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. 🤭

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    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.

      • Dark ArcA
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        9 months ago

        The original framework didn’t have motherboard upgrades, those came later. It was lauded for its openness and repairability

        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.

        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.

        I mean lots of people said that about laptops too and then Framework shook things up.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        9 months ago

        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.