlocked because it unlocks as soon as I lock it.
Asus?
No, one of the new "nokia" that run stock android.
My current phone has that and it's the absolute worst design choice I have ever seen in a phone. It is constantly triggering when I'm trying to lock the screen. I can't understand what the designers at Nokia were thinking, truly awful hardware design.
its probably more of a software issue. ive had 3 phones (sony, samsung) with sensors in the power button and never had a problem
Same thing with Fairphone 4. It's either too dirty to register on first touch (the smaller surface doesn't help), or I unlock the screen when I lock the phone.
My iPad (and also the iPad Air) has a fingerprint sensor on it's power button and it's very nice.
This is the best option by far, sadly can't find it anymore
Well, foldables have them. Sadly they're the opposite of affordable and sustainable.
I was a FaceID skeptic and it quickly won me over, not because of the unlocking experience, but for the authentication during use. What used to be a prompt, followed by an active fingerprint scan, turned into something completely seamless and automatic.
My wife and her sister can unlock each other’s iPhones using the face unlock feature which blows my mind because they do NOT look super similar and are 4 years apart. I’ve turned off all biometrics and use only a PIN. I’m extremely skeptical of the tech.
My sister in law's mom and her daughter have the same thing too where the daughter can unlock her mom's phone with faceID. I researched this and apparently, if you have an unsuccessful unlock first and then you enter the code to unlock, then the phone may train the faceID with the new face too.
> if you have an unsuccessful unlock first and then you enter the code to unlock, then the phone may train the faceID with the new face too
Ay wat? That sounds completely backwards, like if an incorrect password for account login would automatically reset the account password to the incorrect one, how would that make sense?!
Worked that way from FaceID introduction. Apple never cared enough. If you share your phone it is on you that the phone accepts the face who you share it with after you enter a pin. It really should have a new face button under the pin.
That's weird!
I got braces recently and I had to go through the FaceID process again because it didn't recognized me anymore.
Obviously my teeth are quite different with my mouth open, but apparently, it modified my face enough when mouth closed that FaceID thaught I was not myself anymore.
Wow, that’s pretty interesting. I wouldn’t think that would be enough to impact it without some accompanying procedures, like expanding the pallet, or some kind of jaw surgery.
Was it right away from getting the braces put on (from a little extra bulk on the teeth), or after they’ve been on for several months, where the movement of the teeth could change the structure of the face around the mouth?
It started as soon as I left the orthodontist's place.
Based on what I can see in the mirror and the fact that some people asked me if I had lost weight (I didn't), it appears that the braces on the upper teeth are pushing my upper lip away, which in turns is pulling my face skin, resulting in more hollow cheeks and more visible cheekbones.
I wonder if it depends on the phone model as well, and specifically on the quality of whatever sensor they use for depth perception.
I'm just using a PIN too, I don't want to give google/apple/any other my fingerprints or my face features
Two situations I can think of, they might have Bluetooth unlock with an apple watch enabled, or they might have the work with masks setting turned on which turns the accuracy to shit.
Your watch should not unlock someone else's phone though.
The point is if you have watch unlock enabled and someone unlocks your phone standing right next to you, it's still in range to unlock your phone with your watch.
Doesn’t the screen indicate which unlock method it’s using?
That was my experience with a back fingerprint reader. I reach my hand into my pocket, my finger naturally lands on the sensor, and my phone is unlocked before it's out!
I rarely saw my lockscreen
But when I switched to the pixel 8 with a front reader I always saw it
Now on my iPhone I see it frequently and it doesn't land when wearing a mask, when I'm talking, when I'm not looking (I could blind navigate my phone), or when it's just dark. So it just feels painfully slow in comparison...
Nothing has beaten the magical experience of a back fingerprint reader and I think this is why so many of us miss it. But I'm sure it's one of those things you'd have had to use to really feel the magic
It doesn't have to be for everyone but there's enough phones that the option should be available...
FaceID is still not working well for many cases. I thought it was just my family, but it seems common enough [0].
