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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.
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
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.
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...