Someone stole my fairphone 4, then threw it on the ground. So it seems like i'll keep it a while longer

I've been running mine for ~4ish I think, on my third battery and might run out my fourth because it's feeling a _little_ sluggish at times.

I am waiting for the next FP model where I can use a USB-C/dp external display and then I'm all over it.

GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well.

Just as physical security, digital security most of the time not as radical, and tradeoffs are usually accepted, especially when they are "invisible": hardware and software security features are usually not mentioned in the specs and the regular and even power user just don't know most of them and what do they do.

When GrapheneOS says "private" and "secure", they mean top-of-the-line security features, updates as soon as possible, all available mitigations against zero-days and insecure code which will limit the impact before the patch, etc. Security as in a killdozer.

When other say "private" and "secure", most of the time it means: "we've followed all the recommendations applicable to our development budget, device price point, and support life time". Graphene does not like that definition of these words.

For smartphone, chip manufacturer goal is not to protect the user at all costs, but to provide reasonable security features for the price.

BUT the goal of chip manufacturer to protect the device at all costs is for… game consoles! That's why Xbox, PlayStation, Switch all run on a custom silicon and not an ordinary chips!

Fairphone makes their fair share of blunders. Software updates are a big issue, especially around the times that critical vulnerabilities need to be patched.

With the hardware I'm not impressed, and on their own forum I've seen plenty of people reporting issues with overheating on the Gen 6. Hopefully kinks have been ironed out on their 6+.

The current CEO also has a persona that would stir up any community (read a few of his AI-gened posts on their blog, if interested of context).

Still holding on to my FP4, but they are not of consideration on my future phone purchase, unless there is some kind of reality check over there and improvements materialize beyond words.

Seems you have to compromise on HW openness and ethics vs paranoia.

They generally don't like other projects, they also compare the security to the "Android Open Source Project" as if it's a real thing, AOSP doesn't run on a single phone on earth and as such isn't an option for anybody.

And for the updates I could comment that

> Fairphone 6 with stock OS has very lacking security due to delayed patches (1-2 months for partial backports, much longer for full Android patches)

Is certainly much better than my Samsung flagship

Another day, another instance of GrapheneOS bitching about Fairphone. It's not like any other device meets their ridiculous standards either, and now that Google is closing up Android and delaying patches, neither will their own Motorola whenever they get around to actually making it.

Have you considered Pinephone then?

I believe the GrapheneOS team demands, in particular, a security feature called Memory Tagging Extensions (MTE). This feature has a phone's processor attach a "tag" to each memory location saying what's stored there and requires accesses to that memory to bear a matching tag. Buffer overflow type attacks are effectively prevented because a read into the adjoining region having a different tag gets rejected.

This feature is usually NOT present in desktop computers, and has only really been implemented by the Google Pixel hardware so far. It's unclear why it's viewed as being so critically necessary for Graphene: MTE is certainly useful but I personally wouldn't say its absence indicates an "insecure" device, and it imposes both a clear performance (and battery life!) penalty and a significant hardware burden on the SoC manufacturer. It's a pretty significant trade-off.

Anyway, that's the biggest single reason why GrapheneOS devs say "this hardware is not adequately secure": 99% of phone chips are excluded because they do not support MTE.

Ten? So like Android and Linux flavors? I'm not sure I even know of ten: e/OS, Calyx, Lineage, Ubuntu Touch, eh is there like Mobian or something still alive... how do they get to ten?? Do they also all fully work? Camera and calling (and not only on 2G) for example?

I'd be interested in the list, the website you've linked is super sparse (the full menu is like shop, some feel-good pages about device deposit and impact, blog, and contact us - no knowledge base, documentation, or somewhere where you'd expect to find OS info or even downloads)

I am a user. What does Android 17 do for me that 16 doesn't?

I belive you are mistaken. Android 17 final was "released" 6-7 weeks ago.

But Google being Google, this release is pretty much useless until Samsung et al deal with all bugs and performance issues, which will take 2-4 months.

Certification takes time and probably overlaped with the phone development. Fairephone is small compared to e.g. samsung and they describe themself more "stable" and long-term support than bleeding edge.

Even worse: Google actually does four releases releases per year (major and QPRs), of which QPR2 is also provided to OEMs. Only Samsung and GrapheneOS roll out QPR2 releases.

The Android version is clearly displayed in the article.

this is 100% in the hands of the SoC manufacturer.

