Looks great! For other T-Mobile users, it actually supports the full range of frequency bands. Quite a few devices claim T-Mobile support but are then missing band 12 or 71 on LTE or n71 on 5G, all of which are critical for coverage outside of cities.
Likely because Verizon will only let "certified by Verizon" devices on their network, while AT&T and T-Mo will let pretty much anything with an LTE modem connect.
I purchased a Fairphone 6 thinking I was going to solve a lot of issues I had with more popular phone models. This has not been the case. I think that when all is said and done, Fairphone will have done more to hurt the concept of device repairability than help it.
Examples:
Within a month of purchase, the little upper speaker grill/mesh sticker fell out. Now this is why I bought a Fairphone - a few clicks, a few days wait and a few screws later and I can easily replace it... not the case. They wanted me to warranty/send in my phone for a sticker replacement on "the world's most repairable phone." Not a great first impression.
Another system update they shipped bricked my sim card. No support, no help, just me with a permanent fear of installing any updates in the future.
A friend had the Fair Phone 4. It broke after a year. Hostile customer support, not worth her time. Idk. Stories of "good guy" indie companies who drop you as soon as you fell for their marketing keep piling up. It may be greed, short sightedness or an incompetent understanding of what it means to have customers, the results are the same. See Framework for another example of this.
This doesn't match my experience at all. I'm writing this from my fairphone 3 purchased in 2019 the day of release. I purchased one for me, one for my wife. I replaced the battery on mine once, my wife never had to change it. Her phone started so show sign of age a few month ago, she switched to the FP6. I will switch to the FP6+ soon as the support come to end this month for the FP3 (I could switch this one to eOS, but performance wise, it's not in it's prime, so I figured I could afford an upgrade after 7 years ^^). I reached out to support quite a few times for my wife or I (for order reasons, issues with operators, bugs, etc) and they have always been excellent for me.
Also as you probably noted, I'm quite enthusiastic about their products and have convinced a bunch of my surrounding to purchase fairphones when they had to change phone (models 3, 4 and 5 so far). I never had any of them tell me they regreted following my recommendation and as far as I know they still use their fairphones.
My Prusa Core One 3D printer has had two upgrades available at reasonable prices since I purchased it. These upgrade kits are a bit more involved than swapping out a battery or camera but in the end, I will have the latest hardware. They are a great example of "good guys" continuing to hold up their end of the bargain. I hope they make some profit from the upgrade kits because this kind of relationship is worth rewarding.
Moral licensing probably. If they get social points for building a “fair” product they’re less incentivized to be “fair” in other areas. Also why the people who virtue signal the most tend to be the quite rude irl.
Supply Chain is hard, Apple is the pro at it. Small companies struggle. Who are the founders? Are they experienced in hardware? They are doing something ambitious (keeping old stuff in stock costs money).
Just checked, as of now all the Fairbud parts seem to be out of stock defeating the entire purpose. Maybe they will get more stock once the sales kick off.
How often do you connect stuff to your phone, and for what purposes? I genuinely wonder!
I can't remember the last time I connected my phone to my computer for other purposes than charging the phone, but that's me and we all use our stuff different ways
You can install Linux on this device. If it had proper dock support, this would be 'the' phone I've been looking for. There is a not insignificant number of users in the forum that are skipping this phone for that reason. It would have been my first.
There are only 264 replies in that forum total, and not every reply is a unique individual.
I would say that it’s easy to make an argument that this is quite an insignificant number of users even for a niche smartphone manufacturer. I can’t imagine that a lot of people actually dock their phone to use as a desktop. I would be surprised if the percent of smartphone users who do that eclipsed 0.5%.
My understanding in the iPhone world is that the most common use case for fast USB-C connectivity tends to be people doing content creation work where they’re generating a lot of high fidelity camera footage rapidly and offloading it into external storage and other professional solutions.
See, that's all fine and dandy, but I would not recommend this phone to normal people anyway - especially with their record of introducing random bugs. Their whole strategy is going after niche buyers. Most people just want a phone and go through their carrier or Apple.
I have a friend who was looking into the phone and he was about to purchase it before I mentioned the port, but yes we are just geeks.
The first section talks about a long warranty and sustainability. It talks about long battery life and the replaceable battery.
The next section, which is rather large, talks about the camera benefits. This is a huge section and is a very mainstream selling point.
Next is AI and Gemini, a small section.
Next is Moments, their phone mindfulness suite aimed at people battling smartphone attention/addiction issues, a very common concern among users.
Finally, the last section talks about sustainability as well as tips on switching and “what’s in the box.”
So really, zero of the marketing is aimed at niche buyers. They’re looking to sell to people who want a very normal phone experience but want something long-lasting, intentional, and sustainable, and they still need it primarily as a device to capture photos and memories as well as all the normal daily life use you’d expect.
There is zero mention of niche/nerdy features in the marketing. Tinkering and software customization is never mentioned. Professional/enthusiast use cases are never mentioned. There’s nothing talking about terminal emulation or alternative operating systems or anything of that sort.
> My understanding in the iPhone world is that the most common use case for fast USB-C connectivity tends to be people doing content creation work where they’re generating a lot of high fidelity camera footage rapidly and offloading it into external storage and other professional solutions.
I mean, Apple also enforces a difference in what is an iPhone vs an iPad vs a Mac, at both the OS and the application levels, regardless of what little distinction the internals have. Even without bringing mainline Linux into it, Android is generally looser about that.
> I can’t imagine that a lot of people actually dock their phone to use as a desktop.
It doesn't have to be all the time; there are lots of use cases where big displays are occasional. Pocket gaming, for instance.
Ah, that makes sense, thanks! I tried that way back when Windows phone was a thing (using my phone as a desktop), I even had a small dock for my Lumia 925. It worked well enough for presentations and RDPing into my workstation.
I for one would have loved to be able to plug a screen into the phone for a somewhat better experience + peripherals. With the 12 GB RAM though I hope to be able to runs minimal VMs and then rustdesk/VNC into those for work on the phone? It's not the same though...
I don't need USB for speed, it's all via the network anyway, even pics and videos are in Immich by the time I've found my cable.
DisplayPort Alt-Mode is important for when you smash your phone but you _need_ to access data that is on it. Maybe its your photos, text messages, or access to a banking app. Without DP Alt-Mode you're going to be waiting for a screen replacement to ship, with DP Alt-Mode you're just plugging your phone into your dock like a laptop.
Personally I would have seriously considered this phone if it wasn't for the lack of DP Alt-Mode. It would be a tiny portable Linux computer with an unlimited internet connection available anywhere. It would be the perfect thin-client. My cellular plan limits my tethered bandwidth so using the phone as my computer rather than as my computer's modem has real benefits.
I saved al my sons data from this Samsung S10 using their Dex thing after his screen broke. Was really nice.
FP6+ would have been a no brainer for me if it had such a feature (would need to work on /e/ though) for some light dev work. Still going to buy one though (just messed up my iPhone 12 mini cams and faceID with some of Malaysia's high humidity.)
When we are travelling, we often hook up our phones to a hotel/apartment TV with a DP-Alt to HDMI adapter to use our own streaming services/apps. A phone without DP-Alt would be a no-go.
Syncing music is my main use case where USB 2 is annoying. Beyond that, pulling photos of the phone, but I rarely do that to an extent that USB 2 speeds become a problem.
Is wireless connectivity a barrier there? My home WiFi goes about twice as fast as USB 2.0.
My photos (I use Ente, not Google or Apple) sync in the background on WiFi, primarily while I sleep. It’s my understanding that Immich works the same way.
For music syncing I’d probably set up Syncthing-Fork and then never manually transfer again.
When I transfer ROMs to my Android gaming handheld I just use my local NAS and connect with CX File Manager. My handheld has USB 3.0 but I don’t find that plugging in a cable is particularly convenient, especially since the NAS box is in my closet.
My iPhone 17 Pro Max has very fast USB-C but I’ve never used it for anything besides charging. I’m sure professional content creation folks know of a workflow where fast USB is helpful but for my smartphone user I can’t think of a reason to use it.
The app I use to sync, Musicbee, doesn't work on Linux, so I have to use Wine, which for stupid reasons prevents me from syncing wirelessly. Just syncing the files isn't the problem. Syncing the metadata (number of times a song has been played, favourites) is the problem, and just dragging-and-dropping the the files onto my phone doesn't solve for this.
If I could do it wirelessly, I would, but I've never found it to be reliable in the first place the few times I've used it before (times may have changed).
I currently travel between two office locations, with identical setup (screen, dock, mouse and keyboard, ...) so i just close the laptop lid and plug in the office's type C cable coming from the screen.
Sometimes i bring along my laptop so i keep my work laptop where it's at and RDP into it from the other location (laptop just plugs into the type C cable).
Nothing really special, but it's really nice.
Then, back when google enabled desktop mode on most pixels, i of course tried it. Neat, but it's just a shittier gnome desktop with very few desktop apps. If it was a full fledged windows phone with a KDE-Touch interface that rendered a full desktop when docked, oh boy wouldn't it be neat?
Another thing to consider: For some goddamn reason i have a couple of samsung flaships that will refuse to talk to ADB if i use a 2.0 Cable. Has to be 3.0 or type C <-> Type C
IIRC costs and/or size. I agree, silly change. Going from the blue to green theme is another silly change, as is renaming scheme. I like many things this company does, but some decisions I question.
I also bet a smaller, less powerful smartphone with 3.5 mm would sell like hot cakes.
You need to transfer more than 480Mbps over a hard line to and from your phone? Seems like a niche requirement that even iPhone 17 doesn't bother with. Or is it psychological 'nunber must go up and usb number went from 2 to 3 many years ago so now 2 bad'
Previous versions of the Fairphone did have USB3, and also Displayport Alt Mode, so you could plug the phone into a display and use Android Desktop. There's more to a given version of USB than line rate.
I have a fairphone 5 and actively don't like it when it asks me if I want to mirror my screen when I plug it into a charging cable attached to a monitor.
Then you can make a tidy profit upgrading to the Fairphone 6 series and selling your phone to someone who wants that functionality. What is the point you're trying to make? We already knew different people have different preferences.
"[GrapheneOS] lost most interest in that hardware due to the poor way privacy, security, updates and marketing based on these things has been handled."
I'm sure their concerns are valid but just because GrapheneOS don't consider the Fairphone to meet their standards for security doesn't mean it is not worth considering for other people who may have different priorities. Fairphones have certain advantages over Pixels such as better repairability and more ethically sourced labour/components. IMO it's good to see the Fairphone do well (and I hope GrapheneOS's partnership with Motorola also goes well).
Is it pettiness or just sticking to their morals? Murena, as they mentioned, forwards data to OpenAI which is against pretty much everything Graphene stands for.
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe:
> The earlier Voice to Text was a Premium-only, online feature: it streamed your speech to a third-party AI transcription service through an anonymising proxy, so it required a Murena Workspace Premium subscription and an internet connection.
> The new Voice to Text is free, offline and on-device
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe:
It is not petty to correct misinformation. You are downplaying the seriousness of the situation by painting it as some kind of drama. /e/OS objectively has poor privacy and security for numerous reasons, there was no "falling out", and GrapheneOS is not critiquing it based on emotion.
GrapheneOS is a privacy project first, does not come bundled with any google services, and only makes connections to 1st party services by default. /e/OS includes many google services with privileged OS integration. GrapheneOS is far more effective at the goal you state /e/OS has than /e/OS.
You can buy used Pixels, e.g. from 8a up. I'd claim that this is much more ecological than buying a new Fairphone. I suppose that a Pixel is of a higher quality and has less defects than a Fairphone (which changed the ODM several times). --
This said, I would never use /e/ and Murena as I read too many things I don't like.