It's nice that is works for you, but it really sucks when it fails as there's no other biometric alternative. And changing their whole ecosystem just to get working biometrics is a high bar for many.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Makeup/comments/wfjy5x/apple_id_doe...
FaceID does have two flaws in my mind.
1) I frequently unlock my phone while it's laying flat on the desk a good distance from my face. The camera can't see me, and certainly not well enough to identify me.
2) I don't believe that you can add a second FaceID. Currently I have a few fingers added to my TouchID, including my wifes index finger, allowing her to unlock my phone.
Regarding flaw 2, this was the case at launch, but they added an option to register an “additional appearance”.
Nice, I did not know that. Thank you.
That's what makes it insecure. You're always looking at the device.
Besides, fingerprint is even faster. You can unlock the device right as you grab it out of your pocket. You don't even have to look at it.
The one place i feel faceid is better than rear fingerprint reader is when i need to auth multiple times in quick succession like filling with my password manager.
FaceID is absolute terrible. If you wear glasses, the angle on which it operates it pretty narrow. It has a really hard time if your face is partially covered. I can't hold my phone near my lap/chest on a train and unlock it, I need to bring it up to eye level (a gesture most unwelcome when you want to be discreet in unsafe areas). I can't lie in the couch with the phone resting in front of me; I need to angle it up to unlock it. It won't unlock in the mist, light rain, or a variety of other situations.
I last tried the iPhone 16. It's a huge downgrade from the last iPhone SE.
I hate Face ID so much. I hate being asked for my PIN for every single little thing I do. I already unlocked my phone, please stop asking me. If I grabbed it, YES, I WANT TO DO THE THING!
-Exhausted Apple user also wanting easier authentication
Or the minute it actually takes to unlock my phone because it missed the first one and then asks for my pin and activates right before I finish entering my pin
The one thing that grinds my gears is how they made it mandatory for lock page widgets. I don’t need my smart lights faceid protected when I’m trying to turn them on in the middle of the night
the scene early in Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes takes advantage of the most critical flaw in biometric security has always made me shy away from it. if someone is motivated enough, removal of the unlocking body part is all to easy so I'll stick with pass codes or patterns
Removing a body part is also an effective way to get a pass code or pattern. If someone is willing to do you great harm to unlock your phone, I don't think it matters much what locking method you use.
The jurisdictions where a cop will with force put your finger to the fingerprint reader, but won't beat the keys out of you cover most of the first and parts of the second world.
And if you are not in one of those countries just politely ask for a blank white sheet of paper to sign and let them fill the rest. You will save everyone some time.
I would not necessarily trust that. Had an army coworker who regularly beat information out with rubber hoses where he was stationed. Sort of the evil version of don’t ask don’t tell.
boy messed with the law and done got the keys beat out of him
People without safety and security awareness often underestimate a) time, b) the neccessary criminal energy, c) opportunity, and d) logistics (e. g. seclusion, tools).
But when one has technology that works for the attacker by conveniently elimininating the mentioned problems almost completely, than your set of security features is just a pathetic lie... as well as a self-delusion.
Which, to be honest, a lot of safety and security measures and technology are to most people. ;)
Well, that, and in the USA at least the government are constitutionally allowed to use whatever force necessary to put your finger onto the reader, or your face in front of the scanner.
SInce I prefer to keep my fingers than my secrets, I do not care too much about this issue: I would give every password if threatened. However I don't want my fingerprint and my face features to be stored somewhere
> motivated enough
https://xkcd.com/538/
Don't they actually detect pulse nowadays? Or is it facial micromovements for faceid?
They do Face ID because it's cooler and for unreasonable ideas about "security". As if most people are enough of a target to mess around with bio identification.
Apple best product is marketing by far; this is just one of the results.
I have been using Face ID since the iPhone X and agree that it sucks. It doesn't even really solve the "problems" I thought it would solve (unlock while cooking or other activities where your hands are dirty) because you need to look at the thing in a particular way and you need clean hands to interact with the phone anyway.
