The Fairphone (Gen. 6)

Really sad.

Based on what I had read yesterday, when I still hoped that it will have the same USB 3.0/DisplayPort like Fairphone 5, I was considering very seriously to upgrade my rather old ASUS smartphone to a Fairphone 6.

However, if it lacks USB 3.0/DisplayPort, which can be acceptable for a $200 smartphone, but never for a $600 smartphone, then Fairphone 6 is completely disqualified from my point of view.

Unfortunately, only some Chinese smartphones, e.g. from Motorola, offer USB 3.0/DisplayPort in smartphones with decent price/performance ratios and up-to-date Qualcomm SoCs, starting as low as $400.

> But maybe it was not used enough?

Likely not used enough, yet. It would be premature to drop support this quick, as Google seems to just now move Android in the direction (DEX by Samsung is the same thing, but it's Samsung specific).

At the same time, only last year I saw a device in which I'd "dock" my phone (the Nexdock looked reasonably priced) and having both a phone and the steam deck with desktop mode would make such a device more useful.

I know you're talking strictly from the perspective of display glasses, but convergence is the main category under which I'd classify this feature.

Isn't USB C 2.0 on-par with what recent iPhone models offer? It's just fine.

Still rocking a 3 here (albeit only 5 years old). Going quite strong after a couple of replacements and upgrades.

This practice of pixel binning is pretty much the industry standard though. Pretty much all recent phones do it

This question always comes up:

The Reason GrapheneOS isn't made for Fairphones Officially is that Fairphones lack a lot of base requirements for official support:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

There's nothing preventing anyone from making a 3rd Party port of GrapheneOS to Fairphones, it just seems no one does.

This seems to be missing the new focus features introduced with the physical switch, or am I missing something here. Also quoted as 50/100€ more expensive (two prices on the same page?)

eOS uses microG. I'd wish Fairphone offered partnership with GrapheneOS, especially now that Google broke their workflow. Sandboxed Play Services is pretty much a must for a lot of people.

One core member (@z3entu) of postmarketOS works at Fairphone.

There's an /e/os version : https://shop.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-e-operating-s...

I noticed the same general reactions for Framework laptops. Some folks are acting like these smaller companies are trying to force their products on the consumers, but their advertising is completely fine.

However I also find some of the supporters of consumer friendliness unbearable (e.g. Framework or Thinkpad fans).

I get that tribalism is present in many layers of our society and culture (politics, sports, music), but I always found it weirder when people do it for products. The only goal of a company is to maximize their profits, why someone becomes a die hard supporter of them is beyond me.

To summarize, I just wish people would put less emphasis on consumer practices. Buy a product you like and is beneficial for you, but don’t judge others for their choices.

> they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential.

I doubt they'd even get the RND cost for that change back, this is a feature no one cares about except a very very small minority within a small minority. I'm a hardcare FOSS only user and only use grapheneos/fedora linux on my devices for privacy and security reasons and even I am not remotely concerned about hardware switches when i can just powerdown the wifi/Gps/wwan connection.

I've never heard this request from anyone before, so I guess that implementing such a switch wouldn't "effortlessly at least double their market potential".

What a lot of people talk about is a headphone jack. But even that niche has been filled by USB-C adapters for people that really want them and not only talk nostalgic about it.

I'd be happiest if they'd provide a physical switch for the microphone and cameras. That way, you could have a private conversation and be sure you're not being recorded.

Turning off connectivity doesn't help as much to guarantee your privacy as the phone could theoretically be recording and then upload the recording later, when you turn it back on (if it was thoroughly compromised, which admittedly seems unlikely, but nevertheless it would be nice to have some guarantee that it's impossible).

> they'd effortlessly at least double their market potential

I think you overestimate the appeal of such a feature

Genuinely interested, why is that? IOW, why do I want a (mobile) phone without connectivity?

I made the switch to iPhone because they had a physical mute slider. A physical 'airplane mode' would be even better.

Now Apple has removed that ... and I am not happy. Yes, the functionality is theoretically available by configuring the 'smart button'. But I don't physically see the state of the device without picking it up.

The technical descriptions are clearly lacking, up to the point where this product page almost makes me angry... the dimensions seem to be "156.5mm x 73.3mm" with "9,6 mm" thickness, but just right below in the isometric view it says 162mm x 75.5mm x 10.5mmm. I would be really interested in this product as replacement for the iPhone SE, but how can they screw up something so simple?

The website speaks of 12 modules, haven't investigated which.