Compared to the Fairphone 5 it has some improvements but also a few downsides:
Pro:
- It’s a bit smaller (~4mm) and lighter (~20g)
- Slightly better camera (future tests will tell how much better)
- 120 Hz display
- More RAM and storage (although I feel that the previous 6GB/128GB option was also sufficient for most users)
- WiFi 6E Tri-Band (however you will likely never need this speed)
- Bluetooth 5.4
- Slightly larger battery
Con:
- Backpanel now requires a screwdriver
- Display has less resolution/PPI
- Performance of processor will likely be nearly identical to predecessor (however it’s more efficient and modern)
- Downgrade to USB 2
- 600€
My conclusion: Overall the improvements are ok, however just releasing the Fairphone 5 with a newer SoC might have been the better/more cost effective choice. Sacrificing display resolution for 120 Hz feels also quite wrong. 600€ is very pricy for a phone like this. Cutting some premium features away like the 120 Hz display or a bit of RAM and storage (that you can extend anyway with an SD card) might have saved enough to get the launch price down to somewhere near 500€ which would make it accessible for a wider audience.
Honestly, this might be the first fairphone which I would classify as good enough for daily use.
Worth noting buying a second hand phone is still better in every aspect and sadly 2nd hand Samsung from 3 years ago is still better and cheaper. Though Fairphone is getting closer with each release!
It is an android, which is moving towards an ai for everything trajectory which might be a privacy nightmare, I wonder if the next step of the fairphone journey is to break from android
650€ is way too expensive for an unknown phone brand with an unknown OS installed on it smh. i’d love to buy one but considering you can get a samsung for less than 500€
Fairphone has been a really disappointing experiment in so-called sustainable tech over the years. They keep making new phones instead of continuing to support the old ones, which might be greenwashing. (Whereas if you got a legacy Framework 13, it’s still user-repairable and upgradable.) If they wanted to make a non-upgradable device, maybe it would have been wise to make it high-end to futureproof to work until 4G gets phased out. Fairphone still is not making their products available in the U.S., and Murena is a borderline scam company and I am genuinely shocked Fairphone works with them.
And I’ve heard their logic with the headphone jack, but I do think AUX is the lesser of two evils as removing it will just lead to more e-waste with broken bluetooth headphones that rarely last as long as good wired ones. Fairphone’s own bluetooth accessories have gotten negative reviews for their lower build quality, so Fairbuds are likely not the solution to the headphone jack problem.
For the simple fact that non-Europeans can buy them directly off the website, I would sooner recommend feature phones from Sunbeam as it also has user-replaceable batteries and you can send it in for repairs. Or just any phone used.
Fairphone is probably going to be my new phone when I upgrade.
FP would be a good choice for Graphene.
I’d jump immediately if it had a stylus.
I love the idea but the price is too high for the chip given that this is designed to be a longevity phone. A chip like the 7s Gen 3 would make the phone sluggish after a couple of years with how unoptimised todays apps are.
The Gorilla Glass 7i and IP55 water resistance are also concerning given that budget Samsung, Xiaomi, etc phones beat this.
However having components of the phone being easily replacable is a great thing.
I would totally buy one of these if they were sold in the US. Sadly, last time I checked the newest phone wasn’t sold here. So I doubt this one will be.
If they are all about swappable parts, and being able to upgrade your phone how you want … Shouldn’t this just be a module upgrade… Of the main part? Maybe I don’t understand it … At the very least the old parts should work with the new system right? Unless something major has changed.
Why does The Fairphone (Gen. 6) not have an audio jack?
After some of the criticism that we received about removing the headphone jack from Fairphone 4, we did consider bringing it back for The Fairphone (Gen. 6). However, we realized it would be at the expense of increasing the phone’s dimensions. We also looked into the consumer data and Fairphone 4’s weight and thickness were more of an issue than the lack of a minijack, so we decided to keep the same approach, although it was a difficult decision. We didn’t want to invest in OLED technology for the display and then not have improved the phone’s dimensions and weight. But just like with Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5, we will still offer an adapter, which has had overall positive user reviews.
“We heard the criticism but decided that no, you would still need an adapter to use headphones, plus a USB-C hub to be able to charge the damn thing while listening to music or watching videos”
Funny how that’s the same excuses that we get for modern laptops terrible design. “We HAVE to make it thinner so there’s no space! You wouldn’t want a laptop that’s not complete shit if it meant it’d also be less thin and breakable, now would you?”
Let me expand, as I usually deal with surveys and population feedback. There’s loud feedback, and there’s statistically significant feedback.
People who want a headphone jack are very loud. They will interject this issue into every feedback opportunity given. They will mention it on the comment sections, forums, q&a sessions, answer their surveys accordingly, etc. That’s all fine and their prerogative.
However, when you look at the statistics. They are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population. They are not statistically significant for decision making. They don’t have the volume to move sales significantly. This sucks, of course, and I personally wouldn’t mind the return of headphone jacks, smaller phones and bigger batteries as a fair trade for thicker phones.