It is especially annoying because the design of the notch/dynamic island is just terrible/stupid.
There are days where I get so many misses that I feel like disabling the thing entirely since I have to use the passcode so much anyway. I was already very skeptical of Touch ID but Face ID is just worse and more expensive for not much benefits.
This is the issue with technology nowadays, most of the real "problems" have been solved so tech companies come up with all kinds of nonsense to sell newer and shinier stuff. At some point a screwdriver is a screwdriver and a smartphone is a smartphone, we just need it to be of good quality and last long, that's it. But this does not make for "infinite" growth so here we are...
And even if it's not much of a dent, with a case, it makes a fantastic divot for holding your phone. I hate FaceID and I miss fingerprint scanners.
> Fastest way to unlock your phone, because no matter how slow the fingerprint reader is you activate it while pulling it out of your pocket.
You can also do this with under-screen fingerprint readers which are excellent these days.
I have never been able to unlock my under-screen fingerprint reader by taking it out of my pocket. This is because the reader isn't in a good position when the phone is in my pocket. Yes, it's where my thumb is when properly holding my phone, but my grip is different when pulling the phone out of my pocket. My older phone with the reader on the back had my index finger in position before I even attempted to take out of my pocket. It was slower at reading my prints, but was always unlocked before I looked at the screen.
I'd love to use the old phone for so many reasons, but the lack of updates has rendered it useless. No Lineage or Graphene for that one either.
Plus you can feel it on the back which gives you natural feedback
Not to mention some models has haptic feedback and everything, upon unlock ...
Never worked out quite as well for me. There's no tactile feel, which is more important than people give credit for, especially when grabbing something without looking.
Plus, as others are pointing out, there's additional benefits
Usually you can't place your finger in the just the rigbt spot when blindly frabbing the phone from your pocket.
I loved the rear fingerprint reader on my old Nexus 5X.
> fingerprint reader on the back of the phone
Seconded, vehemently.-
My humble, tiny, circa-2014 Elephone E1 (RIP) was unsurpassed.-
Me wonders if the "onscreen reader" is not an integration-cost cutting measure, as it saves one part?
It doesn't save a part. It's still a separate part underneath the screen.
I do the same with the sensor being on the lock button, why does it have to specifically be the back?
Hold your phone. Where does your index finger sit?
Are we talking about holding the phone, or about taking it out of my pocket? Because, for the latter, my fingers are on the sides, including on the power button.
The side buttons on my phone are more of an annoyance I think. I'm constantly pressing them inadvertently, and rarely use them intentionally. The most common thing in my Photos folder are accidental screenshots (yes I do go back and delete them periodically).
People hold it differently then, I suppose. The fingerprint reader on the back of my Pixel 4a never worked reliably for unlocking, and was too sensitive for scrolling. It scrolled so often when I did not want it to, and I could find no setting to turn it off, so I eventually put a piece of aluminium tape over it to block it.
Me too, but for the purpose of unlocking, they're great. That's basically the only thing you can't do accidentally with them.
I'd say you're in the minority then and most people would have their fingers on the front and back while pulling it out due to pocket physics (they don't get wider, but they get deeper).
Your index finger is on the side? I have pretty big hands and long fingers, that's not how I hold my phone. I'm a bit weird and do pinky on button, three fingers in back, then thumb has ample room to navigate around the bottom half
No, my thumb is on the side, on the power button.
Well my original question was where your index finger was, not your thumb
The original topic was about unlocking your phone while taking it out of your pocket, which is done with the thumb.
Is your thumb the only place you have a fingerprint? I used my index finger on my Pixel 2
On the power button? How was that comfortable for you?
I use my index finger on the rear scanner on the...S9+, I think? Works fine.
Are you guys pulling my leg? The original post said "I wish they still made phones with scanners at the back, I hate FaceID", and my reply was "if you don't mind side scanners, which allow you to do the thing you miss (unlocking the phone while taking it out of your pocket), they still make those".