Fairphones have very poor updates with rapidly degrading privacy and security over their lifespan. They don't keep up with important updates from the beginning and it gets much worse over time. Updates are very important for sustainability. They're also missing important hardware-based security protections which are needed to protect user data in the real world. They've consistently had major issues such as using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and OS images which they've usually failed to acknowledge.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch with no movement to updating to a newer one. Fairphone 6 is set to end up in the same situation and it isn't far away. They nearly entirely stop providing Linux privacy and security patches once this happens.
Android patches come around half a year late since the Android Security Bulletins themselves are published very late and Fairphone lags 1-2 months or more behind those.
There's extremely little information available on Fairphone's ODM partner T2Mobile and their supply chain. The information is mainly a list of suppliers without information on working conditions, pay, environmental protection or nearly anything else. T2Mobile has been their ODM since the Fairphone 4 and earlier information is no longer relevant. They moved away from their original ODM partnership to another with the Fairphone 3 and then to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4. It's unclear if pay and working conditions are better at T2Mobile for Fairphones than they are for their other products and in what way they're better. It's unclear how it comes to Foxconn for Apple and Google phones.
Apple and Google design their devices and handle the firmware and software. Fairphone is using hardware, firmware and software provided by T2Mobile. Fairphone is heavily reliant on what's provided by their ODM. For example, their move to T2Mobile coincided with dropping the 3.5mm audio jack. It's likely not something they wanted to do and many of their supporters were unhappy about it, but it's not really their phone hardware. The phones are essentially T2Mobile devices and there's not a lot of information available. It isn't clear why they switched to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 or why the earlier switch to another ODM happened with the Fairphone 3.
You can always flash and factory reset. I’d bet 99.9% of phones on eBay are by and for general public and not some esoteric zero days in the wild that your comment makes it sound like.
Fairphones have atrocious updates which means they aren't sustainable devices. They use a multiple generation old SoC from the beginning with an artificially shortened lifespan.
Fairphones are currently designed and assembled by T2Mobile. T2Mobile even signs the firmware on the devices. Prior to the Fairphone 4, they had 2 previous ODM partnerships. They're limited to what their ODM offers which was likely the reason they dropped the 3.5mm audio jack when they moved to T2Mobile for the Fairphone 4. The working conditions and supply chain management are largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone.
There's a severe lack of actual evidence for Fairphones having a more ethical or sustainable assembly and supply chain than Apple. It's likely each one takes more resources to produce and they definitely don't provide comparable updates.
The e/OS/ CEO said during an interview [1] that GrapheneOS, being a security hardened product, was especially useful for p*ophiles to evade justice. This is totally unacceptable. People defending e/OS/ (and Murena, same people, just branding for devices) are either dishonest or useful idiots.
In the current version of /e/OS, Voice to Text runs offline.
> The earlier Voice to Text was a Premium-only, online feature: it streamed your speech to a third-party AI transcription service [...] The new Voice to Text is free, offline and on-device
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe. Here are 2 clear examples:
>I want to like GrapheneOS, but the pettiness of its leadership is a real problem
I used to feel a bit similarly. But I've since realized they are one of the very few software projects that actually make sensible privacy and security choices.
The privacy and security deficiencies of CalyxOS have nothing to do with compromises for usability. GrapheneOS provides much better usability including through having far broader app compatibility.
CalyxOS drastically reduces privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project. It recently went a whole year without privacy and security patches. They're currently months behind on providing current Pixel driver and firmware updates. It has never been a privacy or security hardened OS but rather the direct opposite.
An operating system going a year without providing privacy and security patches is much worse than many options on that basis alone. It's currently months behind on updates. It's hardly the only other option available.
As someone that swapped from fairphone 5 to a pixel9a with graphene.
I have to side with graphene.
Fairphone is a cool concept, but its a expensive phone, early on i had problem with the speakers and mic. Security updates are extremely slow, support is extremely slow.
Their missions is to make a fair phone, but is it fair if you are then forced to buy more ewaste because your phone breaks?
Look at pixel software support, its really good, and eu made batteries replacement mandatory.
Fairphones continue to have awful updates, privacy and security. /e/ sending user speech data to OpenAI without consent for years never had anything to do with why Fairphones don't meet our requirements.
Refusing to work with organizations or individuals that are detrimental to privacy and security is not petty.
Murena does not provide private or secure products and has positioned itself to be against what GrapheneOS provides. A partnership with a company opposed to GrapheneOS and spreading misinformation about it would not be beneficial, and it is not petty to make the smart choice for the benefit of privacy and security.
The Graphene devs can be a bit obsessive about security, but with a starting price above $600, I think the average user is probably better off with a Pixel 10a bought on sale closer to $300. The stock Fairphone OS seems to include Google services, which is kind of surprising and at odds with the focus on user control and all that.
Fairphones don't provide bare minimum privacy and security. Expecting that is not being obsessive. The flaws are increasingly glaring and easier than ever to exploit thanks to advances in AI models. People should care about this and should get a device with reasonable privacy and security such as an iPhone instead.
Fairphone 5 and earlier having an end-of-life Linux kernel with the Fairphone 6 coming up next is a disaster. Many months of delays for standard Android userspace patches from when they can first be shipped and years of delays for the full patches is also a major problem. An increasingly small portion of the patches is backported to older releases and they have months of delays for those.
Fairphones are also missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. People have come to expect their device will provide strong encryption with a random 6 digit PIN rather than a very strong passphrase but that's not the case with a Fairphone.
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS without Google Mobile Services with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly claimed highly private and secure devices mainly benefit criminals and pedophiles along with peddling other authoritarian talking points. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS devices are mainly used by criminals and aren't useful to regular people.
Despite the marketing, /e/ has very poor privacy and security. /e/ has their own invasive services with tracking, gives highly privileged access to default enabled Google services and doesn't keep up with basic updates. It greatly rolls back privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project.
One thing in the story is that the SPU - the secure enclave on Qualcomm chips that is separate from just running on TrustZone on the main processor - is only available on Snapdragon 8 and X tier products. It's market segmented away from 7 series and below.
Also, I think Qualcomm has only started supporting MTE on Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Older and cheaper SoCs do not support it yet. Outside that, I think only Google Tensor, recent Exynos generations, and Apple A-series support MTE (though IIRC Apple has an improved extension of it).
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has at support for MTE. It doesn't yet support running the whole kernel and userspace with it in practice as GrapheneOS requires but we're going to be working on it with Motorola and Qualcomm.
Fairphones have awful updates for the firmware and drivers with months of delays. They end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel and hardware components. Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life kernels which aren't receiving the vast majority of important privacy and security patches.
They're missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. They don't provide proper encryption protecting user data for the vast majority of users not setting a very strong passphrase.
The main hardware and update requirements for GrapheneOS are listed here:
It should be doable with cooperation between the two, right?
If we add that FSF aims to provide free alternatives to some vendor blobs the landscape begins to look promising.[0]
One party to provide needed specs for hardware, one party to free the hardware from vendor blobs and another party to merge this into a working product.
> I guess, my attack model for my personal phones doesn't really account for "my phone got stolen", I'm far more worried about impersonation and remote phone hijacking than needing to be safe from confiscation from feds.
Even if you only care about "remote phone hijacking", not being able to provide timely vendor blob/drivers/kernel means you're wide open for EoP exploits.
As for why they take such a hard line on physical security, well it's their project and they can have whatever high standards they want, especially if they want to project an image of being an absolute secure phone. The code's all open source so it's not too hard to port to another device, especially nowadays with AI.
Fairphone lags many months behind on Android privacy/security patches. They also end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel without the vast majority of the most important patches which is the case for the Fairphone 5 and earlier. It's not far away for the Fairphone 6. Moving to new Linux kernel branches is an expectation by Google and the upstream Linux kernel for OEMs but Fairphone isn't doing it.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. That's why those are relevant. Fairphones without /e/ still lack reasonable privacy and security, but they're a lot worse with it.
/e/ and Murena have very poor privacy and security for their products combined with very inaccurate marketing. They've repeatedly portrayed private and secure devices as mainly benefiting and being used by criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own explicit choices of words. They've claimed this dozens of times about GrapheneOS including alongside France's national agencies making these inaccurate claims. More information with sources:
Fairphone also had the publicly available test key flagged as trusted by the boot loader at one point, which probably discourages projects like GOS, since it makes it harder to trust the hardware to not be a weak link in security.
Fairphones lack the updates and hardware-based security features expected by GrapheneOS.
They're missing hardware security features needed to provide strong encryption for the vast majority of users not using a very strong passphrase. They're similarly missing hardware-based protections heavily used in GrapheneOS to protect from exploitation including remote attacks.
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS without Google Mobile Services with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly claimed highly private and secure devices mainly benefit criminals and pedophiles along with peddling other authoritarian talking points. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS devices are mainly used by criminals and aren't useful to regular people. Fairphone has chosen to stand with this company included when contacted by the media about criticism.
Despite the marketing, /e/ has very poor privacy and security. /e/ has their own invasive services with tracking, gives highly privileged access to default enabled Google services and doesn't keep up with basic updates. It greatly rolls back privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project.
How have the Fairbuds XL been for you? Have you used any other similar headphones before Fairbuds (asking for your comparison).
I love my Airpod Maxes but I have spend way too much money and time keeping this thing maintained. Once it finally kicks the can, I really want to try something more repair friendly.
Yeah, but only the Fairphone 4 (which is very dated at this point), and only from Murena which is a can of worms in itself. Support also ranges from non-existent to atrocious.
It's a ten dollar dongle that can stay attached to your audio cable out of the way when not using it and has no perceptible affect on sound quality, and there's even passthrough options for when you need to charge, so the whole no-audio-jack thing is a moot point nowadays. It's a solved problem for years now.
Using a dongle makes it impossible to charge the phone or connect it to any other device while using audio, which I do all the time. I also frequently interchange my wired earbuds between my phone and laptop, and don't want to be bothered with an extra loose dongle when I disconnect the earbuds.
Sorry, this isn't a solved problem at all, apart from the solution of only buying phones that have audio jacks.
I have a passthrough dongle so I can charge my iPhone in the car and use an aux audio patch cable, and it's quite a large thing, certainly not unobtrusive but if you're charging maybe that doesn't really matter.
Exactly. Hard pass on a phone without a 3.5mm headphone jack.
People who say, “You can use a dongle” or “Just buy Bluetooth earphones” are missing the point. It’s never about what compromises we, as consumers, can make; it’s about users’ choices and preferences.
I’m fine with manufacturers wanting to make more money by selling dongles or Bluetooth earphones, but I’ll never accept them doing so by removing features to force us to buy them.
It's also extremely expensive. I'm more interested on seeing the next iteration of the PinePhone to fulfill the full Linux phone dream. In the meantime, commodity Android phones are still good enough.
Not just significantly weaker. The Librem 5 uses the Cortex-A53 low-end ARM designs from 2012, and that particular NXP chip is not among the better implementations. The 3GB of RAM is anemic and becomes a greater restriction as time goes on. Many features simply haven't been implemented (most of the sensors) and those that have been that are technically difficult (i.e. camera) provide only a bare experience.
If we're honest about it, the Librem 5 is not something to use as your main phone, it's a toy to experiment with.
You dishonestly promote an $800 product in comment after comment.
Hiding your obvious shilling behind the moral cloak of "activism" is pathetic. It's worse than pathetic, as it runs the risk of harming genuine activism.
They really probably aren't going to get lifetime updates to their modem's closed-source firmware. They can't even get timely updates to their modem's closed-source firmware.
It's great that the OS is open source, it really is. But all bits going out over the cellular radio are handled by proprietary firmware, same as every other phone out there.
Educate me: Is there a way to know when the modem's firmware needs updating? When was the last update shipped?
I missed that at the time. I'm flattered that you elevated me to strcat's level, as if your two links are remotely comparative. I'm just a dude hoping to find a viable way out of this tech duopoly hellscape on a reasonably viable and high-performing stack.
