Fairphone 3 Pre-Orders Begin For Ethical Smartphone With Better Specs Than The Librem 5

[Girolamo_Cavazzoni]

Let's not forget that Fairphone offers an officially supported Google-free Android that respects your freedom in many regards, although it still needs Qualcomm's blobs. And they are working on an Android image with freedreno for the midterm future.

[Serafean]

These are all different beasts:
- Random android handset: gimme your $$, at least once every 2 years. Device controlled by manufacturer + google. Privacy and repairability nowhere to be seen.
- Librem 5: your device, your rules. Privacy 1st class citizen. Repairablility 2nd class citizen. Hardware limited by availability of GPL drivers.

- Fairphone: Device controlled by google, but materials are sourced ethically. Repairability 1st class citizen. Privacy not looked at. Hardware limited by manufacturing.

I'd say the purism guys had it tougher to cobble it together. Both projects are pretty awesome though.

What is unfortunate with both these projects it that AV1 will (hopefuly) become relevant in about a year's time, and they don't have hw acceleration... So a hw refresh will definitely be in order.

[theriddick]

Librem should have just offered mobile software rather then ripping people off with crap hardware at inflated costs.
I would be totally fine paying them $50 for the mobile software that works on any phone.
This whole concept that Librem is magic hardware that protects users.. lol

[caligula]

Maybe I did not articulate myself clearly. My complain was exactly that Michael compares those phones only by performance, which isn't the point of any of those phones. They all have completely different goals.

There are also differences in prices. A mainstream phone produced with child labor and 30 days of OS support is a bit cheaper than ethical phone with a long term 10+ year support. OTOH the mainstream phone will soon ship with a 108 megapixel sensor.

[tuxd3v]

I would love to purchase a Fairphone, I don't even care about hardware specs...but Android. Android devices cannot fully function without violating European human rights/privacy laws, so the Fairphone is only 'fair' from a ecological point of view, not so much social. It is still a very badly needed initiative though. I hope Fairphone will support postmarketOS once the upcoming PinePhone has show it to be workable. With a bit of luck, the US Huawei ban will block Huawei from licensing Android, and lead to diversification the mobile OS landscape, for that badly needed competition, and break Google's illegally acquired monopoly.

Your Comment says it all..
I also would prize a phone that respects our freedoms..
Right now only the Inoi r7, and the Jolla C, were released with pure sailfishOS on them..

Jolla C, was a limited edition.. Inoi r7, its like crazy to get it out of Russia..they go till 'Moskva 21' station, and are returned to the seller..
I know that it was a phone launched for Russia public services with pure saifishOS, but why we can't have it out of Russia...?

The mind set of some Linux users is not the same has others, we sometimes we prize different things,
I think they should think twice, on selling the phone, or a upgraded version of it..

For all of the projects out there, privacy should be a major concern, at least if thinking in selling in Europe..

[ChamPro]

These are all different beasts:
- Random android handset: gimme your $$, at least once every 2 years. Device controlled by manufacturer + google. Privacy and repairability nowhere to be seen.
- Librem 5: your device, your rules. Privacy 1st class citizen. Repairablility 2nd class citizen. Hardware limited by availability of GPL drivers.

- Fairphone: Device controlled by google, but materials are sourced ethically. Repairability 1st class citizen. Privacy not looked at. Hardware limited by manufacturing.

I'd say the purism guys had it tougher to cobble it together. Both projects are pretty awesome though.

What is unfortunate with both these projects it that AV1 will (hopefuly) become relevant in about a year's time, and they don't have hw acceleration... So a hw refresh will definitely be in order.

While I would like AV1 to hurry up, we barely have HEVC/h.265. That only made it into silicon in the last few years and barely any streaming services are using it. It's probably a good 5 years out before AV1 is mainstream.

[tuxd3v]

Just as a reminder, Fairphone 2 has only community port of Sailfish OS, it works great, but doesn't feature proprietary Android support.

Does it have FM Radio?
If it doesn't have google on it...is a good thing

And there hasn't been any official announcement about official 3rd gen support, as either Fairphone would have to pay the license or you would have to pay Jolla directly. But at least community port is likely.

I can buy the OS after, ...no problem, the question is does it has FM radio, all its sensors,NFC and so on working?
Because we can forget Google, but the Hardware needs to work..

[Almindor]

Librem should have just offered mobile software rather then ripping people off with crap hardware at inflated costs.
I would be totally fine paying them $50 for the mobile software that works on any phone.
This whole concept that Librem is magic hardware that protects users.. lol

They couldn't do that because it'd be another Jolla on top of libhybris. And that means it still runs Android software pieces underneath. No way to know what's monitored and what's not.

[Girolamo_Cavazzoni]

Does it have FM Radio?

Yes, it has. Owner of FP2 (LineageOS without Google) here.

[L_A_G]

Considering the vastly different goals of the two project I really don't think comparing them like this is warranted.

The goal for the Fairphone is to make an easily repairable device free of conflict minerals out of standard off-the-shelf components with little to no focus on being fully open or respecting of users' privacy. For the Librem project these two things are literally at the core of everything, as shown by the very unconventional hardware design that eschews standard smartphone components because of how they're full of closed source components that could be doing god knows what. Network chips, which often run their own internal and proprietary OS, are known to be particularly problematic and because of this the ones in the Librem5 sit on their own separate board where they can be completely powered off.

For those who think I'm being overly dramatic about how devices' components running their own closed internal code could be made to do some pretty suspect things I recommend that you watch this talk on the Broadwpn attack or read up on the PoisonTap attack as to what kind of damage a malicious network chip can do: