> Critical Notice: The device does not support LTE Band 13 (Verizon's primary coverage frequency).
Presumably that frequency isn't used in Europe? It also says that it's "not certified for use on the Verizon Wireless network." I don't know if that means Verizon might block it (which sounds like a very US thing) or it's related to not supporting the frequency that Verizon uses for LTE.
The evolution of low effort copy+paste LLM response. Now Google can track everyone who wants that information and people can be just as rude as before when they copy+pasted LLM responses into conversations, but now it's sly.
That's been true for much of the history of cellular networks, as far as I know - universal standards in Europe, US phones can't (always) be moved between service providers. It used to be even worse in the US, with phones locked to individual carriers regardless of technology.
That's some of the European over-regulation that everyone complains about, compared to unfettered American competition.
Yeah, that’s a bummer. But I’m seriously thinking about switching to AT&T over this, but I would need to know if the frequencies are covered as good on AT&T.
I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
> I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
The beginning of your sentence - "I can’t believe how few choices we have..." - can be applied equally sadly to other areas here in the U.S....such as but not limited to lack of choice of residential ISPs, or lack of choice (or generally mis-incentivized) healthcare providers, or lack of choice of mobile service providers, or, etc., or etc. And, of course, your last part of your comment asking where the innovation is? Well, innovation often is pocketed in those who control the capital, and only released little by little at the whims of releasing more capital. Sorry, i have to step away, cuz felt sad instantly just citing my own comments here. :-(
How are you going to innovate installing hundreds of thousands of cell towers across the USA?
Mobile network via satellite might increase number of network providers by 1 or 2, but the physics problem of needing tons of physical assets to create a wireless network usable by small, low powered devices remains.
I guess you could innovate some new physics that allows you to send wireless signals through more surfaces, that is also not ionizing radiation to animal and plant tissue, and doesn’t need a lot of power to send from a mobile device. That is a lot to ask, though.
Cell towers in the United States are primarily owned by three major companies: American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications. These companies build, acquire, and lease space on the towers to wireless providers.
When you say lease space to wireless providers, what do the carriers do with that leased space? Do you think that could be called infrastructure needed for that carrier’s coverage?
Also, there are enough dead zones that satellite direct to cell is a thing.
If you as a user want a modern, high end or top of the line cell phone, you're pretty much just stuck with Apple or Samsung. Maybe Google. If you remove the minor variants each has that's just 3.
We used to have many more - OnePlus obviously, Honor, Huawei, LeEco, HTC, LG, ASUS, Essential, Blackberry, etc.
Why use Verizon directly? It's insanely overpriced. US mobile and others provide better prices, service, features, security, and customer service. If it doesn't work on their towers, US mobile allows you to switch to at&t and t mobile towers.
"[GrapheneOS] lost most interest in that hardware due to the poor way privacy, security, updates and marketing based on these things has been handled."
I'm sure their concerns are valid but just because GrapheneOS don't consider the Fairphone to meet their standards for security doesn't mean it is not worth considering for other people who may have different priorities. Fairphones have certain advantages over Pixels such as better repairability and more ethically sourced labour/components. IMO it's good to see the Fairphone do well (and I hope GrapheneOS's partnership with Motorola also goes well).
Is it pettiness or just sticking to their morals? Murena, as they mentioned, forwards data to OpenAI which is against pretty much everything Graphene stands for.
I was not aware of Murena forwarding data to OpenAI. I'm sympathetic to Murena and their partnership with e/OS/. I looked up what it is about. /e/OS 3 uses OpenAI for Voice to Text. This is the statement where they explain this:
> To implement this approach, we chose to use the OpenAI gpt-4 transcribe API that has been designed for this purpose, is cost-effective and efficient.
In the current version of /e/OS, Voice to Text runs offline.
> The earlier Voice to Text was a Premium-only, online feature: it streamed your speech to a third-party AI transcription service [...] The new Voice to Text is free, offline and on-device
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe. Here are 2 clear examples:
I think it's absolutely pettiness at this point, on both sides. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen a post about /e/OS on Mastodon with someone in the replies ranting about how everyone should use Graphene instead. It reminds me of the old joke about vegans.