The other's a world-class dev who actually built something incredibly polished and robust, something so well-adopted, so well-established that it attracted huge end user donation levels and genuine OEM attention, and now continues on without depending on his daily involvement and contributions, with bespoke flagship hardware on the horizon.
Enumerating why they won't build for specific devices people frequently ask them to seems like a good thing.
In the past you've asked them to support certain hardware. They took the time to explain why they wouldn't. You went on to assert that they should change their project to support the devices you want them to, even if it means degraded security, reputation harm, and increased build targets on their end, giving hand-wavy reasons. You've done that repeatedly. As if you have some right to another open source project's labor. I've explained all this to you numerous times. Why are we doing it again?
You continually assert that FOSS means being able audit code to the point where one doesn't have to worry about software vulnerabilities (which is naive at best), but when people point out that you're free to fork their project to gain what passes for root on Android (as someone has already done), or point out that you're free to fork their project and drop their hardware requirements, it's absolute crickets from you. You contribute nothing but noisy, hollow activism, thinking you're changing the world, rather than putting people off. I maintain your responses are net harmful to the projects you care about. I've explained this to you before, too.
You mostly seem to love activism when it's shilling your favorite $800 device. Everything else, not so much.
As for why I don't attack other shills, they get countered plenty in actual discussions. That's how it's supposed to work. I have no deep-seated need to bother with this.
Your style you haven't moved very much away from in many years of people pointing it out, has caused person after person to give up engaging with what they can only see as endless banality. Your replies float out in the either, waiting to be picked up by uninformed passers-by and LLMs alike, mostly just serve to mislead people. I've explained this to you before multiple times. I'm not doing it to change your mind. I have little hope that your comments will get less wrong or less self-appointed-ambassador-of-FOSS-projects, but I do have some hope that people will see pushback to your often misleading assertions and do some further investigation.
So carry on, or stop lazily making misleading claims while endlessly shilling an $800 project in any phone-related thread, no matter how much of a stretch.
I gotta hand it to you, you're like a walking, self-contained Gish gallop. The zeal would be incredibly useful, if only it could be tempered and harnessed by other qualities.
You used to do the, 'I can never get answers to my simple questions' routine, until I started engaging. Then, every time I say 'you keep doing this,' if I don't provide links, you complain that I didn't provide links. When I do provide links, you either move the goalposts, or drop the thread there. It's happened multiple times. To multiple respondents. You're impervious to most responses, so it's pointless to try.
As I have said before to you, I am completely content to let your comment history speak for itself for anyone who wants to go back and look. It's all there.
> You like to promote GOS
Terrible equivalency. "fsflover" is on here shilling FSF-certified devices multiple times daily, sometimes. Meanwhile, I had to go back six months: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46852121
But please let me know if and when I ever recommend it to people who expressed no interest in it, for whom it would be a terrible technical solution! I should be called out on that.
> I mentioned Qubes countless times, too.
You know that I know that, because it often makes me cringe when you do and I step in to clarify. I honestly wish you wouldn't. I've spent absurd amounts of time correcting and explaining comments you've made about Qubes OS this year. You damage the project's reputation with your worse-than-empty one-liner recommendations, turning people off to it. But I've noticed you've made a little more effort lately to stop doing that. Thanks for the effort, really. I appreciate it.
But you still come off as a fanboy, from the username to the comments to the style. I'd honestly be surprised if the net migration caused for your projects was positive. Hopefully it is.
Go ahead and continue to educate people about the Librem 5. I'm happy for people to learn about it if they don't already know. You and your sidekick are eager, even stating the main thing that needs to happen to unlock an open phone utopia is that Purism revenues need to increase. You guys are being totally candid about your intent.
Just maybe act less surprised when comments that come across as misleading or outright shilling get challenged. It's harming your favorite projects' reputation, and it's running the risk of misinforming people for the purposes activism, which is when you know you've crossed over into ultra-activism.
BTW, many of the folks on the Qubes and Purism forums do a significantly better job of discussing the projects. Directing people to relevant threads there frequented by a variety of well-articulated points of view might be a better bet.
Praying that fairphone somehow makes a foldable one day. My next phone will probably be a fold 8 because I really want a nice reading experience on the go, but I love the philosophy and love my framework laptop.
Considering the big players with R&D budgets valued in the billions have been struggling to make foldable phones, I can't imagine a niche player making one.
Fairphone as a whole feels like a company that prioritises the mission, but only this mission of ethical and reusable hardware. The user experience for power users who are most likely to recommend their devices feels like a let-down.
Love this idea but carrier limitations, eSIM limitations, kind of an odd start. I am sure it’s licensing and radio costs or limitations. But I would assume anything launching nowadays would support esims 100% and could jump networks without an issue.
I got excited about this until i realized still no graphene. It seems like both sides have a huge incentive to support the other, I wish they would make it happen.
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.
An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.
Edit: adding to the last point, the same applies to Fairphone but inversely, where they portray themselves as things they are not (sustainable, specially repairable, ethical, even privacy-respecting). Whereas a takeaway from your comment is that GrapheneOS is good but has a negative image (a false premise, in my opinion), Fairphone puts a lot of *effort* to construct a good image that signals the inverse of what they are. Effort ultimately signals intention.
Fairphone doesn't design or build smartphones themselves but rather their ODM partner does both. It isn't within their control to make devices meeting our requirements. When Fairphone moved to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4, it came with significant changes to the hardware, firmware and software not within their control. They likely didn't want to remove the 3.5mm audio jack but the overall design of the devices isn't up to them. They want to portray themselves as being the ones designing the devices and stood behind it, but they likely didn't want it.
Fairphone has made it very clear they don't consider their awful updates and lack of important hardware-based security features to be a significant problem. Their response to our points has consistently been to downplay it. Fairphone has also consistently taken the approach of not responding to serious security issues such as several generations of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and/or the OS. Not acknowledging or addressing a security issue beyond partially fixing it for subsequent devices is worse than simply downplaying it.
/e/ and Murena spent years actively misleading people about GrapheneOS before we began regularly responding to it. They've taken the approach of misleading people into wrongly believing it isn't usable, isn't compatible with apps, somehow isn't a privacy project and much more. Their efforts have done immense harm to GrapheneOS, especially in Europe where they've mislead many companies and governments about it. /e/ and Murena have heavily pushed the false narrative of GrapheneOS not being usable by regular people but rather primarily useful to criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own words. These are 2 examples where they said it more broadly about hardened devices in general:
They've been doing this towards GrapheneOS specifically for years by misleading people about what it provides and wrongly painting it as an OS for criminals. Fairphone chose to become directly involved in this by responding to questions from the media based on a post with made about Murena with inaccurate claims. They chose to mislead people and to try to make it seem as if the accurate information we provided wasn't correct. Fairphone is not a bystander but rather explicitly sided with Murena in their attacks on GrapheneOS. Claiming highly private and secure devices are primarily benefiting criminals is outrageous and yet Fairphone backs the company repeatedly pushing this.
I would buy this phone in a second over a 17e. Replaceable parts? Expandable storage? Any companies that says they care about the environment and does not have these things are just liars.
Unfortunately, there were quite a lot early reports of users whose FP6 volume buttons broke or their logic boards during charging. Both are components that are not user-replaceable and it often takes Fairphone 4-6 weeks to repair them. Similarly, the head band on their FairBuds XL regularly break for a bunch of people (user replaceable, but you still have to go through their slow support if you do not want to pay for the replacement yourself).
Fairphone (in contrast to Apple) are also known for introducing really bad bugs and then not fixing them for months. Like how the FP4 could only keep a single app in memory after they introduced a memory management bug or how currently a lot of FP6 users are affected by a bug where WiFi stops working (due to an IPv6-related bug) that has been reported in March.
Then there are the really weird design decisions on the FP6. Like, they put the fingerprint scanner in the power button, which makes it nearly impossible to use it one-handed with your left hand if you actually want to unlock it or use fingerprint unlock in an application. And they put the power button on the exact opposite side of the volume down button, so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time.
And then we haven't talked about the hardware. The speakers are pretty mediocre. The camera is only mid. The SoC even caused render slowdowns in 2026 in /e/OS, it's going to be wholly underpowered after 7 years (the new CPU in the plus is barely going to help, the 7s Gen 4 is the Gen 3 with slightly higher clocked cores).
I had the Fairphone 6 and I am happy that I was able to get rid of it for still a fairly OK price (I got it because I like their mission).
> And they put the power button on the exact opposite side of the volume down button, so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time.
To be fair, Apple has nearly the same design.
> I got it because I like their mission
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Yeah, I should criticize them for it too. Though the issue rarely occurs for me on iPhones I think the reason is that the volume buttons are much higher up on the iPhone. So when you do the movement one-handed where the left side rests on your palm and you use a finger to press the power button, the palm doesn't hit volume-down, which does happen on FP6 since the volume buttons are much lower on the side.
It still happened all the time on the FP6 for me after 2 months or so.
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Fairphone has been around since 2013 and all of their models have been plagued by really bad software and hardware issues. I think part of the problem is that the actual hardware and software development is not done by them, but a Chinese ODM (T2Mobile). For clarity, this is not a "everybody produces phones in China". If you look at their Git trees, most commits are from this Chinese ODM. I guess this introduces a delay in fixing issues plus Fairphone is probably just one of their customers.
Also, for anyone worried about security, yes it uses opaque binary blobs of Chinese origin (camera processing stuff by TCL). Well, that aside from usually being months to years behind on Qualcomm firmware blob versions (who do monthly security bulletins) and Linux kernel sources. So Fairphones typically have many known high/critical CVEs.
100% agree that official Sailfish would be awesome. I don't think it is at the point where I could use a SFOS phone as my main, but I definitely want to try it at some point. It's great that there is a company that's working outside iOS/Android.
> so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time
I share that pain. I use a Fairphone 6 as my main phone, and my only real gripes with it are the extremely weak haptic engine and that power button placement.
I mean replacing a battery is something you do, at most, once every 5-7 years. If removing the battery requires a heat gun then it's not the worst thing imo.
5-7 years? With daily use device 100% drain your battery will be about 85-90% health after 1,5 years. Once it gets to 80%, Apple recommends replacement. I'd say replacement should occur at approc 2-3 years of daily usage.
> Critical Notice: The device does not support LTE Band 13 (Verizon's primary coverage frequency).
Presumably that frequency isn't used in Europe? It also says that it's "not certified for use on the Verizon Wireless network." I don't know if that means Verizon might block it (which sounds like a very US thing) or it's related to not supporting the frequency that Verizon uses for LTE.
The evolution of low effort copy+paste LLM response. Now Google can track everyone who wants that information and people can be just as rude as before when they copy+pasted LLM responses into conversations, but now it's sly.
That's been true for much of the history of cellular networks, as far as I know - universal standards in Europe, US phones can't (always) be moved between service providers. It used to be even worse in the US, with phones locked to individual carriers regardless of technology.
That's some of the European over-regulation that everyone complains about, compared to unfettered American competition.
Why use Verizon directly? It's insanely overpriced. US mobile and others provide better prices, service, features, security, and customer service. If it doesn't work on their towers, US mobile allows you to switch to at&t and t mobile towers.
Yeah, that’s a bummer. But I’m seriously thinking about switching to AT&T over this, but I would need to know if the frequencies are covered as good on AT&T.
I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
How are you going to innovate installing hundreds of thousands of cell towers across the USA?
Mobile network via satellite might increase number of network providers by 1 or 2, but the physics problem of needing tons of physical assets to create a wireless network usable by small, low powered devices remains.
I guess you could innovate some new physics that allows you to send wireless signals through more surfaces, that is also not ionizing radiation to animal and plant tissue, and doesn’t need a lot of power to send from a mobile device. That is a lot to ask, though.
Cell towers in the United States are primarily owned by three major companies: American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications. These companies build, acquire, and lease space on the towers to wireless providers.
When you say lease space to wireless providers, what do the carriers do with that leased space? Do you think that could be called infrastructure needed for that carrier’s coverage?
Also, there are enough dead zones that satellite direct to cell is a thing.
If you as a user want a modern, high end or top of the line cell phone, you're pretty much just stuck with Apple or Samsung. Maybe Google. If you remove the minor variants each has that's just 3.
We used to have many more - OnePlus obviously, Honor, Huawei, LeEco, HTC, LG, ASUS, Essential, Blackberry, etc.
> I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
The beginning of your sentence - "I can’t believe how few choices we have..." - can be applied equally sadly to other areas here in the U.S....such as but not limited to lack of choice of residential ISPs, or lack of choice (or generally mis-incentivized) healthcare providers, or lack of choice of mobile service providers, or, etc., or etc. And, of course, your last part of your comment asking where the innovation is? Well, innovation often is pocketed in those who control the capital, and only released little by little at the whims of releasing more capital. Sorry, i have to step away, cuz felt sad instantly just citing my own comments here. :-(
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
The Fairphone (Gen. 6+) comes with upgraded internal hardware that doesn’t compromise on our industry-leading repairability standards. The ‘plus’ isn't about adding features for a longer spec sheet; it's about intentional improvements that keep your device capable for longer.
It really irks me that it still can't get the contrastive clauses right. "it's not about adding (more features), it's about (more features, but with a different emphasis)" is so empty of meaning. how do people copy edit this and not notice?
The sloppiness in the AI comes from the human sloppiness on this topic. This seems like a variant of what I've seen called the "fake because", which is the idea that people don't generally analyze whether or not a given reason actually makes sense. For example, the common advertising "You need to buy this beer because it'll get you the girls". It is obvious to conscious examination by pretty much everyone that this is obviously false... the problem is getting it up to that conscious examination in the first place.
I've also noticed several times the deployment of "It's not about the X, {because} it's actually about the Y" where the connection between the X and the Y has no real logic in it upon examination. That can often be translated to "I want to change the topic to Y" without much loss. I think this is one of the primary ways that AI writing can be really exhausting to work through logically and it gets people who are for whatever reason thinking sloppily, including just the sheer exhaustion of the amount of thinking navigating the modern world takes even for someone who nominally understands how to penetrate this sort of sloppy thinking, into so much trouble when they just trust the torrent of words going by. AIs can very easily hallucinate "fake becauses" at a rate no human could possibly keep up with.
I agree that it's marketing mumbo jumbo, but it's saying "we haven't added more features because more is better, we added them because they actually improve the longevity of the product."
If anything, that sentence tells me that they are insecure of their features being perceived as bullshit.
It's phrased poorly for that point, though. "Unlike the competition, we aren't just adding these features to pad out a spec sheet. Each change we've made for the plus model this year will pay off in improved lifespan and better functionality for you."
Or something in that vein. Like this isn't very hard to write?
I would assume they don’t, and they assume many people aren’t reading it either. Which includes me, even before LLMs came out. I would always skip the marketing and jump to tech specs and pictures/video.
Because you need to show something that executives can parse and people that only want to eat slop writing to read. People literally took marketing material as gospel before. They still do now.
Nice try, but it's generated slop all the way down, Mr. Feynman.
The tech specs aren't safe either. Last year the official Google Store had some laughable AI translations in the specs for their Pixel phones. Eg. "Rear video" was translated to "Rückansicht" ("Rear view"). That nonsensical translation for an audience of 80 million persisted for months. In 2025 blessed vibe-translation of formerly reputable sites really stood out to me.
> Professional editing is both an art and a discipline of diagnosing what a text needs and applying the right level of editorial intervention without flattening voice or intent. This skillset requires language mastery, analysis, and workflow efficiency that many aspiring editors lack. This editing and proofreading course closes that gap by treating editing as a structured profession with repeatable methods. You will discover editing style systems to help you perfect your skillset, while covering specialized domains, ethical considerations, tools and technology, as well as business operations that will help you succeed in your career as a professional editor.
> You will progress through 10 sequential modules and build real-world editor workflows, such as style sheets, author queries, consistency systems, and professional deliverables. You will also strengthen your editorial judgment across various genres and contexts. This online proofreading training program culminates in a capstone editing project that produces industry-standard artifacts, including a marked-up manuscript, editorial letter, style sheet, author queries, and reflective analysis, that will help you demonstrate your competence to prospective employers and clients.
PWP 330 COPYEDITING 3 Units
Apply and further develop skills needed to work with authors and prepare a manuscript for publication. Focus is on the procedures of editing a manuscript, particularly editing for correctness and style, following the conventions of The Chicago Manual of Style.
PREREQ: (PWP 230 AND PWP 310) OR INSTRUCTOR CONSENT
IMO it all comes down to the desire to have too my "copy" without enough to say. the people who generate it don't value their own output enough to try, which is a great way of intuiting that they have had the requirement to create copy delegated to them without them expecting that copy to be useful in any way.
In other words, "doneness" is the metric of quality for most of this stuff.
This has it backwards, it is the AI that writes like cliched AD copy. Feast your eyes on this quote from a whiskey CEO, supposedly written in 2016:
> ‘When you bring people in from overseas [to Scotland], you’re working on their mindsets,’ he says. ‘You make them get a feeling for Scotch. It’s not about an advert, it’s about this magical industry with its rich heritage and this history.
> ‘It’s not about kilts and drums, but it’s about the Highlands, the water, the peat, the stories, and I call it softness – it’s very gentle marketing. A lot of what you’ve got to do is to win the hearts and minds.’
This is something that frustrates me a lot when I see people jumping on a piece of writing as AI generated, these AI-isms didn't show up in a vacuum. Yes, AI commonly overuses some patterns, but it got those patterns from it's training data because real people wrote (and continue to write) that way. A few matching sentences here or there is not the smoking gun people make it out to be.
The other thing that is characteristic of AI text is messing up the underlying meaning or fine details of what it's saying. It's not just that it's imitating people who write bad contrasting clauses, it also can't write good ones reliably.
edit: Ironically that last sentence is not super clear (but hey writing is hard and I'm constantly exposed to slop). My point is the nature of AI makes its writing worse than its training data, it's not all bad training data.
To be fair to committees, the above quote is explicitly from a single person and I expect that is true of most AD copy simply because having one person write it is cheaper.
Committees are more about stamping out flavour by making what exists more bland, rather than adding endlessly regurgitated idioms.
I wonder at what point we're just going to see people writing like AI because they read it so much? That said I'm fine with companies saving money on copywriters
I mean, AI writes copy like this because that's how copywriters did it in the training set. Honestly AI producing it so much is much more likely to make humans avoid it.
> AI writes copy like this because that's how copywriters did it in the training set
I don't think this is true. Someone probably had to write like this, but a base model has to be able to write like anyone. The specific mannerisms of AI appear in post training, either as things that are rewarded or as mode collapse artifacts. ChatGPT didn't get obsessed with goblins because that's incredibly common among humans.
Looks great! For other T-Mobile users, it actually supports the full range of frequency bands. Quite a few devices claim T-Mobile support but are then missing band 12 or 71 on LTE or n71 on 5G, all of which are critical for coverage outside of cities.
The device claims AT&T and Verizon only, I’m curious about that…
To which device are you referring?
The Fairphone 6+ is compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the US and their MVNOs.
https://us.fairphone.com/carrier-compatibility
Oh this is weird. They have some contradicting information.
https://us.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-plus
Click on “see all tech specs” and under “compatibility” it says AT&T and Verizon.
But it lacks Verizon’s primary band and clearly can’t be used with it.
Likely because Verizon will only let "certified by Verizon" devices on their network, while AT&T and T-Mo will let pretty much anything with an LTE modem connect.
Exciting to see this soon after someone got the Fairphone 6 camera working on postmarketOS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338285
The 6+ is a different model, but the announcement says the camera module is the same.
Luca Weiss (Fairphone employee and pmOS dev) has confirmed on the wiki that the FP6 image also works on FP6+: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/index.php?title=Fairphone_%28G...
They even mention that they want to move on to work on the Fairphone 6+.
I purchased a Fairphone 6 thinking I was going to solve a lot of issues I had with more popular phone models. This has not been the case. I think that when all is said and done, Fairphone will have done more to hurt the concept of device repairability than help it.
Examples: Within a month of purchase, the little upper speaker grill/mesh sticker fell out. Now this is why I bought a Fairphone - a few clicks, a few days wait and a few screws later and I can easily replace it... not the case. They wanted me to warranty/send in my phone for a sticker replacement on "the world's most repairable phone." Not a great first impression.
Another system update they shipped bricked my sim card. No support, no help, just me with a permanent fear of installing any updates in the future.
A friend had the Fair Phone 4. It broke after a year. Hostile customer support, not worth her time. Idk. Stories of "good guy" indie companies who drop you as soon as you fell for their marketing keep piling up. It may be greed, short sightedness or an incompetent understanding of what it means to have customers, the results are the same. See Framework for another example of this.
This doesn't match my experience at all. I'm writing this from my fairphone 3 purchased in 2019 the day of release. I purchased one for me, one for my wife. I replaced the battery on mine once, my wife never had to change it. Her phone started so show sign of age a few month ago, she switched to the FP6. I will switch to the FP6+ soon as the support come to end this month for the FP3 (I could switch this one to eOS, but performance wise, it's not in it's prime, so I figured I could afford an upgrade after 7 years ^^). I reached out to support quite a few times for my wife or I (for order reasons, issues with operators, bugs, etc) and they have always been excellent for me.
Also as you probably noted, I'm quite enthusiastic about their products and have convinced a bunch of my surrounding to purchase fairphones when they had to change phone (models 3, 4 and 5 so far). I never had any of them tell me they regreted following my recommendation and as far as I know they still use their fairphones.
My Prusa Core One 3D printer has had two upgrades available at reasonable prices since I purchased it. These upgrade kits are a bit more involved than swapping out a battery or camera but in the end, I will have the latest hardware. They are a great example of "good guys" continuing to hold up their end of the bargain. I hope they make some profit from the upgrade kits because this kind of relationship is worth rewarding.
Moral licensing probably. If they get social points for building a “fair” product they’re less incentivized to be “fair” in other areas. Also why the people who virtue signal the most tend to be the quite rude irl.
Supply Chain is hard, Apple is the pro at it. Small companies struggle. Who are the founders? Are they experienced in hardware? They are doing something ambitious (keeping old stuff in stock costs money).
Just checked, as of now all the Fairbud parts seem to be out of stock defeating the entire purpose. Maybe they will get more stock once the sales kick off.
USB 2.0 port is the only thing preventing me from purchasing one. A wild choice since I believe previous versions did not have this limitation.
How often do you connect stuff to your phone, and for what purposes? I genuinely wonder!
I can't remember the last time I connected my phone to my computer for other purposes than charging the phone, but that's me and we all use our stuff different ways
You can install Linux on this device. If it had proper dock support, this would be 'the' phone I've been looking for. There is a not insignificant number of users in the forum that are skipping this phone for that reason. It would have been my first.
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp6-discussion-about-usb-2-and...
There are only 264 replies in that forum total, and not every reply is a unique individual.
I would say that it’s easy to make an argument that this is quite an insignificant number of users even for a niche smartphone manufacturer. I can’t imagine that a lot of people actually dock their phone to use as a desktop. I would be surprised if the percent of smartphone users who do that eclipsed 0.5%.
My understanding in the iPhone world is that the most common use case for fast USB-C connectivity tends to be people doing content creation work where they’re generating a lot of high fidelity camera footage rapidly and offloading it into external storage and other professional solutions.
See, that's all fine and dandy, but I would not recommend this phone to normal people anyway - especially with their record of introducing random bugs. Their whole strategy is going after niche buyers. Most people just want a phone and go through their carrier or Apple.
I have a friend who was looking into the phone and he was about to purchase it before I mentioned the port, but yes we are just geeks.
I think their early adopters being niche tech nerds is a very different concept than who they are targeting through their marketing.
Scroll down the marketing page and take note of which subjects take up the largest chunk of the page space:
https://us.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-plus
The first section talks about a long warranty and sustainability. It talks about long battery life and the replaceable battery.
The next section, which is rather large, talks about the camera benefits. This is a huge section and is a very mainstream selling point.
Next is AI and Gemini, a small section.
Next is Moments, their phone mindfulness suite aimed at people battling smartphone attention/addiction issues, a very common concern among users.
Finally, the last section talks about sustainability as well as tips on switching and “what’s in the box.”
So really, zero of the marketing is aimed at niche buyers. They’re looking to sell to people who want a very normal phone experience but want something long-lasting, intentional, and sustainable, and they still need it primarily as a device to capture photos and memories as well as all the normal daily life use you’d expect.
There is zero mention of niche/nerdy features in the marketing. Tinkering and software customization is never mentioned. Professional/enthusiast use cases are never mentioned. There’s nothing talking about terminal emulation or alternative operating systems or anything of that sort.
> My understanding in the iPhone world is that the most common use case for fast USB-C connectivity tends to be people doing content creation work where they’re generating a lot of high fidelity camera footage rapidly and offloading it into external storage and other professional solutions.
I mean, Apple also enforces a difference in what is an iPhone vs an iPad vs a Mac, at both the OS and the application levels, regardless of what little distinction the internals have. Even without bringing mainline Linux into it, Android is generally looser about that.
> I can’t imagine that a lot of people actually dock their phone to use as a desktop.
It doesn't have to be all the time; there are lots of use cases where big displays are occasional. Pocket gaming, for instance.
Ah, that makes sense, thanks! I tried that way back when Windows phone was a thing (using my phone as a desktop), I even had a small dock for my Lumia 925. It worked well enough for presentations and RDPing into my workstation.
I for one would have loved to be able to plug a screen into the phone for a somewhat better experience + peripherals. With the 12 GB RAM though I hope to be able to runs minimal VMs and then rustdesk/VNC into those for work on the phone? It's not the same though...
I don't need USB for speed, it's all via the network anyway, even pics and videos are in Immich by the time I've found my cable.
DisplayPort Alt-Mode is important for when you smash your phone but you _need_ to access data that is on it. Maybe its your photos, text messages, or access to a banking app. Without DP Alt-Mode you're going to be waiting for a screen replacement to ship, with DP Alt-Mode you're just plugging your phone into your dock like a laptop.
Personally I would have seriously considered this phone if it wasn't for the lack of DP Alt-Mode. It would be a tiny portable Linux computer with an unlimited internet connection available anywhere. It would be the perfect thin-client. My cellular plan limits my tethered bandwidth so using the phone as my computer rather than as my computer's modem has real benefits.
I saved al my sons data from this Samsung S10 using their Dex thing after his screen broke. Was really nice.
FP6+ would have been a no brainer for me if it had such a feature (would need to work on /e/ though) for some light dev work. Still going to buy one though (just messed up my iPhone 12 mini cams and faceID with some of Malaysia's high humidity.)
When we are travelling, we often hook up our phones to a hotel/apartment TV with a DP-Alt to HDMI adapter to use our own streaming services/apps. A phone without DP-Alt would be a no-go.
Syncing music is my main use case where USB 2 is annoying. Beyond that, pulling photos of the phone, but I rarely do that to an extent that USB 2 speeds become a problem.
that said, Fairphones habe a micro SD card slot which you can use for such things
Yes, and I'd prefer to not have to take it out all the time. Especially since taking out the SD card means also taking out the SIM card.
Is wireless connectivity a barrier there? My home WiFi goes about twice as fast as USB 2.0.
My photos (I use Ente, not Google or Apple) sync in the background on WiFi, primarily while I sleep. It’s my understanding that Immich works the same way.
For music syncing I’d probably set up Syncthing-Fork and then never manually transfer again.
When I transfer ROMs to my Android gaming handheld I just use my local NAS and connect with CX File Manager. My handheld has USB 3.0 but I don’t find that plugging in a cable is particularly convenient, especially since the NAS box is in my closet.
My iPhone 17 Pro Max has very fast USB-C but I’ve never used it for anything besides charging. I’m sure professional content creation folks know of a workflow where fast USB is helpful but for my smartphone user I can’t think of a reason to use it.
The app I use to sync, Musicbee, doesn't work on Linux, so I have to use Wine, which for stupid reasons prevents me from syncing wirelessly. Just syncing the files isn't the problem. Syncing the metadata (number of times a song has been played, favourites) is the problem, and just dragging-and-dropping the the files onto my phone doesn't solve for this.
If I could do it wirelessly, I would, but I've never found it to be reliable in the first place the few times I've used it before (times may have changed).
Having to remove your SIM card (since it uses the same tray) and potentially switch off your phone to transfer files at a decent speed is meh.
Honestly, if it was a linux phone...
I currently travel between two office locations, with identical setup (screen, dock, mouse and keyboard, ...) so i just close the laptop lid and plug in the office's type C cable coming from the screen.
Sometimes i bring along my laptop so i keep my work laptop where it's at and RDP into it from the other location (laptop just plugs into the type C cable).
Nothing really special, but it's really nice.
Then, back when google enabled desktop mode on most pixels, i of course tried it. Neat, but it's just a shittier gnome desktop with very few desktop apps. If it was a full fledged windows phone with a KDE-Touch interface that rendered a full desktop when docked, oh boy wouldn't it be neat?
Another thing to consider: For some goddamn reason i have a couple of samsung flaships that will refuse to talk to ADB if i use a 2.0 Cable. Has to be 3.0 or type C <-> Type C
I wonder what their reasoning behind the downgrade is. I own a FP4 and even this model features USB 3.0 with DisplayPort support.
IIRC costs and/or size. I agree, silly change. Going from the blue to green theme is another silly change, as is renaming scheme. I like many things this company does, but some decisions I question.
I also bet a smaller, less powerful smartphone with 3.5 mm would sell like hot cakes.
You need to transfer more than 480Mbps over a hard line to and from your phone? Seems like a niche requirement that even iPhone 17 doesn't bother with. Or is it psychological 'nunber must go up and usb number went from 2 to 3 many years ago so now 2 bad'
Previous versions of the Fairphone did have USB3, and also Displayport Alt Mode, so you could plug the phone into a display and use Android Desktop. There's more to a given version of USB than line rate.
I have a fairphone 5 and actively don't like it when it asks me if I want to mirror my screen when I plug it into a charging cable attached to a monitor.
That's an issue that would be solved with a better UX on Fairphone's side though, not removing the feature entirely.
Then you can make a tidy profit upgrading to the Fairphone 6 series and selling your phone to someone who wants that functionality. What is the point you're trying to make? We already knew different people have different preferences.
Even my lgv20 could do an external display.
"[GrapheneOS] lost most interest in that hardware due to the poor way privacy, security, updates and marketing based on these things has been handled."
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/28825-is-there-any-chance-o...
I'm sure their concerns are valid but just because GrapheneOS don't consider the Fairphone to meet their standards for security doesn't mean it is not worth considering for other people who may have different priorities. Fairphones have certain advantages over Pixels such as better repairability and more ethically sourced labour/components. IMO it's good to see the Fairphone do well (and I hope GrapheneOS's partnership with Motorola also goes well).
Unfortunately it looks like it's not just a issue of missing hardware security features:
> Their partnership with Murena along with promoting it themselves with misleading marketing means no possibility of working with us.
I want to like GrapheneOS, but the pettiness of its leadership is a real problem for the long term prospect of the project.
Is it pettiness or just sticking to their morals? Murena, as they mentioned, forwards data to OpenAI which is against pretty much everything Graphene stands for.
Only for one voice to text feature which is completely optional to use and can be replaced with something else.
As another commenter mentioned, this voice to text feature is now an offline feature and no longer sends data outside the device.
As another note, this Fairphone can be purchased without /e/OS at all. It’s now being sold in the US without Murena being involved at all.
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
Fairphones don't provide a reasonable level of privacy and security without /e/ either:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354807
> Murena, as they mentioned, forwards data to OpenAI which is against pretty much everything Graphene stands for.
How? In what way? Source?
https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using...
June 2025
Someone else shared the up to date info about this feature: https://doc.e.foundation/os/apps/voice-to-text
> The earlier Voice to Text was a Premium-only, online feature: it streamed your speech to a third-party AI transcription service through an anonymising proxy, so it required a Murena Workspace Premium subscription and an internet connection.
> The new Voice to Text is free, offline and on-device
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
You can stick to your morals without blowing things out of proportion.
“We are the only acceptable way to do things and no tradeoffs are acceptable” is fairly petty.
“We have a difference of opinion” isn’t.
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It is not petty to correct misinformation. You are downplaying the seriousness of the situation by painting it as some kind of drama. /e/OS objectively has poor privacy and security for numerous reasons, there was no "falling out", and GrapheneOS is not critiquing it based on emotion.
GrapheneOS is a privacy project first, does not come bundled with any google services, and only makes connections to 1st party services by default. /e/OS includes many google services with privileged OS integration. GrapheneOS is far more effective at the goal you state /e/OS has than /e/OS.
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And yet GrapheneOS is better at everything that /e/ claims.
Not at running on sustainably produced, repairable hardware ;)
(Wish it was though.)
You can buy used Pixels, e.g. from 8a up. I'd claim that this is much more ecological than buying a new Fairphone. I suppose that a Pixel is of a higher quality and has less defects than a Fairphone (which changed the ODM several times). --
This said, I would never use /e/ and Murena as I read too many things I don't like.
Fairphones have very poor updates with rapidly degrading privacy and security over their lifespan. They don't keep up with important updates from the beginning and it gets much worse over time. Updates are very important for sustainability. They're also missing important hardware-based security protections which are needed to protect user data in the real world. They've consistently had major issues such as using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and OS images which they've usually failed to acknowledge.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch with no movement to updating to a newer one. Fairphone 6 is set to end up in the same situation and it isn't far away. They nearly entirely stop providing Linux privacy and security patches once this happens.
Android patches come around half a year late since the Android Security Bulletins themselves are published very late and Fairphone lags 1-2 months or more behind those.
There's extremely little information available on Fairphone's ODM partner T2Mobile and their supply chain. The information is mainly a list of suppliers without information on working conditions, pay, environmental protection or nearly anything else. T2Mobile has been their ODM since the Fairphone 4 and earlier information is no longer relevant. They moved away from their original ODM partnership to another with the Fairphone 3 and then to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4. It's unclear if pay and working conditions are better at T2Mobile for Fairphones than they are for their other products and in what way they're better. It's unclear how it comes to Foxconn for Apple and Google phones.
Apple and Google design their devices and handle the firmware and software. Fairphone is using hardware, firmware and software provided by T2Mobile. Fairphone is heavily reliant on what's provided by their ODM. For example, their move to T2Mobile coincided with dropping the 3.5mm audio jack. It's likely not something they wanted to do and many of their supporters were unhappy about it, but it's not really their phone hardware. The phones are essentially T2Mobile devices and there's not a lot of information available. It isn't clear why they switched to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 or why the earlier switch to another ODM happened with the Fairphone 3.
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You can always flash and factory reset. I’d bet 99.9% of phones on eBay are by and for general public and not some esoteric zero days in the wild that your comment makes it sound like.
Fairphones have atrocious updates which means they aren't sustainable devices. They use a multiple generation old SoC from the beginning with an artificially shortened lifespan. Fairphones are currently designed and assembled by T2Mobile. T2Mobile even signs the firmware on the devices. Prior to the Fairphone 4, they had 2 previous ODM partnerships. They're limited to what their ODM offers which was likely the reason they dropped the 3.5mm audio jack when they moved to T2Mobile for the Fairphone 4. The working conditions and supply chain management are largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone.
