Fairphone showed off off its modular smartphone made from ethically-sourced materials at the South By Southwest Interactive conference and festival in Austin this week, where the Fairphone 2 was a finalist for an Innovation award.
Fairphone didn’t win the award, but this marks one of the first times the team has shown off the phone in the United States. It’s currently available in Europe for €529, and Fairphone says it could bring the smartphone to the United States in 2017.
For the latest episode of the LPX Show podcast, I spoke with Fairphone’s public engagement manager Daria Koreniushkina about the company’s goals, which include:
- Using materials from conflict-free mines
- Improving working conditions for factory workers
- Building phones which are designed to last 3-5 years, and which are easy to repair and recycle
The Fairphone 2 has gotten a lot of attention since it initially launched for that last bullet point, and in fact it was the first smartphone to get a perfect 10 out of 10 score for repairability from iFixit.
So I also reached out to iFixit founder Kyle Wiens, who had some interesting thoughts about this modular phone… and why so many other companies don’t seem interested in making phones that are easy to repair.
We also talked about whether it makes sense to sell a phone designed to last 5 years if it has hardware that may not be state of the art (the Fairphone 2 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 2,420 mAh battery, and a 1920 x 1080 pixel display)
You can hear what Wiens and Koreniushkina had to say in episode 5 of the LPX Show by clicking the play button above or visiting the LPX Show website.
Also make sure to subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS if you want to make sure you don’t miss upcoming episodes of the show.
You can also follow the podcast on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook for the latest updates.
Oh yeah — I’m also curious to know what other podcasts you’re listening to. You can check out my playlist as the LPX Show website, and sound off in the comments there to let me know what’s in yours!
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Lately, someone from Fairphone disassembled a FP2 in front of me – and it really was impressing, how easy that is. It felt like a big relief, because the day before I tried to repair (once again) one of my girlfriend’s Macbook-chargers (boy, what a piece of junk…)
Besides, there is already quite some effort to port Ubuntu and Sailfish to the FP2, and this would be “state of the art” to me, having such an OS on such a phone…
I comment here, since the comment section on the LPX site requires registration.
It was a a very interesting episode! I missed you asking on question, the main question, though: How about Android OS upgrades on the Fairphone?
This *is* the LPX site. 🙂 The team hasn’t made any official promises of official upgrades to Android 6 or later, but Fairphone has released source code for its custom version of Android: http://code.fairphone.com/ And that could pave the way for custom ROMs. There’s also been some work on a community-supported version of Sailfish OS for the phone: https://www.fairphone.com/2015… So even if Fairphone never updates the software, it’s possible that independent developers will help keep the phone up to date. That’s not to say that Fairphone *won’t* make any updates. It’s just that none have been promised yet.
Now we are on liliputing.com, not on lpxshow.com. Regarding updates and environmental impact: I really, really don’t want an Apple-Android flame war here (everything resembling one is actually one, sorry about that!), but any brand new iPhone these days will get factory software updates for 5 years from launch date, and this Liam robot is also quite nice for the environment: http://mashable.com/2016/03/21… When buying a new, expensive phone, you may want to consider price depreciation, or the cost of ownership between your purchase and reselling the device to the next buyer: http://www.aboveavalon.com/not… All in all, nice try from FairPhone, Android… Read more »
Oh whoops! I’m silly. Both sites using Disqus for comments, so a) It’s easy for me to forget which one I’m looking at and b) you shouldn’t have needed to register again. That’s odd. As for software updates for iPhones, Apple has never promised 5 years of support. When iOS 9 rolled out, it did support the last 4 years worth of iPhones, but not all features are available on older devices. And not every version of iOS has supported hardware that old. I’ve got a 4th-gen iPod touch from 2010 that can’t run anything newer than iOS 6. That… Read more »
Brad, Commenting on lpxshow.com truly requires registration, unlike commenting here. check it out! Regarding iOS updates: the iPhone 4s came out in 2011, it is the oldest model supported by iOS 9, that is 5 years later. I said 5 years (which was not a promise by Apple, it’s just the state of affairs, as it seems) from the date of the device’s debut as a brand new model (that was 2011 for the 4s), of course, if you have bought it any time later, you will not enjoy the 5 years on the latest OS on it. Regarding security… Read more »
iOS 9 came out in 2015 though, so that’s 4 years. But the larger point I was making is that when Apple stops offering support, you’re out of luck. My 2010 iPod touch hasn’t received a software update in nearly 3 years and at this point I can’t even update many of the apps on it because newer versions of even the apps I’ve already installed tend to require iOS 7 or later. So either I can replace that iPod with a newer model or I can keep using it without any software updates. With (some) Android devices, I’d have… Read more »
Brad,
I’m not logged into any account here whatsoever, guest posting is enabled on liliputing.com, but not on lpxshow.com.
Let’s say the iPhone 4s came out September 1st, 2011 and it is going to be compatible with the latest iOS version up until August 31st, 2016 (both dates rounding to months, but roughly to Apple events/product updates). That is full 5 calendar years, at least, this is how I calculated. Sorry for the confusion.
Ahh…. clearly I haven’t dug into the Disqus settings in a long time. Just turned on support for guest comments on LPXShow.com. Sorry about the mixup! As for the time frame, what I was trying to point out is that: The iPhone 4S is the exception, not the rule. It’s much more common for Apple to drop support for older devices after around 3 years. And although it can run iOS 9, it’s missing support for many new features including in the OS: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2… But I think we’re in agreement that the Fairphone 2 is clearly not for everyone. 🙂
My point with the iPhone 4s is, sure it does not run all the latest built-in apps and features designed for the latest hardware, which is. 5 times, 10 times faster? (I don’t have the numbers in front of me, and I’m lazy to look up). The point is, it can still run your bitcoin wallet and online banking securely up to 5 years after the device’s original launch date, which is fine. Did I say I’m a security-conscious person? 😉 And sure, YMMW for what do you require from your devices. Try that with any Android. Not trolling (hopefully!),… Read more »
TL;DR, there is a price to pay: it’s a brick, thick and heavy.
The dimensions are concealed in a support page (they’re missing from the tech specs from the Phone page). They’re 126 x 63.5 x 10 mm. This is the Galaxy S from 2010 (9.9 mm).
More unfortunate, it weights 163 g. That old Galaxy S was 119 g.
Compare it with the iPhone SE which is the current state of the art in for that phone format: 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm and 113 g.
However, it’s a nice start.