GrapheneOS and /e/OS' goals are different - the former is about security tightening and the latter is about deGoogling. They just had a public falling out and refuse to let it go.
You can buy used Pixels, e.g. from 8a up. I'd claim that this is much more ecological than buying a new Fairphone. I suppose that a Pixel is of a higher quality and has less defects than a Fairphone (which changed the ODM several times). --
This said, I would never use /e/ and Murena as I read too many things I don't like.
You are trusting that your used Pixel doesn't have some non-removable rootkit installed... depending on source, and if that's even possible I don't know but I am suspect of random used hardware on FB or eBay.
You can always flash and factory reset. I’d bet 99.9% of phones on eBay are by and for general public and not some esoteric zero days in the wild that your comment makes it sound like.
Fairphones have very poor updates with rapidly degrading privacy and security over their lifespan. They don't keep up with important updates from the beginning and it gets much worse over time. Updates are very important for sustainability. They're also missing important hardware-based security protections which are needed to protect user data in the real world. They've consistently had major issues such as using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and OS images which they've usually failed to acknowledge.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch with no movement to updating to a newer one. Fairphone 6 is set to end up in the same situation and it isn't far away. They nearly entirely stop providing Linux privacy and security patches once this happens.
Android patches come around half a year late since the Android Security Bulletins themselves are published very late and Fairphone lags 1-2 months or more behind those.
There's extremely little information available on Fairphone's ODM partner T2Mobile and their supply chain. The information is mainly a list of suppliers without information on working conditions, pay, environmental protection or nearly anything else. T2Mobile has been their ODM since the Fairphone 4 and earlier information is no longer relevant. They moved away from their original ODM partnership to another with the Fairphone 3 and then to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4. It's unclear if pay and working conditions are better at T2Mobile for Fairphones than they are for their other products and in what way they're better. It's unclear how it comes to Foxconn for Apple and Google phones.
Apple and Google design their devices and handle the firmware and software. Fairphone is using hardware, firmware and software provided by T2Mobile. Fairphone is heavily reliant on what's provided by their ODM. For example, their move to T2Mobile coincided with dropping the 3.5mm audio jack. It's likely not something they wanted to do and many of their supporters were unhappy about it, but it's not really their phone hardware. The phones are essentially T2Mobile devices and there's not a lot of information available. It isn't clear why they switched to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 or why the earlier switch to another ODM happened with the Fairphone 3.
Fairphones have atrocious updates which means they aren't sustainable devices. They use a multiple generation old SoC from the beginning with an artificially shortened lifespan.
Fairphones are currently designed and assembled by T2Mobile. T2Mobile even signs the firmware on the devices. Prior to the Fairphone 4, they had 2 previous ODM partnerships. They're limited to what their ODM offers which was likely the reason they dropped the 3.5mm audio jack when they moved to T2Mobile for the Fairphone 4. The working conditions and supply chain management are largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone.
There's a severe lack of actual evidence for Fairphones having a more ethical or sustainable assembly and supply chain than Apple. It's likely each one takes more resources to produce and they definitely don't provide comparable updates.
Fairphones have atrocious updates which means they aren't sustainable devices. They use a multiple generation old SoC from the beginning with an artificially shortened lifespan.
Fairphones are currently designed and assembled by T2Mobile. T2Mobile even signs the firmware on the devices. Prior to the Fairphone 4, they had 2 previous ODM partnerships. They're limited to what their ODM offers which was likely the reason they dropped the 3.5mm audio jack when they moved to T2Mobile for the Fairphone 4. The working conditions and supply chain management are largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone.
There's a severe lack of actual evidence for Fairphones having a more ethical or sustainable assembly and supply chain than Apple. It's likely each one takes more resources to produce and they definitely don't provide comparable updates.
