The review is a bit late, but it’s fairly detailed and informative.
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Was actually looking into getting one myself. But the lack of a headphone jack is a deal breaker for me.
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Coincidentally they also sell wireless headphones
I’m with you on wanting a headphone jack, but why should a green company specifically have one?
Wireless headphones have a battery that eventually will need to be replaced, which it usually is not designed for. Wired headphones dont have any inherently degrading components, so can (with care) be used for a very long time.
Because there might be a lot of wired headphones out there going unused because of no headphone jacks in newer phone models, contributing to ewaste.
I feel yah, but I was completely fed up looking for the golden pony boy with a 3.5mm jack. I’m team dongle now :-(.
I am reluctantly Team dongle now aswell.
I’d have liked to get something like a Sony that would fit a lot of my needs hardware wise (headphone jack, SD card reader, side mounted fingerprint scanner, and so on). But the shit software update policy and higher price made me just get a pixel 6a and make some compromises.
The only ones I’ve seen have 180° degree USB-C ports, I haven’t really been thorough searching tbf…
I feel like they could pose damage to the charging port, if I were to use them with the phone on my pocket.
Probably just overthinking it but still 😂
Just get the apple usb-c to 3.5mm dongle, it’s cheap and relatively powerful. They are 10 euro rond here and I have like 3 laying around (dongles suck and get lost ) or permanently coupled with the cable I use it with. 180 degree ports are probably not great in pocket, maybe if it rests on the port? port downwards?
I was also outraged when the audio jack disappeared from phones but now that they have quality wireless earbuds I really can’t imagine going back to a wired headphone. The very last time I used a wired headphone I got it snagged on a cabinet pull and they painfully ripped from my ears. Never again. And even if you wanted wired, usb-c dongles are dirt cheap.
I can no longer understand the argument for an audio jack at this stage.
Primarily, wired headphones tend to be less disposable. Don’t require batteries too.
I had to get wireless earbuds too, since my company requires me to use a device of their choosing, but we’re talking personal preference here.
Sure, wireless BT has come a long way, no argument there, and it’s not like I listen to FLACs on the go.
The thing with dongles is that they look fragile AF.
And I find it hard to justify the unnecessary use of batteries, it’s just something else for me to forget, and also somewhat raises some environmental concerns… idk
But that’s only my POV on the matter, not a hard stance or anything
I really want to like this and keep trying to convince myself that the little problems would be manageable… I’m not too fussed about bezels, the camera or the screen not being that bright. The processor and “sluggishness” seem like the main issue - is it noticeable during day to day use? I don’t play games but I do flick between apps a lot, is it noticeable?
And the charging seems frustratingly slow, even my midrange phone for a few years back had 65w charging. Is there an external battery charger? That way I could always be using my phone and just have a couple of spare batteries that can be charged externally.
Also flick between a lot of apps and am writing this from my FP5
Honestly: no, not really. I haven’t noticed any sluggishness whatsoever.
Now that I’m looking for it, i did notice that apps aren’t kept open in the background but are instead restarted when you switch. But the load time is so abysmal (0.2 - 0.5s), i literally never noticed until i started looking for you.
I like it a lot. It’s a really great phone for me. But i am also not your typical user. I don’t game, except maybe a sudoku once in a while. I use my phone exclusively for: lemmy, music, texting, calling and watching videos.
I do wish it was iphone-mini-sized, but that’s not a Problem with FairPhone but rather a Problem with the industry as a whole.
I have the same exact usage as you. I thought I was typical. 😅 Do people typically play on their phones ? it doesn’t seem like a very good experience but then again I’ve never tried
I have a Fairphone 4 since release and honestly I don’t have a clue what sluggishness people complain about.
My biggest gripe is lack of AR core (most board gaming apps require it) and lack of a notification LED. The rest is a fantastic phone where I can trivially repair broken parts. Which I’ve really been missing. In return it’s a bit pricey, granted.
Received my Fairphone5 yesterday. Literally no issues so far with performance or battery. Dint notice any sort of sluggishness. Also, it’s built like a tank compared to my iPhone 12 mini.
Back when Samsung and Motorola had swappable batteries, I bought a universal battery charger. It had repositionable pins that you guide to touch the right connectors on the battery, and a spring-adjustable battery height. I bet those are still sold somewhere.
Well, i am using the OnePlus Nord N200 now and was using the Motorola One 5G Ace. I find no issues in day-to-day use of the phone. It switches apps fine and performs quite well. Now i do notice app installs take a bit. Not god awful long, but not almost instant like on snapdragon 8 series chips. I think you should be fine as long as
- you arent a mobile gamer
- you arent constantly installing new apps.
App updates can take a little bit so either set aside time to do them or maybe google play !if you use that crap) will do it for you.
NOTE: I run my phones on totally degoogled LineageOS. When i used stock this thing lagged like dial-up because of all the google play crap. It was horrible. If you are going to get it i seriously suggest the degoogled life. Maybe it would have been better after everything settled down, updated, etc, but that first boot with play services on stock was horrible in the extreme and i installed Lineage as fast as possible.
App updates can take a little bit so either set aside time to do them or maybe google play !if you use that crap) will do it for you.
I have a smartphone with dimensity 700. If it can apply updates(multiple apps) in a few mins tops. The fairphone with its SoC should be fine.
By “some time” i meant like 10-15 seconds per app. A snapdragon 8 series is nearly instant.