> and my reply was "if you don't mind side scanners, which allow you to do the thing you miss (unlocking the phone while taking it out of your pocket), they still make those".
This isn't quite what you said, you asked a question
> why does it have to specifically be the back?
and then got an answer to the question
> Where does your index finger sit?
This answer was presumably meant to imply that your index finger naturally sits at the perfect spot for unlocking the phone if the sensor is on the back. At least for me (and I always assumed everyone else, but you are showing to be an exception), my index finger is on the back of the phone both when taking it out of the pocket and when holding it, so it's the perfect spot for a sensor.
Your assumption of using the thumb to unlock the phone is apparently so strong that maybe you didn't realize others in this thread are assuming index finger is the most natural to unlock, and I guess that is where the confusion comes from. Since I have a sensor on the back of my phone and unlock it with my index finger while taking it out of my pocket, this statement is very odd to me:
> The original topic was about unlocking your phone while taking it out of your pocket, which is done with the thumb.
First, it's not true for me, since I use my index finger, and second, I'm not even sure how I would have to contort my hand to have the fingers and thumbs on the side of the phone while taking it out of my pocket such that the thumb could unlock via a side sensor. Even putting my hand in at a 90 degree angle is tough because pockets are usually too tight for that. But I suppose if you have always unlocked your phone with your thumb while taking it out of your pocket, I can see why you might think they're pulling your leg.
Are you saying that they’re holding it wrong™?
The S9 wasn't super bad but the S8's was right beside the cam which really sucked. Constantly getting fingerprints all over the camera.
I literally asked a question about the index finger. Don't try to gaslight me here lol
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44358046The thumb works well enough with the finger print scanner to the side IMHO.
Who said it has to be on the back? Bro said that's what he prefers over Face ID, maybe just has never had one on the lock button.
I have. Better than FaceID and under screen but I still prefer on the back. It had other benefits and just felt nicer than in the lock button
If it doesn't have to be on the back, he can just buy a phone with a fingerprint reader on the side today.
I see what you mean now. Having owned both kinds (and under-screen), I think they still have a point though - on the back was (slightly) better and I wish they'd come back.
I would personally rank a traditional iPhone home button sensor and the backside sensors on certain Android devices as equally great for unlocking while sliding the phone out of a pocket and general convenience.
Side button sensors work OK, too but I have much more misses on my supposedly more "modern" side button sensor phone than I ever had on old Pixels or any old iPhone with a home button sensor. I assume this is due to the size and general shape of a side button in comparison to an iPhone-style home button or old-Pixel-style back sensor which are bigger, indented and finger-guiding.
+1 I've come to realize that the rear fingerprint sensor is even more important than the audio jack for me.
For all the hate that I give apple (great hardware, terrible company, wasted potential) it was extremely smart of them to buy PrimeSense. Even Microsoft kinda missed that boat.
This might be a minority experience but I used to use the Pixel 4a with the reader on the back and now the Pixel 8a with reader inside the display and I find the fingerprint reader of the 8a marginally faster and much more reliable. From an UX perspective I also find it slightly more practical on the front so I can unlock the phone without picking it up.
> That was seriously the best solution.
I much prefer having it on a physical home button. You can still feel a dent, but it takes even less effort to reach for it with your thumb.
(Well, I think the Pixel never had a home button, and by now it's unfortunately disappeared from other phones too...)
You can bring back the software buttons for back/home/app switcher on Android in one of the display menus. First thing I turn on.
The back sensor had an indent too, so you could easily feel it. Hold your phone in your hand. Where does your index finger sit? If it is on the back of the phone, that's where the sensor was. It was very natural.
Sure, but I'm talking about where my fingers first reach when taking the device out of my pocket.
In that case, I'm grabbing it with my thumb, index finger and middle finger, and since the phone is seated upside down, my thumb reaches the home button before I'm even holding it in my palm.