The e/OS/ CEO said during an interview [1] that GrapheneOS, being a security hardened product, was especially useful for p*ophiles to evade justice. This is totally unacceptable. People defending e/OS/ (and Murena, same people, just branding for devices) are either dishonest or useful idiots.
/e/ has other privacy invasive services which are enabled by default. It gives highly privileged access to Google services which are always active and has user tracking in their update client.
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe:
It is pettiness: watch them below spread their hate of Fairphone in the comments…
It's absolutely OK to disagree with another project's security stance, but spending your time going to the HN comment section of the other project's announcement and spamming disparaging comments there isn't, at all.
Fairphones continue to have awful updates, privacy and security. /e/ sending user speech data to OpenAI without consent for years never had anything to do with why Fairphones don't meet our requirements.
>I want to like GrapheneOS, but the pettiness of its leadership is a real problem
I used to feel a bit similarly. But I've since realized they are one of the very few software projects that actually make sensible privacy and security choices.
The privacy and security deficiencies of CalyxOS have nothing to do with compromises for usability. GrapheneOS provides much better usability including through having far broader app compatibility.
CalyxOS drastically reduces privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project. It recently went a whole year without privacy and security patches. They're currently months behind on providing current Pixel driver and firmware updates. It has never been a privacy or security hardened OS but rather the direct opposite.
in this case, usability means "it exists and can be used" versus "we can't build it because we don't have the resources (calyx)/we are too stubborn to make something that works on XYZ hardware (graphene)".
It's more private than whatever slop gets installed on an android by default. thats what matters to me. perhaps i care less about security than privacy.
Graphene doesnt support my phone, and im not interested in buying a pixel, so kindly sit the fuck down.
An operating system going a year without providing privacy and security patches is much worse than many options on that basis alone. It's currently months behind on updates. It's hardly the only other option available.
Refusing to work with organizations or individuals that are detrimental to privacy and security is not petty.
Murena does not provide private or secure products and has positioned itself to be against what GrapheneOS provides. A partnership with a company opposed to GrapheneOS and spreading misinformation about it would not be beneficial, and it is not petty to make the smart choice for the benefit of privacy and security.
As someone that swapped from fairphone 5 to a pixel9a with graphene.
I have to side with graphene.
Fairphone is a cool concept, but its a expensive phone, early on i had problem with the speakers and mic. Security updates are extremely slow, support is extremely slow.
Their missions is to make a fair phone, but is it fair if you are then forced to buy more ewaste because your phone breaks?
Look at pixel software support, its really good, and eu made batteries replacement mandatory.
The Graphene devs can be a bit obsessive about security, but with a starting price above $600, I think the average user is probably better off with a Pixel 10a bought on sale closer to $300. The stock Fairphone OS seems to include Google services, which is kind of surprising and at odds with the focus on user control and all that.
Fairphones don't provide bare minimum privacy and security. Expecting that is not being obsessive. The flaws are increasingly glaring and easier than ever to exploit thanks to advances in AI models. People should care about this and should get a device with reasonable privacy and security such as an iPhone instead.
Fairphone 5 and earlier having an end-of-life Linux kernel with the Fairphone 6 coming up next is a disaster. Many months of delays for standard Android userspace patches from when they can first be shipped and years of delays for the full patches is also a major problem. An increasingly small portion of the patches is backported to older releases and they have months of delays for those.
Fairphones are also missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. People have come to expect their device will provide strong encryption with a random 6 digit PIN rather than a very strong passphrase but that's not the case with a Fairphone.
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Maybe I did not dig deep enough, but I did not see concrete claims that fairphone doesn't do this on either of the linked conversations? It was all suspicion dropped on murena and e/os, and some bad marketing by fairphone?
> I guess, my attack model for my personal phones doesn't really account for "my phone got stolen", I'm far more worried about impersonation and remote phone hijacking than needing to be safe from confiscation from feds.
Even if you only care about "remote phone hijacking", not being able to provide timely vendor blob/drivers/kernel means you're wide open for EoP exploits.
