I can’t believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he’s onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭
I can’t believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he’s onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭
I think their point about framework laptops is actually a stupid one. The fairphone is not a modular device (although they always seem to be trying to claim that), which the framework laptops are. The fact you have to remove the battery to do anything kind of proves that it’s not modular, we’ve seen modular phones so we know what they look like and they don’t look like this.
So it just seems a weird comparison to have made. The fairphone is easier to repair than your average smartphone, but it’s still a lot less repairable than phones from the early 2000s. It’s not a simple repair unless you’re talking about a battery replacement. It doesn’t have swappable buttons, It doesn’t have swappable chassis. Basically it’s a cheap Android phone that costs more money than it is really worth with the justification of environmentalism. I would take a truly modular and easy to repair phone over this any day of the week if one existed, and since one doesn’t yeah I think i’ll go for a Pixel.
The Framework is about more than just the USB bays. They’re also designed to have non-hotswappable repairs for things like the touchpad, the screen, the keyboard, and all kinds of other components that are impossible to replace on other laptops. And there are actually some upgrades you can do to the Fairphone 4, though I don’t think I would bother with the ones they offer if I had one.
The original framework didn’t have motherboard upgrades, those came later. It was lauded for its openness and repairability, but the repairability doesn’t seem to be any better than the Fairphone’s. You can swap the battery, add storage, replace the (web)cam, swap the screen, all without complicated tools, but i think the only real difference is that the Fairphone doesn’t have a removable SSD and RAM package. You can’t upgrade a framework’s CPU without replacing the entire motherboard with it, for instance. Almost everything the Framework was lauded for on launch has been the default on Fairphones for years now, so I think the comparison is quite apt.
I don’t think I’ve used an early 2000s phone where you could replace the camera without a soldering iron, or get access to the screen without breaking the chassis plastic. The replaceable stuff always seemed like a marketing gimmick to me.
The Fairphone has one practical repairability advantage: they promise to keep parts in stock. I could happily get another year or two out of my current phone, but there are no more replacement screens or batteries to be found anywhere. The same was true back in the 2000s; phones with replaceable batteries, skins and back panels would show up, but two years later no shop would stock any of that stuff.
Unfortunately, the modular phones died, because the few phones that did offer modules completely failed. It’s just not viable to create a fully modular device in this form factor.
The original framework came with the claim that it WOULD have motherboard upgrades though (and then they delivered). It was only highly praised for what it was at the time because that’s what the product was (on top of being a product with pretty good specs) and you should never buy a product on the promise of something else.
I mean lots of people said that about laptops too and then Framework shook things up.
I’m not going to get into it because it’s really not relevant to the point, but it is absolutely not proven that modular phones are non-viable. The only two phones to ever tryid it basically never even were given a chance by their manufacturers before they were killed. They just realized that they would never make lots of money on it because you make more money by selling a new phone, then you ever will by just making modular components.