It should not be. Heck, I have a ton of apps & games, and multitask like crazy. On my A22 5g with its dimensity 700 and 6GB of ram(+6GB virtual). It’s not really an issue. I only see things slow down when it’s thermal throttling. The author mentioned 0 throttling issues, so it should be fine for the fairphone with its SoC. The previous fairphones had even lower performance, but they have existed and are fine.
I wish I could get one in the US.
I really love the idea of the Fairphone, but I just can’t bring myself to deal with the CPU downgrade for them generally.
Unless you are a mobile gamer there is no reason for such overpowered CPUs, in most cases they are just there because higher numbers sell better!
This has not been my experience. I can usually tell when my phone bogs down loading an intense website or switching between 3 apps after a couple years. If I want my phone to last a long time and I want to enjoy using it I’ve found that it’s best to start with a device that is as powerful as possible.
That’s usually a combination of planned obsolesence and bad software, Smasung flagships for example start to significantly slow down after roughly a year of usage. These CPUs are more than enough for daily tasks like web browsing and as soon as you have a manufacturer with good software support or load something like LineageOS on the device it usually works very well again, in some cases you also need a new battery because many clock down once that looses capacity.
We’re gonna have to agree to disagree then. I don’t play games and currently use a Pixel 6 Pro. I occasionally feel this phone bog down and I am not a particularly heavy user. If I’m loading an intense website while streaming music and then I go to check my email I can see a few frames dropped from its 120Hz refresh rate. If I experience this with a flagship a couple of years old, I can’t image the Fairphone would fare any better
Do you use the default Android install or aomething like LineageOS, Callyx or /e/OS? I use a Oneplus 6 with LineageOS and the slowdown dose exist but it’s barely noticable.
Default install and I no longer enjoy tinkering with a device I rely on so heavily these days. I am sensitive to things slowing down and I tend to find combinations that cause them pretty often.
Running FP4 myself, bought bit less than a year ago. If I can get it last significantly longer than phones usually do, I get another one. If not, I have to come up with something else.
No complaints so far but I do all the fancy stuff on PC so I don’t need much from my phone. Remains to be seen if it’s worth it.
Why is it so overpriced and expensive in Vietnam? Is it really worth spending money equal to a new iPhone on this?..
Tbh if you live in a non european country i’d recommend a good Pocophone
What is that? My budget is about 130usd.
No. The product sucks
Oh, I see. Was wondering what all the fuss is about. Originally I assumed it was a budget (but maybe quality) Android alternative to something like Samsung, so the price surprised me.
It’s going to be a continuation of their previous products. It’s just greenwashing through and through. Their update guarantees are worthless, because they don’t invest in fixing any of their annoying bugs. I have a FP4 and Android Auto is still broken as fuck. Within the 2 years I had it, they didn’t release a single fix in that area.
The fingerprint sensor is a piece of garbage that fails constantly and gets stuck in “clean sensor” faults until you reboot the phone. Also not fixed in its entire life time so far.
It’s great that you can replace parts, but even with all parts new it’s a garbage phone. Maybe they can’t even fix these things, because they used inferior hardware where they don’t even have control over the problematic behavior.
They continue to release new garbage to the market and they really do not give a single fuck about the quality of the products they already released to market. They just don’t have any good products. Sure there are people who claim “it works for me”, but the bugs are real and so is the poor customer care of this company. Stay away as far as possible. You’re being scammed.
Thank you for sharing your real thoughts and being straightforward. Very educational. Appreciated. Not many people here have the balls to say the hard truth, for whatever reason.
Takes out battery to insert SIM and SDcard, is this 2012?
Its a made up criticism to make it look like the author is thorough, but it doesn’t reflect a real use case. In two years using the FP4 in five countries, there has never been a single time where I wanted to swap SIM cards or eject a mounted SD card while the system is running. You do these things while the phone is powered down. It’s an argument being made by an idiot.
Criticizing bezel sizes when people put their phones in protective cases; criticizing having to remove batteries to get to components that you only swap when powered down anyway; bitching about price to performance ratio like this isnt a phone designed to last half a decade; this is what techbro marketing shills, AI output, and other brainless NPCs do. Not quite as bright screen, no LTPO, who the fuck cares, nobody is comparing two phones outside under the sun in any sort of real life situation. You generally carry one phone, two if you have a job where you’re on call, and you don’t really choose the iPhone they give you for that so why would you compare brightness for two devices outside and use that as a reason to tell people not buy a phone? That’s just not something real people do. You use one phone at a time. This review is not reflective of how people use phones. Its nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking. It’s a worthless marketing review.
Android has supported hotswapping SIM cards and microSD cards for over a decade
You don’t have to remove those doesn’t mean everyone else want. Beside, LG G3/4 already have the ability to hotswap sim/sd card and still offer a removable battery. This is just outdated design choice
Hopefully. Let’s get back to that.
Hope not because it’s super inconvenient. They can do it like my LG G3, removable SD and Sim without removing the battery
Removable batter means you can replace the battery. Which also means you can keep it longer which means it’s better for the plant… ugh you probably don’t care if all you can think is huh duh it’s not like all the other phones.
You don’t understand right?
and I don’t have to remove the battery to insert/remove sim/sd card.I do. It’s the opposite of left.
What an odd accusation!
So what’s the point of your first comment? I simply point out an outdated design choice, it’s not like I’m against removable battery. Or guess you realize you are too dumb to use google and have to go roundabout eh?
Im sorry I won’t converse with someone that thinks the best way to get their point across is to include insults.
Have a great day and try to be better.
