Want an ethical smartphone? Fairphone 3 is on the way – but tiny market share

The Fairphone is coming back, and the camera is basically the same as in the Pixel 3a/XL.

Good news, I think. Tiny market share, but still.

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Ethical construction? A modular design? An SD card slot and a headphone jack?

You had my attention, Fairphone. Now you have my interest

(Too bad I’m too much of a cheapskate to drop £400 on a phone. Wonder how the second-hand market is…)

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Make one half the size and I’ll buy it.

It’d work well in Western Europe, but it lacks many LTE bands used in the US. Otherwise, it would absolutely be my next phone.

It immensely pisses me off that so many phone makers have jumped on the all-glass, no replaceable battery, no headphone jack, (often) no SD card slot bandwagon. My old LG is getting a bit long in the tooth, and looking over my replacement options is depressing. While the newer Nokia phones have SD slots at least, they’re still sealed-up units, and the higher models are all-glass.

There are a few “unofficial” ROMs, including LineageOS, floating around for my old LG over on xda-developers, but after flashing an older Samsung with CyanogenMod only to have CyanogenMod implode, and seeing so much developer drama on xda-developers, that option also gives me cold feet. I may take the plunge anyway, and if it works, get a replacement battery (since the three-year-old original is getting a bit puffy, though it shows no sign of decreased charge life).

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I’m really sorry about that, but some things move faster than we do. Big screens are here to stay, apparently. I’m happy with my small device, but watching movies on it is a bit of a stretch. And people do that.

The answer to this development? Cargo pants.
Never out of fashion, because they (nearly) never were in fashion.

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Oh, shit. I didn’t realise. I’ll have to have a look at this, but I would not be surprised - Europe is their bread and butter market.

Some peeps on the forum are also complaining about the lack of 5G capabilities, but given that even UMTS is still non-existent in larger parts of some European countries, this is rather funny …

I hear ya, but ethics and sustainability are expensive in the short term.

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Belt holsters. Rockin like a cop.

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