As for why they take such a hard line on physical security, well it's their project and they can have whatever high standards they want, especially if they want to project an image of being an absolute secure phone. The code's all open source so it's not too hard to port to another device, especially nowadays with AI.
Fairphone lags many months behind on Android privacy/security patches. They also end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel without the vast majority of the most important patches which is the case for the Fairphone 5 and earlier. It's not far away for the Fairphone 6. Moving to new Linux kernel branches is an expectation by Google and the upstream Linux kernel for OEMs but Fairphone isn't doing it.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. That's why those are relevant. Fairphones without /e/ still lack reasonable privacy and security, but they're a lot worse with it.
/e/ and Murena have very poor privacy and security for their products combined with very inaccurate marketing. They've repeatedly portrayed private and secure devices as mainly benefiting and being used by criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own explicit choices of words. They've claimed this dozens of times about GrapheneOS including alongside France's national agencies making these inaccurate claims. More information with sources:
It should be doable with cooperation between the two, right?
If we add that FSF aims to provide free alternatives to some vendor blobs the landscape begins to look promising.[0]
One party to provide needed specs for hardware, one party to free the hardware from vendor blobs and another party to merge this into a working product.
Fairphones have awful updates for the firmware and drivers with months of delays. They end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel and hardware components. Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life kernels which aren't receiving the vast majority of important privacy and security patches.
They're missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. They don't provide proper encryption protecting user data for the vast majority of users not setting a very strong passphrase.
The main hardware and update requirements for GrapheneOS are listed here:
One thing in the story is that the SPU - the secure enclave on Qualcomm chips that is separate from just running on TrustZone on the main processor - is only available on Snapdragon 8 and X tier products. It's market segmented away from 7 series and below.
Also, I think Qualcomm has only started supporting MTE on Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Older and cheaper SoCs do not support it yet. Outside that, I think only Google Tensor, recent Exynos generations, and Apple A-series support MTE (though IIRC Apple has an improved extension of it).
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has at support for MTE. It doesn't yet support running the whole kernel and userspace with it in practice as GrapheneOS requires but we're going to be working on it with Motorola and Qualcomm.
Fairphone also had the publicly available test key flagged as trusted by the boot loader at one point, which probably discourages projects like GOS, since it makes it harder to trust the hardware to not be a weak link in security.
Fairphones lack the updates and hardware-based security features expected by GrapheneOS.
They're missing hardware security features needed to provide strong encryption for the vast majority of users not using a very strong passphrase. They're similarly missing hardware-based protections heavily used in GrapheneOS to protect from exploitation including remote attacks.
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS without Google Mobile Services with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly claimed highly private and secure devices mainly benefit criminals and pedophiles along with peddling other authoritarian talking points. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS devices are mainly used by criminals and aren't useful to regular people. Fairphone has chosen to stand with this company included when contacted by the media about criticism.
Despite the marketing, /e/ has very poor privacy and security. /e/ has their own invasive services with tracking, gives highly privileged access to default enabled Google services and doesn't keep up with basic updates. It greatly rolls back privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project.
Looks great! For other T-Mobile users, it actually supports the full range of frequency bands. Quite a few devices claim T-Mobile support but are then missing band 12 or 71 on LTE or n71 on 5G, all of which are critical for coverage outside of cities.
You need to transfer more than 480Mbps over a hard line to and from your phone? Seems like a niche requirement that even iPhone 17 doesn't bother with. Or is it psychological 'nunber must go up and usb number went from 2 to 3 many years ago so now 2 bad'
I would buy this phone in a second over a 17e. Replaceable parts? Expandable storage? Any companies that says they care about the environment and does not have these things are just liars.
I mean replacing a battery is something you do, at most, once every 5-7 years. If removing the battery requires a heat gun then it's not the worst thing imo.
5-7 years? With daily use device 100% drain your battery will be about 85-90% health after 1,5 years. Once it gets to 80%, Apple recommends replacement. I'd say replacement should occur at approc 2-3 years of daily usage.
Unfortunately, there were quite a lot early reports of users whose FP6 volume buttons broke or their logic boards during charging. Both are components that are not user-replaceable and it often takes Fairphone 4-6 weeks to replace them. Similarly, the head band on their FairBuds XL regularly break for a bunch of people (user replaceable, but you still have to go through their slow support if you do not want to pay for the replacement yourself).
Fairphone (in contrast to Apple) are also known for introducing really bad bugs and then not fixing them for months. Like how the FP4 could only keep a single app in memory after they introduced a memory management bug or how currently a lot of FP6 users are affected by a bug where WiFi stops working (due to an IPv6-related bug) that has been reported in March.
> And they put the power button on the exact opposite side of the volume down button, so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time.
To be fair, Apple has nearly the same design.
> I got it because I like their mission
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Yeah, I should criticize them for it too. Though the issue rarely occurs for me on iPhones I think the reason is that the volume buttons are much higher up on the iPhone. So when you do the movement one-handed where the left side rests on your palm and you use a finger to press the power button, the palm doesn't hit volume-down, which does happen on FP6 since the volume buttons are much lower on the side.
It still happened all the time on the FP6 for me after 2 months or so.
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Fairphone has been around since 2013 and all of their models have been plagued by really bad software and hardware issues. I think part of the problem is that the actual hardware and software development is not done by them, but a Chinese ODM (T2Mobile). For clarity, this is not a "everybody produces phones in China". If you look at their Git trees, most commits are from this Chinese ODM. I guess this introduces a delay in fixing issues plus Fairphone is probably just one of their customers.
Also, for anyone worried about security, yes it uses opaque binary blobs of Chinese origin (camera processing stuff by TCL). Well, that aside from usually being months to years behind on Qualcomm firmware blob versions (who do monthly security bulletins) and Linux kernel sources. So Fairphones typically have many known high/critical CVEs.
Not all of the development. For example, Luca 'z3ntu' Weiss works at Fairphone [1].
As an owner of Fairphone 4 and 5 I disagree with you that all their soft- and hardware had really bad design flaws. Fairphone 3 was an improvement over Fairphone 2 (which had quite severe flaws), but 4 and 5 have been good. They innovated long-term support and repairable smartphones, which contributed to legislation in EU.
Fairphone 6 WiFi IPv6 has known workarounds. But it takes too long till the known fix is backported.
I also have no issue using my Fairphone with one hand, while it is in a car kit. For using it with one hand solely, device is too large (and heavy) for me.
There's enough I don't like about Fairphone. For example, software switch on side, silly change to green, renaming Gen 6 (nobody calls it that), too much marketing BS, long support queue (for like, ages), no SFOS (should've partnered with Jolla; I was excited for such announcement today). I wish they spend some more money on support instead of marketing.
And the charging issue with Fairphone 6 seems severe, but there's only like 50 people on forum who reported. It isn't a common issue, but FP 6 sold more than 4 or 5. Ie. yes it is an issue, but the WiFi issue us way more common, as were the many issues with the 2.
100% agree that official Sailfish would be awesome. I don't think it is at the point where I could use a SFOS phone as my main, but I definitely want to try it at some point. It's great that there is a company that's working outside iOS/Android.
> so you make a screenshot when you want to lock the phone half of the time
I share that pain. I use a Fairphone 6 as my main phone, and my only real gripes with it are the extremely weak haptic engine and that power button placement.
Yeah, but only the Fairphone 4 (which is very dated at this point), and only from Murena which is a can of worms in itself. Support also ranges from non-existent to atrocious.
How have the Fairbuds XL been for you? Have you used any other similar headphones before Fairbuds (asking for your comparison).
I love my Airpod Maxes but I have spend way too much money and time keeping this thing maintained. Once it finally kicks the can, I really want to try something more repair friendly.
The Fairphone (Gen. 6+) comes with upgraded internal hardware that doesn’t compromise on our industry-leading repairability standards. The ‘plus’ isn't about adding features for a longer spec sheet; it's about intentional improvements that keep your device capable for longer.
