Slashdot Mirror
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.
I use my Fairphone in my hugcircle in my safe space. Where do you use yours?
The entire thing is a joke. The phone is made in China in the same factories and suppliers as other phones. The difference is that their suppliers say "sure, we only use tungsten from Colorado, not from the Congo". And the hipsters fly home happy.
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.
Gently reply
"Sure, boss, we are willing to work on social end environmental performance with you. When is the check coming, gweilo?"
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
That's pretty great really. What's not to like about that?
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.
www.gaiageek.com
You can do replace individual components with an iPhone too with parts off of ebay.
Oh, really?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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?
You suck at reading bullshit. There is nothing concrete in that quote.
Goals are something you'd like to reach. They aren't things you're currently doing. You never need to reach a goal.
Willingness to work on something means nothing. I'm willing to give everyone in the world a million dollars, but I'll never do so.
A commitment to transparency isn't a plan. It's a 'we'll make a committee and never let anything useful come out of the meetings'.
"production partners we engage with directly" means no one. They can define "engage with directly" however they want.
Identifying areas that needs improvement doesn't mean improving them.
They're going to create worthless assessments as the first step in a process to create a policy of creating more worthless assessments before making changes that might have an impact on something.
They're going to look at each step of the production line, ignoring how it fits in with all the other steps, and see how they can make that step more profitable by itself. Then they might actually make a change to make it more profitable. "Investigate" has no promise of action and they don't even say what they're investigating for. You will assume they're investigating what you want them to investigate and someone with different ideals will read the same paragraph and believe they're investigating what that person wants investigating.
You shouldn't read anything released by a corporation. It's all meaningless and will damage your brain.
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!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Because manufacturing doesn't work that way. Their Chinese supplier makes their phone. The supplier supplies the electronics and the raw materials. It isn't like Fairphone sends them a shipment of tungsten saying "hey use this to make our phone".
Citation needed, again.
How the fuck do you know how their setup works? You haven't provided a single link to support your bullshit; you probably haven't even looked at their site.
Put up a link or shut up. Fairphone has put up claims, feel free to debunk them if you have anything other than bullshit:
It is just a bunch of hipsters with a gimmick.
No, it's a bunch of whiny, cynical assholes bitching because someone is making an effort to provide consumers choice - a choice that whiny, cynical assholes don't want to look into in the slightest, never mind a choice they'd make.
Fine, if you don't want one no one cares. But just because someone shat in your cereal, don't have a whinefest about someone else making an effort.
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.
I saw what you did there. You're moving the goalposts.
Obviously a legitimate, Apple-approved repair shop can fix your phone without bricking it.
Per the article I linked to -- which you ignored -- repair shops that use unapproved Apple parts can permanently brick an iPhone.
And you're saying a consumer can fix their iPhone with parts they just buy off eBay? Yeah, good luck with that.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Apple released a fix for this issue days after it made the media.
Oh dear ... AC, it appears you're right:
http://www.techtimes.com/artic...
http://www.techtimes.com/artic...
Sorry, 110010001000.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The goal of fairphone is not to sell many phones. Instead their primary goals are to make the production process of phones transparent, show how things can be improved for humans and environment in all steps from resources to assembly, and they have encourage you to use your phone longer. Exactly what you want. The fp2 should even last longer than the first.
If your intention was to tell everyone just how confused you are, I think you were wildly successful. It's not "Marxist" (I honestly think you don't know the meaning of the word) to source materials from companies which treat their workers well. I can see how you'd get confused, knowing as little as you seemingly do. I would suggest you spend more time working on your education and less time showing everyone just how sorely you need it.
This exactly what FP promotes. The best what you can do for laborer and the environment, use the phone as long as possible.
in my opinion, taking away the ability to earn at least a little money is only going to hurt the mostly innocent bystanders.
It looks like they're still putting money into poverty stricken areas:
It appears they've made an honest effort to source things intelligently.
Reading these comments (not the one I'm replying to) bitching, moaning, and whining about "hipsters" getting a "feel good" from stupidly being duped through the entire process, I'm pretty fucking disgusted with Slashdot today.
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...