There's a severe lack of actual evidence for Fairphones having a more ethical or sustainable assembly and supply chain than Apple. It's likely each one takes more resources to produce and they definitely don't provide comparable updates.
The e/OS/ CEO said during an interview [1] that GrapheneOS, being a security hardened product, was especially useful for p*ophiles to evade justice. This is totally unacceptable. People defending e/OS/ (and Murena, same people, just branding for devices) are either dishonest or useful idiots.
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116353973732143171 (full interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQV7498NRQw)
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In the current version of /e/OS, Voice to Text runs offline.
> The earlier Voice to Text was a Premium-only, online feature: it streamed your speech to a third-party AI transcription service [...] The new Voice to Text is free, offline and on-device
https://doc.e.foundation/os/apps/voice-to-text
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe. Here are 2 clear examples:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
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>I want to like GrapheneOS, but the pettiness of its leadership is a real problem
I used to feel a bit similarly. But I've since realized they are one of the very few software projects that actually make sensible privacy and security choices.
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The privacy and security deficiencies of CalyxOS have nothing to do with compromises for usability. GrapheneOS provides much better usability including through having far broader app compatibility.
CalyxOS drastically reduces privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project. It recently went a whole year without privacy and security patches. They're currently months behind on providing current Pixel driver and firmware updates. It has never been a privacy or security hardened OS but rather the direct opposite.
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An operating system going a year without providing privacy and security patches is much worse than many options on that basis alone. It's currently months behind on updates. It's hardly the only other option available.
As someone that swapped from fairphone 5 to a pixel9a with graphene.
I have to side with graphene. Fairphone is a cool concept, but its a expensive phone, early on i had problem with the speakers and mic. Security updates are extremely slow, support is extremely slow.
Their missions is to make a fair phone, but is it fair if you are then forced to buy more ewaste because your phone breaks? Look at pixel software support, its really good, and eu made batteries replacement mandatory.
That does not seem like pettiness to me. That seems like a very good reason to not work with someone.
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Fairphones continue to have awful updates, privacy and security. /e/ sending user speech data to OpenAI without consent for years never had anything to do with why Fairphones don't meet our requirements.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354807
I'm not sure how you can read my comment to imply that.
Refusing to work with organizations or individuals that are detrimental to privacy and security is not petty.
Murena does not provide private or secure products and has positioned itself to be against what GrapheneOS provides. A partnership with a company opposed to GrapheneOS and spreading misinformation about it would not be beneficial, and it is not petty to make the smart choice for the benefit of privacy and security.
The Graphene devs can be a bit obsessive about security, but with a starting price above $600, I think the average user is probably better off with a Pixel 10a bought on sale closer to $300. The stock Fairphone OS seems to include Google services, which is kind of surprising and at odds with the focus on user control and all that.
Fairphones don't provide bare minimum privacy and security. Expecting that is not being obsessive. The flaws are increasingly glaring and easier than ever to exploit thanks to advances in AI models. People should care about this and should get a device with reasonable privacy and security such as an iPhone instead.
Fairphone 5 and earlier having an end-of-life Linux kernel with the Fairphone 6 coming up next is a disaster. Many months of delays for standard Android userspace patches from when they can first be shipped and years of delays for the full patches is also a major problem. An increasingly small portion of the patches is backported to older releases and they have months of delays for those.
Fairphones are also missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. People have come to expect their device will provide strong encryption with a random 6 digit PIN rather than a very strong passphrase but that's not the case with a Fairphone.
More information:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354623
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS without Google Mobile Services with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly claimed highly private and secure devices mainly benefit criminals and pedophiles along with peddling other authoritarian talking points. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS devices are mainly used by criminals and aren't useful to regular people.
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
Despite the marketing, /e/ has very poor privacy and security. /e/ has their own invasive services with tracking, gives highly privileged access to default enabled Google services and doesn't keep up with basic updates. It greatly rolls back privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project.
https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/divestos-website/raw/co...
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
Here's a post with more specific allegations:
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
One thing in the story is that the SPU - the secure enclave on Qualcomm chips that is separate from just running on TrustZone on the main processor - is only available on Snapdragon 8 and X tier products. It's market segmented away from 7 series and below.
Also, I think Qualcomm has only started supporting MTE on Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Older and cheaper SoCs do not support it yet. Outside that, I think only Google Tensor, recent Exynos generations, and Apple A-series support MTE (though IIRC Apple has an improved extension of it).
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has at support for MTE. It doesn't yet support running the whole kernel and userspace with it in practice as GrapheneOS requires but we're going to be working on it with Motorola and Qualcomm.
i dont get it, they are comparing eOS to graphene, not talking about the hardware.
this would be like grapheneOS not using pixel because the stock android that ships with it does not respect privacy.
am i missing something?
Fairphones have awful updates for the firmware and drivers with months of delays. They end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel and hardware components. Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life kernels which aren't receiving the vast majority of important privacy and security patches.
They're missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. They don't provide proper encryption protecting user data for the vast majority of users not setting a very strong passphrase.
The main hardware and update requirements for GrapheneOS are listed here:
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
We left another reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354807 with more details on how Fairphone doesn't meet those requirements.
You're making me want one.
You still need to rely on the OEM to properly configure the bootloader, not leak the keys, and provide updated vendor blobs.
It should be doable with cooperation between the two, right?
If we add that FSF aims to provide free alternatives to some vendor blobs the landscape begins to look promising.[0]
One party to provide needed specs for hardware, one party to free the hardware from vendor blobs and another party to merge this into a working product.
[0] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/librephone
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> I guess, my attack model for my personal phones doesn't really account for "my phone got stolen", I'm far more worried about impersonation and remote phone hijacking than needing to be safe from confiscation from feds.
Even if you only care about "remote phone hijacking", not being able to provide timely vendor blob/drivers/kernel means you're wide open for EoP exploits.
As for why they take such a hard line on physical security, well it's their project and they can have whatever high standards they want, especially if they want to project an image of being an absolute secure phone. The code's all open source so it's not too hard to port to another device, especially nowadays with AI.
Fairphone lags many months behind on Android privacy/security patches. They also end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel without the vast majority of the most important patches which is the case for the Fairphone 5 and earlier. It's not far away for the Fairphone 6. Moving to new Linux kernel branches is an expectation by Google and the upstream Linux kernel for OEMs but Fairphone isn't doing it.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. That's why those are relevant. Fairphones without /e/ still lack reasonable privacy and security, but they're a lot worse with it.
/e/ and Murena have very poor privacy and security for their products combined with very inaccurate marketing. They've repeatedly portrayed private and secure devices as mainly benefiting and being used by criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own explicit choices of words. They've claimed this dozens of times about GrapheneOS including alongside France's national agencies making these inaccurate claims. More information with sources:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
Fairphone also had the publicly available test key flagged as trusted by the boot loader at one point, which probably discourages projects like GOS, since it makes it harder to trust the hardware to not be a weak link in security.
Fairphones lack the updates and hardware-based security features expected by GrapheneOS.
They're missing hardware security features needed to provide strong encryption for the vast majority of users not using a very strong passphrase. They're similarly missing hardware-based protections heavily used in GrapheneOS to protect from exploitation including remote attacks.
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS without Google Mobile Services with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly claimed highly private and secure devices mainly benefit criminals and pedophiles along with peddling other authoritarian talking points. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS devices are mainly used by criminals and aren't useful to regular people. Fairphone has chosen to stand with this company included when contacted by the media about criticism.
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
https://clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-interview.ht...
Despite the marketing, /e/ has very poor privacy and security. /e/ has their own invasive services with tracking, gives highly privileged access to default enabled Google services and doesn't keep up with basic updates. It greatly rolls back privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project.
https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/divestos-website/raw/co...
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
Fairphone products have been available in the US officially for ages. This is just the ability to purchase direct from Fairphone.
I bought a Fairphone 4 from Murena years ago (and am still using it), and I bought a pair of Fairbuds XL just in April from the same.
This is still a big deal and seems to come with more expanded carrier support.
How have the Fairbuds XL been for you? Have you used any other similar headphones before Fairbuds (asking for your comparison).
I love my Airpod Maxes but I have spend way too much money and time keeping this thing maintained. Once it finally kicks the can, I really want to try something more repair friendly.
Yeah, but only the Fairphone 4 (which is very dated at this point), and only from Murena which is a can of worms in itself. Support also ranges from non-existent to atrocious.
Directly buying from FP is a huge deal for me.
No standard audio jack?
That's a dealbreaker for me, especially for something touting modularity, repairability, and user control.
It's a ten dollar dongle that can stay attached to your audio cable out of the way when not using it and has no perceptible affect on sound quality, and there's even passthrough options for when you need to charge, so the whole no-audio-jack thing is a moot point nowadays. It's a solved problem for years now.
Using a dongle makes it impossible to charge the phone or connect it to any other device while using audio, which I do all the time. I also frequently interchange my wired earbuds between my phone and laptop, and don't want to be bothered with an extra loose dongle when I disconnect the earbuds.
Sorry, this isn't a solved problem at all, apart from the solution of only buying phones that have audio jacks.
> dongle makes it impossible to charge the phone or connect it to any other device while using audio
I feel like you missed the part where the parent comment said "[...] and there's even passthrough options for when you need to charge".
I have a passthrough dongle so I can charge my iPhone in the car and use an aux audio patch cable, and it's quite a large thing, certainly not unobtrusive but if you're charging maybe that doesn't really matter.
Something like https://www.belkin.com/p/3.5mm-audio-plus-usb-c-charge-adapt...
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Magnetic-Adapter-Charger-Charg... is pretty compact.
I'm not saying they're related, but they also make and sell wireless headphones...
Exactly. Hard pass on a phone without a 3.5mm headphone jack.
People who say, “You can use a dongle” or “Just buy Bluetooth earphones” are missing the point. It’s never about what compromises we, as consumers, can make; it’s about users’ choices and preferences.
I’m fine with manufacturers wanting to make more money by selling dongles or Bluetooth earphones, but I’ll never accept them doing so by removing features to force us to buy them.
How many phones have a standard audio jack now?
I figured that had largely vanished for a while now.
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It's also extremely expensive. I'm more interested on seeing the next iteration of the PinePhone to fulfill the full Linux phone dream. In the meantime, commodity Android phones are still good enough.
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Not just significantly weaker. The Librem 5 uses the Cortex-A53 low-end ARM designs from 2012, and that particular NXP chip is not among the better implementations. The 3GB of RAM is anemic and becomes a greater restriction as time goes on. Many features simply haven't been implemented (most of the sensors) and those that have been that are technically difficult (i.e. camera) provide only a bare experience.
If we're honest about it, the Librem 5 is not something to use as your main phone, it's a toy to experiment with.
> no proprietary drivers unlike anything else on the market
You continue to be misleading with your wording.
https://docs.puri.sm/Hardware/Librem_5/Maintenance/Modem.htm...
You dishonestly promote an $800 product in comment after comment.
Hiding your obvious shilling behind the moral cloak of "activism" is pathetic. It's worse than pathetic, as it runs the risk of harming genuine activism.
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They really probably aren't going to get lifetime updates to their modem's closed-source firmware. They can't even get timely updates to their modem's closed-source firmware.
It's great that the OS is open source, it really is. But all bits going out over the cellular radio are handled by proprietary firmware, same as every other phone out there.
Educate me: Is there a way to know when the modem's firmware needs updating? When was the last update shipped?
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> I never claimed the lifetime updates for the modem, did I?
Exactly. You get very precise when you want to paint the device as a panacea of liberty, to the point of potentially misleading people.
The rest of the time, not so much.
Your accusation are so vague, I can't even understand you. Notice how I always give precise links to all your misconceptions and you don't.