It really irks me that it still can't get the contrastive clauses right. "it's not about adding (more features), it's about (more features, but with a different emphasis)" is so empty of meaning. how do people copy edit this and not notice?
I would assume they don’t, and they assume many people aren’t reading it either. Which includes me, even before LLMs came out. I would always skip the marketing and jump to tech specs and pictures/video.
Because you need to show something that executives can parse and people that only want to eat slop writing to read. People literally took marketing material as gospel before. They still do now.
Nice try, but it's generated slop all the way down, Mr. Feynman.
The tech specs aren't safe either. Last year the official Google Store had some laughable AI translations in the specs for their Pixel phones. Eg. "Rear video" was translated to "Rückansicht" ("Rear view"). That nonsensical translation for an audience of 80 million persisted for months. In 2025 blessed vibe-translation of formerly reputable sites really stood out to me.
> Professional editing is both an art and a discipline of diagnosing what a text needs and applying the right level of editorial intervention without flattening voice or intent. This skillset requires language mastery, analysis, and workflow efficiency that many aspiring editors lack. This editing and proofreading course closes that gap by treating editing as a structured profession with repeatable methods. You will discover editing style systems to help you perfect your skillset, while covering specialized domains, ethical considerations, tools and technology, as well as business operations that will help you succeed in your career as a professional editor.
> You will progress through 10 sequential modules and build real-world editor workflows, such as style sheets, author queries, consistency systems, and professional deliverables. You will also strengthen your editorial judgment across various genres and contexts. This online proofreading training program culminates in a capstone editing project that produces industry-standard artifacts, including a marked-up manuscript, editorial letter, style sheet, author queries, and reflective analysis, that will help you demonstrate your competence to prospective employers and clients.
PWP 330 COPYEDITING 3 Units
Apply and further develop skills needed to work with authors and prepare a manuscript for publication. Focus is on the procedures of editing a manuscript, particularly editing for correctness and style, following the conventions of The Chicago Manual of Style.
PREREQ: (PWP 230 AND PWP 310) OR INSTRUCTOR CONSENT
I agree that it's marketing mumbo jumbo, but it's saying "we haven't added more features because more is better, we added them because they actually improve the longevity of the product."
If anything, that sentence tells me that they are insecure of their features being perceived as bullshit.
It's phrased poorly for that point, though. "Unlike the competition, we aren't just adding these features to pad out a spec sheet. Each change we've made for the plus model this year will pay off in improved lifespan and better functionality for you."
Or something in that vein. Like this isn't very hard to write?
The sloppiness in the AI comes from the human sloppiness on this topic. This seems like a variant of what I've seen called the "fake because", which is the idea that people don't generally analyze whether or not a given reason actually makes sense. For example, the common advertising "You need to buy this beer because it'll get you the girls". It is obvious to conscious examination by pretty much everyone that this is obviously false... the problem is getting it up to that conscious examination in the first place.
I've also noticed several times the deployment of "It's not about the X, {because} it's actually about the Y" where the connection between the X and the Y has no real logic in it upon examination. That can often be translated to "I want to change the topic to Y" without much loss. I think this is one of the primary ways that AI writing can be really exhausting to work through logically and it gets people who are for whatever reason thinking sloppily, including just the sheer exhaustion of the amount of thinking navigating the modern world takes even for someone who nominally understands how to penetrate this sort of sloppy thinking, into so much trouble when they just trust the torrent of words going by. AIs can very easily hallucinate "fake becauses" at a rate no human could possibly keep up with.
I wonder at what point we're just going to see people writing like AI because they read it so much? That said I'm fine with companies saving money on copywriters
I mean, AI writes copy like this because that's how copywriters did it in the training set. Honestly AI producing it so much is much more likely to make humans avoid it.
