this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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I believe the concept behind Fairphone sounds interesting, but I think this thing about being environmentally friendly shouldn't be focused on high-end devices, if the Fairphone 5 costs the same as 10 cheap devices(considering cheap devices have a lifetime of 1.5 years) and a biggest % of people would be able to afford a 60 bucks device vs a 600 bucks one I don't see the point here, maybe they should make a device focused on the cheap budget pocket to really fight with the devices consumerism who are the ones what mainly create the e-waste problem. I'm not an expert but this is my humble POV.
I wonder if its just cheaper to make the crappy disposable devices, either because just gluing shit together is easy, or because the existing business model & supply lines based on planned obsolescence are established and optimised.
Ultimately any business model based on chasing anything but the most money is going to be at a disadvantage under capitalism. Want to prioritise good products, less waste, human dignity, not destroying the ecology? Well, you're going to make less money, so you can spend less on capturing market share and you will always have a more niche and more expensive product that will be left behind by products that focus on money above all else.
I believe anything don't cost by itself, I mean money and prices are a man-made concept englobed into economy, so I believe making cheap stuff and making expensive stuff are just two concepts englobed into capitalism.
My point would be, to get rid of e-waste we don't need eco-friendly corporations, we need to get rid of the mayor problem which it's capitalism by itself and it's consumerism practices.
Yeah, in a better world where the people have control of the means of production, we wouldn't care at all about financial return when making something. We'd make it to work well and to last and to be repairable, just like current open source hardware is. We'd make it for us.
True dat folk! ✌️🤞
Needs indefinite software support too. It has 8 years software support, which is the best that exists I think, but that means I'll have to trash it in 8 years for no good reason. The only reason I've had to get rid of old phones is because they weren't providing security updates anymore.
The problem is that, apparently the software support is lacking.
It seems security updates are (very) slow to come.
It's a shame because the concept is very interesting and was thinking of taking the fairphone 5 as my next phone. However the bad feedback regarding updates made me look into another model
Security updates are good but the major of the weakness it's the human using the device, there wouldn't be any security update which can fight a dumb user, my humble POV.
I'm not saying you are dumb, what I'm saying it's from my POV security updates are redundant.
According what I know about devices security updates are meant to protect corporations interests they usually are not to protect you from being hacked it's more like to protect the corporations devices from you hacking it.
There's vulnerabilities like the recent iMessage exploit that are executed remotely through no interaction by the user. In combination with the ability to self-spread you get mass exploits like WannaCry which spread to 300k+ computers in 7 hours. All you need is a network connection.
Imo, paying a small extra for the device makes sense because it's not a huge company, and the r&d must be expensive.
Yeah I mean for people who can afford any phone out there it's not a big problem, but if you are from IDK maybe the 80% who cannot do it I believe it's better if they focus or at least have a line of products for the people who would be interested in a budget price phone, people who don't need the most great-eco-friendly phone with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of ROM, maybe something optimized for work with 4GB/64GB configuration and could last 5 years it's a better idea for me but anyway I'm really not interested into having 24 cores CPU and 350 megapixel camara just to watch porn and news in Lemmy haha. It depends of the needs of the user but maybe focusing too into a more practical phone for the 80% of users could be good for the business.
It's a very neat idea (I myself would get a mid range phone like that), but I wonder if they can actually do that... Has anyone ever asked them?
The problem I think it's about the production and costs, all corporations nowdays manufacture in China so I believe if there would be a great budget/eco-friendly phone or another products what can actually fight in the global market it have to be a Chinese company who make it. But I believe the Chinese are not interested in it if they can keep making cheap stuff and sell it like hamburgers for the hungers. So for Fairphone being an European company I think it's better to stick in the high-end niche. At least that way they can sell their stuff to eco-friendly wannabes and keep making a good profit in the side.
With geopolitics being what they are I think there is a lot of onshoring coming. As well as moving production from China to other places.