this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.