What about patching security vulnerabilities? Privacy enhancements?
How would I know when the firmware needs updating? How can I find when it was last updated?
https://forums.puri.sm/t/updating-firmware-on-the-librem-5/2...
'You may be interested in this $800 product.'
'I'm not interested.'
'Here's why you should be.'
What you call activism, others call shilling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324418
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Also, this link is hilarious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47312790
I missed that at the time. I'm flattered that you elevated me to strcat's level, as if your two links are remotely comparative. I'm just a dude hoping to find a viable way out of this tech duopoly hellscape on a reasonably viable and high-performing stack.
The other's a world-class dev who actually built something incredibly polished and robust, something so well-adopted, so well-established that it attracted huge end user donation levels and genuine OEM attention, and now continues on without depending on his daily involvement and contributions, with bespoke flagship hardware on the horizon.
You made my day. Thanks. Have an upvote.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47312651
Enumerating why they won't build for specific devices people frequently ask them to seems like a good thing.
In the past you've asked them to support certain hardware. They took the time to explain why they wouldn't. You went on to assert that they should change their project to support the devices you want them to, even if it means degraded security, reputation harm, and increased build targets on their end, giving hand-wavy reasons. You've done that repeatedly. As if you have some right to another open source project's labor. I've explained all this to you numerous times. Why are we doing it again?
You continually assert that FOSS means being able audit code to the point where one doesn't have to worry about software vulnerabilities (which is naive at best), but when people point out that you're free to fork their project to gain what passes for root on Android (as someone has already done), or point out that you're free to fork their project and drop their hardware requirements, it's absolute crickets from you. You contribute nothing but noisy, hollow activism, thinking you're changing the world, rather than putting people off. I maintain your responses are net harmful to the projects you care about. I've explained this to you before, too.
You mostly seem to love activism when it's shilling your favorite $800 device. Everything else, not so much.
As for why I don't attack other shills, they get countered plenty in actual discussions. That's how it's supposed to work. I have no deep-seated need to bother with this.
Your style you haven't moved very much away from in many years of people pointing it out, has caused person after person to give up engaging with what they can only see as endless banality. Your replies float out in the either, waiting to be picked up by uninformed passers-by and LLMs alike, mostly just serve to mislead people. I've explained this to you before multiple times. I'm not doing it to change your mind. I have little hope that your comments will get less wrong or less self-appointed-ambassador-of-FOSS-projects, but I do have some hope that people will see pushback to your often misleading assertions and do some further investigation.
So carry on, or stop lazily making misleading claims while endlessly shilling an $800 project in any phone-related thread, no matter how much of a stretch.
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I gotta hand it to you, you're like a walking, self-contained Gish gallop. The zeal would be incredibly useful, if only it could be tempered and harnessed by other qualities.
You used to do the, 'I can never get answers to my simple questions' routine, until I started engaging. Then, every time I say 'you keep doing this,' if I don't provide links, you complain that I didn't provide links. When I do provide links, you either move the goalposts, or drop the thread there. It's happened multiple times. To multiple respondents. You're impervious to most responses, so it's pointless to try.
As I have said before to you, I am completely content to let your comment history speak for itself for anyone who wants to go back and look. It's all there.
> You like to promote GOS
Terrible equivalency. "fsflover" is on here shilling FSF-certified devices multiple times daily, sometimes. Meanwhile, I had to go back six months: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46852121
There was this, three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941735
But please let me know if and when I ever recommend it to people who expressed no interest in it, for whom it would be a terrible technical solution! I should be called out on that.
> I mentioned Qubes countless times, too.
You know that I know that, because it often makes me cringe when you do and I step in to clarify. I honestly wish you wouldn't. I've spent absurd amounts of time correcting and explaining comments you've made about Qubes OS this year. You damage the project's reputation with your worse-than-empty one-liner recommendations, turning people off to it. But I've noticed you've made a little more effort lately to stop doing that. Thanks for the effort, really. I appreciate it.
But you still come off as a fanboy, from the username to the comments to the style. I'd honestly be surprised if the net migration caused for your projects was positive. Hopefully it is.
Go ahead and continue to educate people about the Librem 5. I'm happy for people to learn about it if they don't already know. You and your sidekick are eager, even stating the main thing that needs to happen to unlock an open phone utopia is that Purism revenues need to increase. You guys are being totally candid about your intent.
Just maybe act less surprised when comments that come across as misleading or outright shilling get challenged. It's harming your favorite projects' reputation, and it's running the risk of misinforming people for the purposes activism, which is when you know you've crossed over into ultra-activism.
BTW, many of the folks on the Qubes and Purism forums do a significantly better job of discussing the projects. Directing people to relevant threads there frequented by a variety of well-articulated points of view might be a better bet.
> claims of reedom
Now that's just hilarious.
[dead]
Praying that fairphone somehow makes a foldable one day. My next phone will probably be a fold 8 because I really want a nice reading experience on the go, but I love the philosophy and love my framework laptop.
Considering the big players with R&D budgets valued in the billions have been struggling to make foldable phones, I can't imagine a niche player making one.
My gripe is the lack of usb 3 / dp-alt support.
Fairphone as a whole feels like a company that prioritises the mission, but only this mission of ethical and reusable hardware. The user experience for power users who are most likely to recommend their devices feels like a let-down.
Love this idea but carrier limitations, eSIM limitations, kind of an odd start. I am sure it’s licensing and radio costs or limitations. But I would assume anything launching nowadays would support esims 100% and could jump networks without an issue.
That website took a very very long time to load.
I got excited about this until i realized still no graphene. It seems like both sides have a huge incentive to support the other, I wish they would make it happen.
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
This always comes up, it will probably never happen, makes me sad as well.
See our response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355122.
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Perhaps you misunderstood why is criticism voiced in the first place. What you ask for is here, as it has always been:
> https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.
An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.
Edit: adding to the last point, the same applies to Fairphone but inversely, where they portray themselves as things they are not (sustainable, specially repairable, ethical, even privacy-respecting). Whereas a takeaway from your comment is that GrapheneOS is good but has a negative image (a false premise, in my opinion), Fairphone puts a lot of *effort* to construct a good image that signals the inverse of what they are. Effort ultimately signals intention.
Fairphone doesn't design or build smartphones themselves but rather their ODM partner does both. It isn't within their control to make devices meeting our requirements. When Fairphone moved to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4, it came with significant changes to the hardware, firmware and software not within their control. They likely didn't want to remove the 3.5mm audio jack but the overall design of the devices isn't up to them. They want to portray themselves as being the ones designing the devices and stood behind it, but they likely didn't want it.
Fairphone has made it very clear they don't consider their awful updates and lack of important hardware-based security features to be a significant problem. Their response to our points has consistently been to downplay it. Fairphone has also consistently taken the approach of not responding to serious security issues such as several generations of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and/or the OS. Not acknowledging or addressing a security issue beyond partially fixing it for subsequent devices is worse than simply downplaying it.
/e/ and Murena spent years actively misleading people about GrapheneOS before we began regularly responding to it. They've taken the approach of misleading people into wrongly believing it isn't usable, isn't compatible with apps, somehow isn't a privacy project and much more. Their efforts have done immense harm to GrapheneOS, especially in Europe where they've mislead many companies and governments about it. /e/ and Murena have heavily pushed the false narrative of GrapheneOS not being usable by regular people but rather primarily useful to criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own words. These are 2 examples where they said it more broadly about hardened devices in general:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
They've been doing this towards GrapheneOS specifically for years by misleading people about what it provides and wrongly painting it as an OS for criminals. Fairphone chose to become directly involved in this by responding to questions from the media based on a post with made about Murena with inaccurate claims. They chose to mislead people and to try to make it seem as if the accurate information we provided wasn't correct. Fairphone is not a bystander but rather explicitly sided with Murena in their attacks on GrapheneOS. Claiming highly private and secure devices are primarily benefiting criminals is outrageous and yet Fairphone backs the company repeatedly pushing this.
Can someone explain why in 2026 we have artificial limits like this?
> expandable upto 2TB with microSD
I get that 2TB ought to be enough for everybody, but why the heck shouldn't a 4TB microSD Just Work?
The SDXC spec does not allow for cards bigger than 2TiB, because of address sizes. You need SDUC for above 4TB.
They just haven't tested anything larger.
Every time I've seen a card capacity limit like this, someone tries a bigger card and it just... works.
Disappointed they don't have a wireless-charging-enabled backplate. And I was just about ready to pull the trigger...
I know wireless charging is wasteful... but I've got magsafe pucks everywhere in the house/car now... Let me have this one thing...
$650 for anyone who does not want to click. Hard sell compared to the iPhone 17e but more choice is good.
I would buy this phone in a second over a 17e. Replaceable parts? Expandable storage? Any companies that says they care about the environment and does not have these things are just liars.
Unfortunately, there were quite a lot early reports of users whose FP6 volume buttons broke or their logic boards during charging. Both are components that are not user-replaceable and it often takes Fairphone 4-6 weeks to repair them. Similarly, the head band on their FairBuds XL regularly break for a bunch of people (user replaceable, but you still have to go through their slow support if you do not want to pay for the replacement yourself).
Fairphone (in contrast to Apple) are also known for introducing really bad bugs and then not fixing them for months. Like how the FP4 could only keep a single app in memory after they introduced a memory management bug or how currently a lot of FP6 users are affected by a bug where WiFi stops working (due to an IPv6-related bug) that has been reported in March.
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/dns-over-tls-ipv6-issues-apps-...
Then there are the really weird design decisions on the FP6. Like, they put the fingerprint scanner in the power button, which makes it nearly impossible to use it one-handed with your left hand if you actually want to unlock it or use fingerprint unlock in an application. And they put the power button on the exact opposite side of the volume down button, so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time.
And then we haven't talked about the hardware. The speakers are pretty mediocre. The camera is only mid. The SoC even caused render slowdowns in 2026 in /e/OS, it's going to be wholly underpowered after 7 years (the new CPU in the plus is barely going to help, the 7s Gen 4 is the Gen 3 with slightly higher clocked cores).
I had the Fairphone 6 and I am happy that I was able to get rid of it for still a fairly OK price (I got it because I like their mission).
> And they put the power button on the exact opposite side of the volume down button, so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time.
To be fair, Apple has nearly the same design.
> I got it because I like their mission
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
To be fair, Apple has nearly the same design.
Yeah, I should criticize them for it too. Though the issue rarely occurs for me on iPhones I think the reason is that the volume buttons are much higher up on the iPhone. So when you do the movement one-handed where the left side rests on your palm and you use a finger to press the power button, the palm doesn't hit volume-down, which does happen on FP6 since the volume buttons are much lower on the side.
It still happened all the time on the FP6 for me after 2 months or so.
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Fairphone has been around since 2013 and all of their models have been plagued by really bad software and hardware issues. I think part of the problem is that the actual hardware and software development is not done by them, but a Chinese ODM (T2Mobile). For clarity, this is not a "everybody produces phones in China". If you look at their Git trees, most commits are from this Chinese ODM. I guess this introduces a delay in fixing issues plus Fairphone is probably just one of their customers.
Also, for anyone worried about security, yes it uses opaque binary blobs of Chinese origin (camera processing stuff by TCL). Well, that aside from usually being months to years behind on Qualcomm firmware blob versions (who do monthly security bulletins) and Linux kernel sources. So Fairphones typically have many known high/critical CVEs.
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Thanks for the long-term perspective!
100% agree that official Sailfish would be awesome. I don't think it is at the point where I could use a SFOS phone as my main, but I definitely want to try it at some point. It's great that there is a company that's working outside iOS/Android.
Whoever came with calling it the "The Fairphone (Gen 6)" instead of "Fairphone 6" should have been fired on the spot.
And (Gen. 6+) is even worse now...