> AI writes copy like this because that's how copywriters did it in the training set
I don't think this is true. Someone probably had to write like this, but a base model has to be able to write like anyone. The specific mannerisms of AI appear in post training, either as things that are rewarded or as mode collapse artifacts. ChatGPT didn't get obsessed with goblins because that's incredibly common among humans.
This has it backwards, it is the AI that writes like cliched AD copy. Feast your eyes on this quote from a whiskey CEO, supposedly written in 2016:
> ‘When you bring people in from overseas [to Scotland], you’re working on their mindsets,’ he says. ‘You make them get a feeling for Scotch. It’s not about an advert, it’s about this magical industry with its rich heritage and this history.
> ‘It’s not about kilts and drums, but it’s about the Highlands, the water, the peat, the stories, and I call it softness – it’s very gentle marketing. A lot of what you’ve got to do is to win the hearts and minds.’
This is something that frustrates me a lot when I see people jumping on a piece of writing as AI generated, these AI-isms didn't show up in a vacuum. Yes, AI commonly overuses some patterns, but it got those patterns from it's training data because real people wrote (and continue to write) that way. A few matching sentences here or there is not the smoking gun people make it out to be.
The other thing that is characteristic of AI text is messing up the underlying meaning or fine details of what it's saying. It's not just that it's imitating people who write bad contrasting clauses, it also can't write good ones reliably.
edit: Ironically that last sentence is not super clear (but hey writing is hard and I'm constantly exposed to slop). My point is the nature of AI makes its writing worse than its training data, it's not all bad training data.
Praying that fairphone somehow makes a foldable one day. My next phone will probably be a fold 8 because I really want a nice reading experience on the go, but I love the philosophy and love my framework laptop.
Considering the big players with R&D budgets valued in the billions have been struggling to make foldable phones, I can't imagine a niche player making one.
A friend had the Fair Phone 4. It broke after a year. Hostile customer support, not worth her time. Idk. Stories of "good guy" indie companies who drop you as soon as you fell for their marketing keep piling up. It may be greed, short sightedness or an incompetent understanding of what it means to have customers, the results are the same. See Framework for another example of this.
My Prusa Core One 3D printer has had two upgrades available at reasonable prices since I purchased it. These upgrade kits are a bit more involved than swapping out a battery or camera but in the end, I will have the latest hardware. They are a great example of "good guys" continuing to hold up their end of the bargain. I hope they make some profit from the upgrade kits because this kind of relationship is worth rewarding.
Supply Chain is hard, Apple is the pro at it. Small companies struggle. Who are the founders? Are they experienced in hardware? They are doing something ambitious (keeping old stuff in stock costs money).
Just checked, as of now all the Fairbud parts seem to be out of stock defeating the entire purpose. Maybe they will get more stock once the sales kick off.
Moral licensing probably. If they get social points for building a “fair” product they’re less incentivized to be “fair” in other areas. Also why the people who virtue signal the most tend to be the quite rude irl.
This doesn't match my experience at all. I'm writing this from my fairphone 3 purchased in 2019 the day of release. I purchased one for me, one for my wife. I replaced the battery on mine once, my wife never had to change it. Her phone started so show sign of age a few month ago, she switched to the FP6. I will switch to the FP6+ soon as the support come to end this month for the FP3 (I could switch this one to eOS, but performance wise, it's not in it's prime, so I figured I could afford an upgrade after 7 years ^^). I reached out to support quite a few times for my wife or I (for order reasons, issues with operators, bugs, etc) and they have always been excellent for me.
Also as you probably noted, I'm quite enthusiastic about their products and have convinced a bunch of my surrounding to purchase fairphones when they had to change phone (models 3, 4 and 5 so far). I never had any of them tell me they regreted following my recommendation and as far as I know they still use their fairphones.
Even worse. Now your headphones cost 10-15x as much, consist of a collection of small standalone parts that are easy to lose, need to be recharged, and can't be easily interchanged between audio sources.
Exactly. Hard pass on a phone without a 3.5mm headphone jack.