Android versions are locked to kernel versions, which are locked to binary drivers to run your hardware. there's no way around that and you can't reverse engineer or do anything if you want that SoC vendor to continue to fulfill your orders (which you're already at the bottom of the fulfilment list because of low volumes)

I've bought new a Google Pixel 7a two years ago, paid for it 400 euros. After 1 year I've dropped it, landed on a corner, screen completely broken, replacement costed screen costed me nearly 120 euros (and was not an original screen, otherwise I would have spent more). Just costs much money because of the fucking fingerprint reader under the screen that why couldn't put it in the back of the phone as they did for many years. Broken it again, fuck it I will not repair it again, with the cost of the repair I may as well buy a new phone.

Then I've decided that is worth either spending money on phones whose replacement parts doesn't cost half of the phone itself, or just buying the cheapest Xiaomi or similar chineese brand phone and when it breaks buy a new one or repair it (funny enough cheap phones are more repairable than expensive ones, so I usually repair them).

Genuinely, how do you make your phone so slow? I've been using my s10 for 7 years, and besides the minor crack in the corner of the screen from being dropped, and constantly juggling storage because I hoard media, it works as well as it did when it was new.

My family's Pixels have all lasted physically long enough for Google to stop supporting them. My wife was annoyed when I told her she needed a new one because from her perspective there was nothing wrong with her existing one ( lack of security updates is not on her radar.)

I'm typing this from a Galaxy S10 I got in 2020, with Lineage 22 (Android 15) running on it.

For sure it isn't the snappiest, but my only real performance issue is loading gifs on Signal, which takes several seconds for some reason.

Just tried maps now, actually still fairly fine for me.

I am not sure what you are doing to your phone for it to act like that

Nobody is suggesting Fairphone has also replaced Google/Android re SW/OS. What they've arguably done I'd improve the existing situation - surely that counts for something?

There is also nothing precluding them from dropping Android in the future and putting effort into something like Sailfish OS.

You can run postmarketOS on it, although some features are not supported yet: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...

The headphone jack is inside USB-C connector. You can use USB-C-to-3.5mm passive (!) cable to connect your 3.5mm headphones, or you can buy 3.5mm headphones with USB-C audio connection.

There's no additional DAC involved, the analog audio is already on a USB-C pins.

I absolutely concour about the need of a headphone jack - I do not buy anything without it. So,

> to fit other features in

what exactly, one would ask. If there are tradeoffs, if would be nice if the customers can decide what to have, in a modular product.

Serial is a universal data interface that we've had for decades. Don't need RS232 on my phone though.

Fairphone 4 (2021) parts: https://www.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?catego...

Fairphone 5 (2023) parts: https://www.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?catego...

Parts for the Fairphone 2 (2015) and Fairphone 3 (2019) aren't available anymore, but I suppose that's not all that surprising after 11 respective 7 years.

Afair, they started running out of some Fairphone 3 spare parts around 2024 and kept the ones they still had for warranty repairs. Source: I own one (and switched to the Fairphone 6 early this year).

This is a good point. Ifixit has guides for all the phones, but it reports that none of the replacement parts are actually sold in the United States.

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Fairphone

Reminds me of the cold steel throwing axe that I bought that specifically has replaceable handles in case you break one. No one actually sells the handles though!

It's in shop --> "all parts" (under the "spare parts" header)

Here are the ones for the fairphone 4: https://www.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?catego...

I however couldn't find the ones for the fairphone 3. The fairphone 4 is from 2021, which is not that old.

A simple Google search showed they are right here: https://www.fairphone.com/spare-parts

When I had a Fairphone 4, regulars on the community forum repeatedly reminded everyone that repairability was not a primary goal of Fairphone, ethical consumerism was, and any longevity and repairability was secondary or coincidental.

Yes, that goes against most of Fairphone's own advertising, but it was consistent with my experience of the phone and discussions on the forum: security updates frequently so far out of date that some software could not be run, flimsy components inconsistent with advertising (yes, the battery was nominally swappable, but the snaps on the back would break easily, and support would claim that it was not intended to be removed regularly), parts that were frequently out of stock, and of course, whole new phone designs every generation rather than Framework-like component upgrades.

It seems like they may have improved since then, but those problems, along with the atrocious security (FP4 used AOSP's public test signing keys, with publicly-available private keys, for its firmware) and sketchiness around specs, standards and openness (especially for the camera), generally turned me off the company.

It’s both superior engineering-wise and morally. The moral framing is probably more popular with folks that don’t care about engineering superiority, too.