But unfortunately, the vast majority of the market is pre-occupied with other things. The phone screen is too small, the phone weights too much, the phone is too thick, I want to bring my phone to the pool without fear of it breaking, etc. They are not as passionate about it, not like the headphone people are, but they far outnumber them in several orders of magnitude. In the end, if the product doesn’t sell, it won’t matter how much it was worth to a single passionate person. It will sink the company if it doesn’t have mass appeal. Making phones is already an extremely expensive endeavor.
You can get good Bluetooth earbuds for under $50 and a USB-C to AUX dongle for under $15.
The average person is fine with Bluetooth earbuds or an adapter, and audiophiles would not find the inbuilt DAC/amp on a phone to be adequate.
Maybe I chose the wrong $10 adapter but I notice a big drop in sound quality using that vs Bluetooth, to the point that it’s not worth using unless there isn’t another option. I’m not really an audiophile, though I can notice the general quality of sound.
how do you charge the phone with a DAC plugged in?
You can get a USB-C splitter adapter.
isn’t that against the USB-C standard?
If we revisit the “loud” vs “statistically significant” paradigm, while it is a shame you will not be able to charge the phone with a dac in without buying a specific cable, how often does the average person do so?
so you need a dongle for the DAC, and an additional dongle for charging that is also, if I recall it correctly, violates the USB-C standard. did I understand it correctly?
Wirelessly.
Or you switch to your bluetooth buds during a wired charge.
I’m all for audio jacks, but have been using a phone without one for 4 years now, and there are so many options to not be incovenienced.
Also I don’t use my audiophile headphones with the phone at all - DAC on it just isn’t good enough to get most out of then, prefer to use them with my desktop PC amp only.
good luck charging my phone wirelessly! wireless charging is also very wasteful, and it does not support idle charging (powering the phone without wearing the battery), even if the phone otherwise does. doesn’t it also take up a significant amount of that precious space inside the phone?
Wirelessly.
FairPhone doesn’t do wireless charging.
Didn’t know that, thanks.
It’s kinda tough sell without wireless for such price, for me. Though I guess it’s maybe a tough fit with their modular design ambitions, and corners have to be cut somewhere to keep their higher costs down.
People who want a headphone jack […] are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population.
People interested in paying more for fair trade materials and repairable phones are also a very tiny minority of the entire population.
Of course I don’t have any statistic, but I would guess that the proportion of people wanting a Jack is significantly higher in the group of people interested in buying Fairphone that on the general population.In my particular case, I’m still using my Fairphone 3, and I’m not buying a Fairphone again unless it has a Jack.
I don’t have any statistic, but I would guess that the proportion of people wanting a Jack is significantly higher in the group of people interested in buying Fairphone that on the general population.
Fairphone literally does have that statistic. They spent effort to gather that info in order to inform their business decisions. And they report:
We also looked into the consumer data and Fairphone 4’s weight and thickness were more of an issue than the lack of a minijack
Just out of interest, because I too love the jack, then what are you buying in the future?
I have no idea, I’m hoping for my F3 to still last a couple of years.
I’m honestly pretty tired of Android, and that’s another can of worms. Maybe I’ll try with a linux phone, but I’m still undecided.Motorola or whatever, depends what’s available within budget at the time I need the phone.
Like I’ve said before- their market is small enough they should be trying to get everyone they can to buy it.
That’s what they’re doing. That’s why they remove the headphone jack in favour for a slimmer, lighter phone. Their market research showed that’s more important to a bigger portion of their customers.
I’ve never met someone that cared about a thinner phone, they’ve been too thin since 2015…
People that want their ducking hradphine jacks? They are everywhere.
Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
You are only paying more for that phone because they are a tiny boutique manufacturer who has to outsource everything. The fair/eco stuff is just fair- and greenwashing.
If you buy a phone because you want to look fair/eco, buy a Fairphone. If you actually really care for fair/eco, get an used phone and donate some money to the correct NGOs or charities.
Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
I’ve looked through their report and I can’t find this info. The only thing I’ve found is a ~€2 bonus per phone to their factory workers, which is only a small fraction of a phones supply chain. Can you provide a more detailed reference supporting your claim?
Read through the whole report, sum up all the money they mention. It comes out to $16 000. Double that for the stuff where they don’t mention money (because they surely would mention anything that costs more than the things they do mention). Double it again, for a safety margin. Double it again, because we are really generous. Now we are at €128 000. Divide that by the number of devices sold in 2024 and you get $1.24. Now add the $1.20 (Page 29) they pay as a living wage bonus and you arrive at $2.44 per device.
And now let’s be super generous and double that guess again, and you end up with the <€5 per device that I quoted above.
The picture becomes clearer when you look at what they say about their fair material usage.