It was dumb when Apple did it and it’s even dumber to copy it. Of course, it was also dumb when Apple repurposed the sleep/power button for Siri.
> so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time
I share that pain. I use a Fairphone 6 as my main phone, and my only real gripes with it are the extremely weak haptic engine and that power button placement.
I’d pay twice what they are asking for one with a reasonably sized screen.
I’m holding on to my iphone mini, but apparently people buy the razr and just leave it closed 100% of the time.
That’s $700, and not having the dumb hinge mechanism and internal facing display would be a selling point for many.
I mean replacing a battery is something you do, at most, once every 5-7 years. If removing the battery requires a heat gun then it's not the worst thing imo.
5-7 years? With daily use device 100% drain your battery will be about 85-90% health after 1,5 years. Once it gets to 80%, Apple recommends replacement. I'd say replacement should occur at approc 2-3 years of daily usage.
You can also carry one or two spare batteries with you and get from zero to 100% charge in a minute.
No Verizon support. :(
How is that still a thing? I can’t think of a phone here in Europe that you can’t just put a SIM card from any carrier in and it will work.
From Fairphone's US order page
> Critical Notice: The device does not support LTE Band 13 (Verizon's primary coverage frequency).
Presumably that frequency isn't used in Europe? It also says that it's "not certified for use on the Verizon Wireless network." I don't know if that means Verizon might block it (which sounds like a very US thing) or it's related to not supporting the frequency that Verizon uses for LTE.
Because the United States sucks in regards to mobile phone compatibility and spectrum allocation. https://share.gemini.google/u6E8mAiITMcJ
What is that link?
The evolution of low effort copy+paste LLM response. Now Google can track everyone who wants that information and people can be just as rude as before when they copy+pasted LLM responses into conversations, but now it's sly.
That's been true for much of the history of cellular networks, as far as I know - universal standards in Europe, US phones can't (always) be moved between service providers. It used to be even worse in the US, with phones locked to individual carriers regardless of technology.
That's some of the European over-regulation that everyone complains about, compared to unfettered American competition.
Interesting, the tech specs page said Verizon was supported but the carrier coverage page says it isn’t
Why use Verizon directly? It's insanely overpriced. US mobile and others provide better prices, service, features, security, and customer service. If it doesn't work on their towers, US mobile allows you to switch to at&t and t mobile towers.
Yeah, that’s a bummer. But I’m seriously thinking about switching to AT&T over this, but I would need to know if the frequencies are covered as good on AT&T.
I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
How are you going to innovate installing hundreds of thousands of cell towers across the USA?
Mobile network via satellite might increase number of network providers by 1 or 2, but the physics problem of needing tons of physical assets to create a wireless network usable by small, low powered devices remains.
I guess you could innovate some new physics that allows you to send wireless signals through more surfaces, that is also not ionizing radiation to animal and plant tissue, and doesn’t need a lot of power to send from a mobile device. That is a lot to ask, though.
Cell towers in the United States are primarily owned by three major companies: American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications. These companies build, acquire, and lease space on the towers to wireless providers.
No more infrastructure needs to be built.
When you say lease space to wireless providers, what do the carriers do with that leased space? Do you think that could be called infrastructure needed for that carrier’s coverage?
Also, there are enough dead zones that satellite direct to cell is a thing.
Innovation in the US is mainly how many more creative ways they can suck money out of consumers.
What are you talking about? There are hundreds of different cell phones available for sale in the US.
Hundreds might be pushing it.
If you as a user want a modern, high end or top of the line cell phone, you're pretty much just stuck with Apple or Samsung. Maybe Google. If you remove the minor variants each has that's just 3.
We used to have many more - OnePlus obviously, Honor, Huawei, LeEco, HTC, LG, ASUS, Essential, Blackberry, etc.
> I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
The beginning of your sentence - "I can’t believe how few choices we have..." - can be applied equally sadly to other areas here in the U.S....such as but not limited to lack of choice of residential ISPs, or lack of choice (or generally mis-incentivized) healthcare providers, or lack of choice of mobile service providers, or, etc., or etc. And, of course, your last part of your comment asking where the innovation is? Well, innovation often is pocketed in those who control the capital, and only released little by little at the whims of releasing more capital. Sorry, i have to step away, cuz felt sad instantly just citing my own comments here. :-(
How is the OS?
grapheneos when?
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one. Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
OK, mate, looks like I might be buying a Motorola when my Googlephone goes kaputski then.
I meant that comment from a standpoint of "no graphene, no buy".
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The Fairphone (Gen. 6+) comes with upgraded internal hardware that doesn’t compromise on our industry-leading repairability standards. The ‘plus’ isn't about adding features for a longer spec sheet; it's about intentional improvements that keep your device capable for longer.
AI-like typing detected.
It really irks me that it still can't get the contrastive clauses right. "it's not about adding (more features), it's about (more features, but with a different emphasis)" is so empty of meaning. how do people copy edit this and not notice?
The sloppiness in the AI comes from the human sloppiness on this topic. This seems like a variant of what I've seen called the "fake because", which is the idea that people don't generally analyze whether or not a given reason actually makes sense. For example, the common advertising "You need to buy this beer because it'll get you the girls". It is obvious to conscious examination by pretty much everyone that this is obviously false... the problem is getting it up to that conscious examination in the first place.
I've also noticed several times the deployment of "It's not about the X, {because} it's actually about the Y" where the connection between the X and the Y has no real logic in it upon examination. That can often be translated to "I want to change the topic to Y" without much loss. I think this is one of the primary ways that AI writing can be really exhausting to work through logically and it gets people who are for whatever reason thinking sloppily, including just the sheer exhaustion of the amount of thinking navigating the modern world takes even for someone who nominally understands how to penetrate this sort of sloppy thinking, into so much trouble when they just trust the torrent of words going by. AIs can very easily hallucinate "fake becauses" at a rate no human could possibly keep up with.
I agree that it's marketing mumbo jumbo, but it's saying "we haven't added more features because more is better, we added them because they actually improve the longevity of the product."
If anything, that sentence tells me that they are insecure of their features being perceived as bullshit.
It's phrased poorly for that point, though. "Unlike the competition, we aren't just adding these features to pad out a spec sheet. Each change we've made for the plus model this year will pay off in improved lifespan and better functionality for you."
Or something in that vein. Like this isn't very hard to write?
12 GB RAM instead of 8 and Snapdragon 7s Gen4 vs Gen3.
For an MSRP increase from 599€ to 649€ that seems like a decent deal to me.
>how do people copy edit this and not notice?
I would assume they don’t, and they assume many people aren’t reading it either. Which includes me, even before LLMs came out. I would always skip the marketing and jump to tech specs and pictures/video.
Why have the marketing blurbs at all then? it's just throwing away tokens if most people don't read it.
SEO, basically. Same as before
$0.10 for a marketing blurb isn’t exactly throwing away tokens, and if it conforms to society’s expectations then probably worth the spend.
Conformity. Demands for it are everywhere if you choose to see it.
Because you need to show something that executives can parse and people that only want to eat slop writing to read. People literally took marketing material as gospel before. They still do now.
Nice try, but it's generated slop all the way down, Mr. Feynman.
The tech specs aren't safe either. Last year the official Google Store had some laughable AI translations in the specs for their Pixel phones. Eg. "Rear video" was translated to "Rückansicht" ("Rear view"). That nonsensical translation for an audience of 80 million persisted for months. In 2025 blessed vibe-translation of formerly reputable sites really stood out to me.
Nobody gives a fuck about anything anymore.
The root problem is that all marketing copy is like this, generated by meat sacks or weight arrays. It’s all borderline nonsense.
how do people copy edit this and not notice?
If they wanted to pay trained copy editors, they wouldn't use A.I.
Where do copy editors train?
(to the sibling comment's point)
Professional Editor and Proofreading Course - https://careertraining.uwp.edu/training-programs/professiona...
> Professional editing is both an art and a discipline of diagnosing what a text needs and applying the right level of editorial intervention without flattening voice or intent. This skillset requires language mastery, analysis, and workflow efficiency that many aspiring editors lack. This editing and proofreading course closes that gap by treating editing as a structured profession with repeatable methods. You will discover editing style systems to help you perfect your skillset, while covering specialized domains, ethical considerations, tools and technology, as well as business operations that will help you succeed in your career as a professional editor.
> You will progress through 10 sequential modules and build real-world editor workflows, such as style sheets, author queries, consistency systems, and professional deliverables. You will also strengthen your editorial judgment across various genres and contexts. This online proofreading training program culminates in a capstone editing project that produces industry-standard artifacts, including a marked-up manuscript, editorial letter, style sheet, author queries, and reflective analysis, that will help you demonstrate your competence to prospective employers and clients.
---
https://www.uww.edu/cls/academics/professional-writing-publi...
https://uww-public.courseleaf.com/undergraduate/letters-scie...
At communication school, there are degrees and stuff.
Right? As opposed to all those unintentional improvements they usually put in their products.
it sounds profound to the person that generated it
level 1 AI psychosis, really mild symptoms
IMO it all comes down to the desire to have too my "copy" without enough to say. the people who generate it don't value their own output enough to try, which is a great way of intuiting that they have had the requirement to create copy delegated to them without them expecting that copy to be useful in any way.
In other words, "doneness" is the metric of quality for most of this stuff.
This has it backwards, it is the AI that writes like cliched AD copy. Feast your eyes on this quote from a whiskey CEO, supposedly written in 2016:
> ‘When you bring people in from overseas [to Scotland], you’re working on their mindsets,’ he says. ‘You make them get a feeling for Scotch. It’s not about an advert, it’s about this magical industry with its rich heritage and this history.
> ‘It’s not about kilts and drums, but it’s about the Highlands, the water, the peat, the stories, and I call it softness – it’s very gentle marketing. A lot of what you’ve got to do is to win the hearts and minds.’
The waybackmachine has it first in 2019, but that's early enough to know this is 100% human trite bullshit. https://web.archive.org/web/20190823030911/https://scotchwhi...
This is something that frustrates me a lot when I see people jumping on a piece of writing as AI generated, these AI-isms didn't show up in a vacuum. Yes, AI commonly overuses some patterns, but it got those patterns from it's training data because real people wrote (and continue to write) that way. A few matching sentences here or there is not the smoking gun people make it out to be.
The other thing that is characteristic of AI text is messing up the underlying meaning or fine details of what it's saying. It's not just that it's imitating people who write bad contrasting clauses, it also can't write good ones reliably.
edit: Ironically that last sentence is not super clear (but hey writing is hard and I'm constantly exposed to slop). My point is the nature of AI makes its writing worse than its training data, it's not all bad training data.
This is only true if you consider those who write corporate press releases and post on LinkedIn to be real people. /s
Personally I find writing of this type grating whether the source was AI or the amalgamated output of a committee of humans in a PR department.
To be fair to committees, the above quote is explicitly from a single person and I expect that is true of most AD copy simply because having one person write it is cheaper.
Committees are more about stamping out flavour by making what exists more bland, rather than adding endlessly regurgitated idioms.
> This is only true if you consider those who write corporate press releases and post on LinkedIn to be real people.
You make a fair point. Objection withdrawn your honor.
> but that's early enough to know this is 100% human trite bullshit
It's also lacking the toaster dash. Clear bio-signature of the unaffected hearts and minds.
I wonder at what point we're just going to see people writing like AI because they read it so much? That said I'm fine with companies saving money on copywriters
I’m not. I’m tired of trying to parse this crap.
I mean, AI writes copy like this because that's how copywriters did it in the training set. Honestly AI producing it so much is much more likely to make humans avoid it.
> AI writes copy like this because that's how copywriters did it in the training set
I don't think this is true. Someone probably had to write like this, but a base model has to be able to write like anyone. The specific mannerisms of AI appear in post training, either as things that are rewarded or as mode collapse artifacts. ChatGPT didn't get obsessed with goblins because that's incredibly common among humans.
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