At Fairphone, our dedication to change means a dedication to measurement. We’ve just completed the life cycle assessment on the Fairphone 3, and we’re humble-proud to present our results. As with the Fairphone 2, we turned to the independent experts at the Fraunhofer Institute IZM to examine the phone’s lifelong environmental impact – from the […]
I don’t have a smartphone but have considered a Librem 5 or Pinephone because they are open designs. Can anyone tell me if 1.) as an American, I could buy a Fairphone and it would work out of the box and 2.) if the openness of the hardware and software are comparable to the two models I just listed?
They don’t ship outside of Europe. Not sure if it’s work in the US, sorry.
The software is open source, the hardware is using closed source Qualcomm chips AFAIK. But you can easily dismantle the phone and repair it. Not sure how it compares to other phone you listed.
The software isn’t fully open-source either. It comes with the Google Play Services preinstalled, for example. They haven’t ruled out the possibility of a Google-free version in the future and you can get LineageOS running on there, but yeah, it’s just not all sunshine and roses.
Yeah. I’m personally pre-ordering the Pinephone PostmarketOS, but it’s for a secondary device to experiment with - I wouldn’t want to depend on it as a daily driver yet.
I don’t have a smartphone but have considered a Librem 5 or Pinephone because they are open designs. Can anyone tell me if 1.) as an American, I could buy a Fairphone and it would work out of the box and 2.) if the openness of the hardware and software are comparable to the two models I just listed?
They don’t ship outside of Europe. Not sure if it’s work in the US, sorry.
The software is open source, the hardware is using closed source Qualcomm chips AFAIK. But you can easily dismantle the phone and repair it. Not sure how it compares to other phone you listed.
The software isn’t fully open-source either. It comes with the Google Play Services preinstalled, for example. They haven’t ruled out the possibility of a Google-free version in the future and you can get LineageOS running on there, but yeah, it’s just not all sunshine and roses.
Having looked into it myself, one stumbling block would be 4G data connectivity.
e.g. these are the supported bands for the FP3: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032577632-Connectivity-of-the-FP3-outside-of-Europe
compared to T-Mobile (which I use via Mint Mobile) https://www.frequencycheck.com/carriers/t-mobile-united-states
seems like I’m limited to two of the bands (2 and 4) which could badly limit connectivity.
Thanks! Looks like Librem 5 and Pinephone are my options, then and neither are really at market yet.
Yeah. I’m personally pre-ordering the Pinephone PostmarketOS, but it’s for a secondary device to experiment with - I wouldn’t want to depend on it as a daily driver yet.