Take for example the FP5 (page 42 & 67). Their top claim here is “Fair materials: 76%”, which they then put a disclaimer next to it, that they only mean that 76% of 14 specific focus materials is actually fair. On the detail page (page 67) they specify that actually only 44% of the total weight of the phone is fairly mined, because they just excluded a ton of material from the list of “focus materials” to push up the number.
The largest part of these materials are actually recycled materials (37% of the 44% “fair” materials). The materials they are recycling are plastics, metals and rare earth elements. That’s all materials that are cheaper to recycle than to mine. You’ll likely find almost identical amounts of recycled materials in any other phone, because it makes economical sense. It’s just cheaper. Since these materials cost nothing extra to Fairphone, we can exclude them from the list, which leaves 1% of actually fair mined material (specifically gold), and 6% of materials that they bought fairwashing credits for.
Also, the raw materials of phones are dirt cheap compared to the end price. The costly part is not mining the materials, but manufacturing all the components.
With only 1% of the materials being fairly mined and only 6% being compensated with credits, you can start to see why in total they spend next to nothing on fair mining/fair credits.
Yeah, I see, thanks a lot for taking the time to read through the report and write this.
It’s fucking sad but honestly thanks for pointing it out, I hadn’t even read the report.Yeah, it is sad. Turns out, Fairphone is just yet another fairwashing company. People spend lots of money and suffer through using this phone with its trash quality software because they think that they are saving the planet by doing so, and in the end they actually just indirectly donated maybe a few Euros to some random fair credit mill.
Keep your eyes peeled and read what’s beind the marketing, because even companies that look good rarely are.
Especially for stuff like fair/eco/green, where it’s really hard to objectively measure how good something is and where legal standards are ridiculously low.
What statistics? People buying thin phones over thicker phones doesn’t mean much when that’s almost all that’s being sold nowadays and every phone is trying to be as thin as possible. It seemed to me that 90% of what we’re told people want is actually just what companies want to push on us because it’s cheaper and more profitable.
All the people I know who are average users couldn’t care less about how thin the phone is, two mm more or less doesn’t make any difference. They care about screen size and being able to use it without too much hassle. If they get a phone without an audio jack half of them will just assume that they can’t plug earphones at all. And they are not the ones who will complain. But then, Fairphone isn’t marketed towards average users, so maybe their users have different priorities? Idk
Very strange how mine can somehow fit a 7000mAh battery, dual SIM + SD card slot and a regular jack. Hmm…
Is it repairable only with a screwdriver and parts you can buy from the manufacturer?
That’s a definite advantage of the Fairphone.
I guess, I will find out how mine fares when the need arises. Hasn’t happened in 4.5 years yet.
Are you a Republican? Because that really sounds like “mine works, so fuck everyone else”
Are you a murican? Cuz you really sound like USA is your whole world.
Okay, I’m going to ask… why don’t you use wireless?
Edit: some results are in, and the only reasonable answer is better audio quality, although that’s probably no longer true. The rest are fairly weak reasons.
Lol’d at the 10m extension cord though, thanks for that one.
There’s a deGoogled version too!!
I would prefer GrapheneOS (If I can live with the irony of getting a Pixel phone just to deGoogle it…). Sandboxing there is way better. But you lose the Repairability… Gotta check and compare the new EU metrics too.
They are just two different devices.
I not only want a degoogled version but also a secure one. Sadly developing a secure android is rather hard. The Graphene team does it pretty well. Others try it too, but sadly they are not close.
Degoogled version is €50 more, for whatever reason
the reason: support for developers. You can install it yourself to save that amount.
People don’t want to pay for privacy. That’s the real problem with end users. Imagine if more people did so. What a world we could have. Nah. Let’s be cheap AF!
Locking privacy behind a paywall? Sounds like a nightmare.
That’s the real problem with end users.
The real problem with end users is that they buy according to whatever needs corpos inject via advertising.
Like Kagi for web searching.
Because the built in software is usually there because the manufacturer is receiving money from the software company. That’s why consumer devices are always bloated with garbage.
I bet PostmarketOS will release for it
Why do you think so? We still don’t have proper support for the Fairphone 4 on pmOS, why’d the 6 be any better?
Because as you said it is available in some capacity already. Plus people complain about the slow speed of the 4 so maybe people will want to develop quicker for the 6. I could be totally wrong but I’m hopeful
GraphineOS is more secure
We know GrapheneOS only makes their OS on Pixel phones or whatever their own device will be so it’s moot
Thats because pixels fit the rigid standards, if Fairphone met them they would make a version for them
That would be great but that’s just not the way it is unfortunately
Is it really de-googled if it still runs Android?
the degoogled roms like eos calyx lineage graphene are not just aosp zero work roms with no gapps inclueded. the devs do work on changing as much google related code as they can even within aosp. nothing is perfect obviously, but im pretty sure there are compatible mobile linux distros even.
is the bootloader locked with eos?
dang, I just bought FP5.