On phones with a fingerprint sensor on the back, I first have to get a full grip, and then I can reach for the sensor.
(But it's probably somewhat hand/pocket-specific...)
A big issue with fingerprint-only devices is water. If your finger, the reader or both are sufficiently wet, most readers just don't work. Most touchscreens also don't work too well in those conditions - certainly not well enough to enter a secure alphanumeric unlock code - but enough to pull up a map.
I've had my old iPhone 7+ turn into a charged brick multiple times in the rain. Never happened with the faceID phones.
It's nice that it was working for you, and I also wish we could build more options for ourselves.
I think, even having a stable physical design would help tremendously: imagine each new Pixel with the same standard screen size and casing attachment. Google could still change the overall outer feel as long as it fits the inner latching mechanism.
Then building a third party back panel with a fingerprint reader becomes somewhat realistic. And we don't need Google to build an ecosystem, just stop doing their minuscule size tweaks every year and stabilize the attachment mechanism. Just that.
Yes. I pine for the ATX of phones.
The Pixels had the worst option for a while: the under-screen optical sensor. Slow and prone to failure. They've since switched it out for an ultrasonic sensor, but it was shockingly bad for a few years.
Nothing better than trying to unlock your phone at night and the screen blasts the white light to illuminate your fingerprint to be read.
Ultrasonic ftw.
I had an Pixel 9 Pro with the ultrasonic sensor and I found that it wouldn't work at all with a tempered glass screen protector. The optical sensor they had for previous generation sort of works fine with a screen protector
I love having the fingerprint reader behind the screen on my Pixel 8a. It has a clear benefit vs. the back; you can unlock it while it's sitting on the table, without lifting it up.
My main gripe with fingerprint sensors on the back is that it's easy to inadvertently smudge the camera lens when unlocking the phone. Some phones have/had fingerprint unlock on the side power button which is similarly convenient, although I actually don't mind the underscreen sensors that are most common these days. I do appreciate being able to sneak a peek at my phone by discreetly unlocking it at very oblique angles that aren't possible with Face ID.
That's more a design failure of the camera system, not the fingerprint reader. You can have the best of both worlds here.
> I honestly don't get why people like Face ID more
Big +1. Face ID fails way more than Touch ID ever did. I know you couldn't your finger with wet hands or gloves, but that didn't come up all that much.
Face ID fails multiple times per day, every day. I can't unlock my phone well in bed, while brushing teeth, while it's sitting on a table not directly in front of me, if I'm in direct sunlight, in a car mount, etc. The only time it's more useful is when I'm already using the phone and need to auth for an app (bank, 1Password, etc). Then it's seamless. It just doesn't make sense as an unlock mechanism, IMO. iPad has the same problem - I can't unlock it if it's on the couch next to me without picking it up and holding it in front of my face.
Face ID would make a lot of sense on a laptop, which is always used in basically ideal conditions for unlocking: straight on view, probably inside, always centered on my face.
I'd love Touch ID on a phone's lock button, but that's not an option. And I'm worried that if it was an option, it would be relegated to the budget phones (like it is on ipads).
Why would sunlight make a difference? It uses infra red to map your face right?
I have no idea, but it's a constant source of frustration. Sunglasses also lead to failed reads, which makes a little more sense but is just as frustrating. "Here's a new phone. It works great except you can't use it quickly if you're wearing sunglasses. Sorry!"
It works with some sunglasses. Probably related to the coating on the lens.
It works occasionally, but unpredictably. Consistently frustrating though
An ultra bright IR source from an unexpected angle?
Sunlight contains a lot of IR.
The best it's on the power button tbh
Another plus: you could swipe down on the fingerprint reader for additional actions, like seeing your notifications.
I had a Xiaomi phone with a fingerprint reader on the back, and now I have a Pixel phone with a fingerprint reader on the screen. It took about a week to get used to the new location, and I have been doing well since then. Do you have specific issues with it?
