World's First Modular Smart Phone Hits the Market

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.

Comments

Polite Applause Due

[retroworks]

They are trying to do what we wish all manufacturers would do, make devices repairable, upgradeable, and built of sustainable raw materials.

I truly hope they will succeed, but they have to make something competitive with manufacturers that don't tie a hand behind their backs, because cheaper phones make more profits, and more profits make better phones. I trade with the Good Enough Markets (Africa, South America, Asia) and the buyers of used phones want whatever is the best phone for the least cost. The minute they make some compromise that reduces quality and value, they will lose scaleability and traction. To achieve value, you must achieve scale of production, and that requires a wee bit of ruthlessness.

Good Luck, Fair Phone Guys. Don't try to be perfect, just be better.

Re:Awaiting Awareness

[Maow]

A further initiative these guys are taking that I fully endorse: and end to the so-called "land-fill Android" syndrome:

Extending the lifespan of your mobile phone

we’d like to encourage you to keep your existing mobile as long as it works. If you do buy Fairphone, we’re selling spare parts and offering repair tutorials to help make your phone useful for as long as possible, plus adding features like dual SIM to make the phones more attractive on the secondhand marketplace. We’re also working with partners to set up projects in Ghana to improve local waste collection efforts and transport discarded phones to Europe for safe recycling. Finally, our Take Back Program helps ensure that your old mobile phone is reused or properly recycled.

That's pretty great really. What's not to like about that?

Re:Awaiting Awareness

[Compuser]

I want my phone to do messaging, read email, browse the web, call people, I want it as a portable gps and basic camera and maybe a calculator and a flashlight. All these have been available on very old phones, all of these do not tax the processor even back to Snapdragon 800.
There has been zero reason to upgrade a phone for the last three years at least. Of course, as soon as phones become capable of actual computing (running real applications, running multiple displays, interfacing with external storage, burn blu ray disks, and print to generic printers) I will upgrade. Until then... why?

Re:"A social justice movement"

[Maow]

Just what I want and desperately need, more militantly dysfunctional subjectivist Marxist bullshit in my objectively functional technology.

What a fucking retarded statement.

They're capitalists trying to fill a niche for ethically sourced phones with a modular design (a great and exciting idea all by itself), high reparability, and easily recyclable - the entire life cycle carefully considered.

We've all heard the "child labour" comments and accusations regarding the manufacturing of our electronics - this business is trying to do something about it. How the fuck you get "militant Marxist" bullshit out of that makes it sound like you've fallen on your head. A few times.

And at +5 Insightful, a few others have too.

Before I know it my pull requests are going to be totally triaged by feels and privilege checks

If you're talking about making pull requests to a hardware manufacturer who is using Android from AOSP, then yeah, your pull requests are probably pretty fucking useless.

You don't like it, don't buy it, but getting your feels all hurt, along with your butt, makes you a militant Marxist moron. Since you like slinging non-sequiturs...