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World's First Modular Smart Phone Hits the Market

Posted by timothy on from the people's-front-of-judea dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Out before the much anticipated Google Modular Phone Project ARA, is a new phone from Fairphone: The Fairphone 2. This phone is claimed to be the the worlds first real modular phone. Fairphone is more than just a phone manufaturer but a social justice movement . Fairphone is a project of Waag Society, Action Aid and Schrijf-Schrijf to raise awareness about conflict minerals in consumer electronics and the wars that the mining of these minerals is fueling in the DR Congo. The Fairphone 2 build consists of 5-inch Full HD LCD screen, Android 5.1 Lollipop,Dual SIM, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Qualcomm quad core processor.

5 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Poor support for 3G/4G bands used in the Americas by gaiageek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just in case anyone in the US or elsewhere in the Americas is considering one of these, know that you won't get any LTE reception, and in the US, you'll only get 3G reception on the 1900 band used by AT&T or (in some places) by T-Mobile. It doesn't support AT&T's 850 band and or T-Mobile's 1700 (AWS) band.

    In short, this is designed by Europeans, for Europeans.

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    www.gaiageek.com
  2. Re:Awaiting Awareness by 110010001000 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes you can. You can replace the same number of components on the iPhone as you can the Fairphone. How do you think the hundreds of iphone repair shops do it? I can't believe people fall for this kind of stuff.

  3. There's a Jolla one (that you can't have) by Phil+Urich · · Score: 3, Informative
    Someone made one for the Jolla, since there's a modular back to that phone designed for people to add electronics to it, and a lot of Jolla folks come from the N900 user/developer community so missed landscape slider QWERTY keyboards. https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

    I rather like mine, although unfortunately just like the Fairphone 2 here, it doesn't support the frequencies my wireless carrier uses and as such is completely useless to me as a cellphone. Alas!

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    I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
    1. Re:There's a Jolla one (that you can't have) by Eunuchswear · · Score: 3, Informative

      The fairphone 2 has an interrnal USB connecter on the back for TOH like extensions. DVL, who made the keyboard TOH for the Jolla is working on add-ons for the Fairphone 2.

      https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fairphone-2-hardware-extensions/11457

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      Watch this Heartland Institute video
  4. Re: Awaiting Awareness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apple released a fix for this issue days after it made the media.