In a bid to reduce global electronic waste, Fairphone has created a smartphone that owners can repair themselves. What makes its technology so sustainable?
Honestly, modern phones last 4-5+ years. The two-year upgrade cycle made more sense when the technology was rapidly improving and there were significant changes in user experience from year to year.
The only thing is you may have to replace your battery halfway through the life-cycle of your phone, but that’s not a big deal.
I genuinely don’t get the appeal of the Fairphone. Just keep your normal smartphone (be it Android, iPhone, or whatever) as long as you can then recycle it once you’re ready to upgrade.
I feel people nowadays upgrade out of battery degradation rather than new features/specs.
phones became so damn frustrating to service that people just swap them when their batteries start to degrade, instead of swapping batteries and continue using it.
Batteries got harder to access, making battery swaps a lot harder and error prone for regular users. The battery used to be easily accessible via the back cover, which was made to be easily removable. Now you have to unglue your screen with a heat gun, get to the battery through the phone guts, remove the original battery which is likely glued in, put the new one, put the phone back together and somehow glue the screen back and hope you didn’t damage anything. Also, from my experience, 3rd party replacement batteries typically don’t last as long as the original ones do. An original battery lasted me 3 years, after which I had to keep replacing 3rd party batteries every 4 months because they kept dying.
Honestly, modern phones last 4-5+ years. The two-year upgrade cycle made more sense when the technology was rapidly improving and there were significant changes in user experience from year to year.
The only thing is you may have to replace your battery halfway through the life-cycle of your phone, but that’s not a big deal.
I genuinely don’t get the appeal of the Fairphone. Just keep your normal smartphone (be it Android, iPhone, or whatever) as long as you can then recycle it once you’re ready to upgrade.
I feel people nowadays upgrade out of battery degradation rather than new features/specs.
phones became so damn frustrating to service that people just swap them when their batteries start to degrade, instead of swapping batteries and continue using it.
Batteries got harder to access, making battery swaps a lot harder and error prone for regular users. The battery used to be easily accessible via the back cover, which was made to be easily removable. Now you have to unglue your screen with a heat gun, get to the battery through the phone guts, remove the original battery which is likely glued in, put the new one, put the phone back together and somehow glue the screen back and hope you didn’t damage anything. Also, from my experience, 3rd party replacement batteries typically don’t last as long as the original ones do. An original battery lasted me 3 years, after which I had to keep replacing 3rd party batteries every 4 months because they kept dying.