It's not exactly a flagship phone, but the Unihertz Jelly Max has a fingerprint reader on the back.
The problem with Unihertz though is that they lose interest in fixing software bugs approximately 5 minutes after lauching new phones. And, based on my experience, they tend to launch with a lot of bugs.
Sensor on power button is far more elegant, imo. I've had all three solutions and that one stood out as the clear winner.
This is maybe specific to the model, but my previous phone (Xperia 10 V) had its sensor on the power button and I'd always unintentionally unlock it immediately after locking it and putting it back in my pocket
i got rid of my pixel and went back to sony because of the fingerprint sensor being on the back. when its lying flat on a desk you have to lift it up to unlock it, same deal when its in a dock of some sort, its very awkward. having it on the side is a much better idea
> I honestly don't get why people like Face ID more (what I currently use)
Because it works for authentication too. My password manager just... automatically authenticates me without me having to tap a thing. It recognizes the login form on the validated domain, it scans my face, it fills in my info. Same as paying with Wallet, I just slide up the credit card I want to use and it scans my face as I hold it against the reader.
And I'm not always pulling the phone out of my pocket, I'm picking it up off the table. I grab it by the edges, I'm not putting my finger on its back.
Would be great if both options were available simultaneously. Face ID didn’t pass? Just scan your finger instead and carry on.
Sorry if I wasn't clear -- it's because I don't have to do anything.
The fingerprint sensor requires me to put my finger on it.
FaceID just works without me doing anything. I don't even realize I have to authenticate, and then have to do something in response -- it just does it.
If the fingerprint reader is in the right place it feels like you aren't doing anything. Just like with FaceID where you looking at your phone becomes second nature so does your hand placement when pulling your phone out of your pocket.
If you haven't had a phone like this before it's hard to explain. But I can tell you from personal experience that it is less effort than FaceID, which is my current daily driver
There is no such "right place". As I already explained, it's totally different if you're pulling it out of your pocket vs. picking it up from a table. Vs. holding it. I've had devices with fingerprint sensors on the back and on the edge. My finger is never naturally "just there". Even pulling it out of my pocket, where it comes the closest. Most importantly, my finger does not sit on the fingerprint sensor the entire time I'm using the phone, the way my face is nearly always visible to it when authentication is necessary.
It's great for that specific use case.
It's terrible for people who put their phone on their desk, in a stand, or on a wireless charger while they are working.
How you can ensure that your fingerprints are not sent somewhere (and your face model when using Face ID)?
How can you ensure that your phone is not recording you 24/7? It’s called „trust“. Trust in the vendor, trust in independent 3rd parties that would identify such an issue, trust in capitalism because this would certainly be very bad publicity.
I cover the front camera (I don't do video calls anyway). "Trust" in people who live in the other country and cannot even be put in jail seems like a poor choice.
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You can say the same thing about a PIN code.
Edit: oooof I missed the point entirely. Sorry.
PIN code is worthless, what will you use it for if you don't have my phone? While fingerprints and 3D face scan will always find a buyer, for example, the government.
Agreed, I honestly couldn’t tell you what the lockscreen on my pixel 3a looked like, I almost never saw it. 100x better than faceid.
> I honestly don't get why people like Face ID more
Because good luck using that fingerprint sensor while wearing gloves, e.g. during garden work, while on a motorcycle ride, or in winter.
Why not both, though. Touch ID for the 80% of cases where it works and then is faster than Face ID, because by the time the phone is in front of your face it’s already unlocked, and Face ID for the remaining cases where Touch ID fails. If you can include three cameras, surely you can include two biometric sensors.
The backup unlock is the watch.
This was annoying, but it is less annoying than my experience with FaceID[0]. Sure, there's no perfect solution, but it isn't like we all have to use the exact same solution for everything, right? There's more than one phone out there...
I do hope we have a mutual understanding that we're talking about something subjective. Something that isn't the best option for everyone. FaceID, fingerprint, or whatever. There's no one size fits all...
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44362879