Earlier this year, Fairphone announced the Fairphone 2, which has been designed by the company from scratch and has a unique feature: the users can (and are encouraged to) easily disassemble the phone themselves, swap or upgrade parts, and keep using the device longer than any other similar smartphone. In a word, it is modular.
Interesting, and a very different approach than Google’s Ara.
Hopefully it will hit the US market and be able to run stock Android builds.
What will be most interesting is to see if a community of parts people develops around it – e.g can I only buy a new camera module from them or could I buy it from any of N vendors that sell compatible parts? IOW, how tied in to buying from them are the phones?
5 years? Not with a Snapdragon 801. Unless the CPU and ram are part of the modular things you can upgrade.
They plan to release a new phone earlier so if it gets too slow for you, you can get a new one. However, you can get spare parts for the next 5 years. Awesome!
There are NO modules that can be replaced with other modules. I first read the entire article, then I actually searched through the text for words like “upgrade, swap, replace, third party, modules, etc”. Basically this phone is very easy to repair by replacing module A with a new module A.
They don’t even guarantee that parts from their next phone (v3) will work in this one (v2).
Now look at the words on the board: reuse, recycle, refurbish.
This is not an “upgradable” phone, it is a “repairable” phone
Just as avgalen already pointed out, Fairphone are pretty clear about the fact they’re aiming for repairability, not upgradability. Given the vibration alert on my phone just died, I’d love to be able to switch out a cheaper module to replace it.
Apart from their interesting design approach, they’re also really upfront about the cost breakdown of the phone, which makes for interesting reading:
https://www.fairphone.com/2015/09/09/cost-breakdown-of-the-fairphone…
I’m impressed by what they’re trying to achieve with this.
So basically you pay almost $600+ for ugly non-upgradeable hardware nowhere near as good as the $180 2015 Moto G. Sounds like a real value proposition to me [/sarc].
I’m sorry, but your comment cannot be taken seriously, knowing that a Snapdragon 801 hugely outperforms a Snapdragon 410 SoC and a 1080p screen outperforms a 720p screen.
It’s not a fair comparison and your claims are untrue.
edit: and also that’s not sarcasm, because no person or institution was hurt by your snide remark. It’s irony, but without sarcasm. Learn the difference.
Edited 2015-10-23 08:35 UTC
Get of your high horse. The reality is that this phone is an overpriced gimmick designed to make the gullible feel good about buying consumer junk. The company will probably be broke in a year or two so you won’t be able to buy spares anyway.
That’s rather pessimistic. Since this company exists for a couple of years already and knowing that this is their second large project, I think (or rather hope) that they continue to exist for a significant amount of time.
Do you also think fairtrade food and goods are overpriced gimmicks?
Edited 2015-10-23 11:47 UTC
They are far worse than gimmicks. They are a particularly evil combination of emotional blackmail (consumers) and extortion (producers). The only people who benefit are the cynical middlemen.
Edited 2015-10-24 02:11 UTC
part of the extra cost comes from the fact they source their materials from “ethical sources”. Now, you can argue the validity of that argument, but not using slave/child labour does make things more expensive. Many prefer to simply not ask the questions they dont want the answers to…
The phone is made in China under contract. The only source for many of the materials (eg rare earths) and components is also China. There is no plausible reason why it would be any more “ethical” than any other brand.
Edited 2015-10-23 09:43 UTC
Fairtrade food and goods also originate from the same place where the less ethical equivalents come from. Does that make their premise false? I think not.
Also this claim is easy to make, but has been debunked numerous times.
Edited 2015-10-23 11:50 UTC
“What did surprise us is how wages are typically lower, and on the whole conditions worse, for workers in areas with Fairtrade organisations than for those in other areas.”
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/
One thing I’m not sure of (and can’t seem to find anything definitive about): does it support hardware accelerated encryption? Because isn’t that the same chipset as the Nexus 6? Which had a problem with encryption acceleration?
That’s something that would keep me from buying the phone (whereas I’m currently considering this phone as my next phone, when my current Moto E – which does have hardware accelerated encryption with its lowly SD410 – would die)
Who gets the 39€ in IP and royaties ?
How can we make android smartphones that cost 80€ ?
Edited 2015-10-23 12:32 UTC
You can buy Android phones for $30. This business is simply a way of selling grossly overpriced parts to the gullible.
Edited 2015-10-24 02:56 UTC
It’s usually just a bulk discount.
The more devices you sell, the royalties per device will be less.
The phone uses bog standard hardware (CPU. RAM, screen etc) inside custom Lego blocks. The total hardware royalties would be a dollar or two at most.
The only reasonable explanation for a 39 Euro royalty charge is price gouging.
The gross profit on this phone would be at least $300/unit.
As I’ve said repeatedly this is a great bit of marketing for an overpriced gimmick.