People who say, “You can use a dongle” or “Just buy Bluetooth earphones” are missing the point. It’s never about what compromises we, as consumers, can make; it’s about users’ choices and preferences.
I’m fine with manufacturers wanting to make more money by selling dongles or Bluetooth earphones, but I’ll never accept them doing so by removing features to force us to buy them.
I got excited about this until i realized still no graphene. It seems like both sides have a huge incentive to support the other, I wish they would make it happen.
I read this type of back and forth here and there over the years, and I get why you respond in this way.
But it's a shame, people like me really, really appreciate the way FairPhone builds smartphones, and really, really like the way you build a smartphone OS.
So instead of this back and forth I'd really, really love to see you guys (in stead of pointing out flaws) take a more constructive stance and approach FairPhone with something like an action plan. Something like: This is what would be needed, implement these things and we can start talking. And then give FairPhone a chance to respond. You're all stuck in a tit for tat loop, someone's gotta break the loop with a constructive response. I'll be telling the FairPhone people to approach you with an "Ok, fine, what would we need to do to get the ball rolling hardware-wise." (Although I think I saw that information out there at some point already right?) - But just stick to that level of communications.
And maybe it's not possible for FP, but at least one of you stated some reasonable terms and everyone can refer to that when this request comes up again.
And I think it's mostly /e/ you have issues with right, not even FairPhone...
I also like your plans with Motorola, don't get me wrong, I'm not replacing my iPhone 12 mini for now because I'm waiting for what's coming. But it's a shame that we have to choose between sustainable/repairable and secure/private.
Can't you all just be friends ;) I think we're all Jedi here.
A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.
An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.
Fairphone doesn't design or build smartphones themselves but rather their ODM partner does both. It isn't within their control to make devices meeting our requirements. When Fairphone moved to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4, it came with significant changes to the hardware, firmware and software not within their control. They likely didn't want to remove the 3.5mm audio jack but the overall design of the devices isn't up to them. They want to portray themselves as being the ones designing the devices and stood behind it, but they likely didn't want it.
Fairphone has made it very clear they don't consider their awful updates and lack of important hardware-based security features to be a significant problem. Their response to our points has consistently been to downplay it. Fairphone has also consistently taken the approach of not responding to serious security issues such as several generations of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and/or the OS. Not acknowledging or addressing a security issue beyond partially fixing it for subsequent devices is worse than simply downplaying it.
/e/ and Murena spent years actively misleading people about GrapheneOS before we began regularly responding to it. They've taken the approach of misleading people into wrongly believing it isn't usable, isn't compatible with apps, somehow isn't a privacy project and much more. Their efforts have done immense harm to GrapheneOS, especially in Europe where they've mislead many companies and governments about it. /e/ and Murena have heavily pushed the false narrative of GrapheneOS not being usable by regular people but rather primarily useful to criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own words. These are 2 examples where they said it more broadly about hardened devices in general:
They've been doing this towards GrapheneOS specifically for years by misleading people about what it provides and wrongly painting it as an OS for criminals. Fairphone chose to become directly involved in this by responding to questions from the media based on a post with made about Murena with inaccurate claims. They chose to mislead people and to try to make it seem as if the accurate information we provided wasn't correct. Fairphone is not a bystander but rather explicitly sided with Murena in their attacks on GrapheneOS. Claiming highly private and secure devices are primarily benefiting criminals is outrageous and yet Fairphone backs the company repeatedly pushing this.
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
Fairphone as a whole feels like a company that prioritises the mission, but only this mission of ethical and reusable hardware. The user experience for power users who are most likely to recommend their devices feels like a let-down.
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
Fairphones have awful updates, privacy and security. They don't provide crucial hardware-based security features needed to have working encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase. They don't provide what's required to have decent protection from remote attacks either. Their devices don't provide important driver and firmware updates we need to have for each supported device. Fairphones end up with an end-of-life Linux kernel branch after a couple years and have never migrated to a new one.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
I'd like to challenge you to say something nice about FairPhone. It's something I tell my kids as well when they're stuck in a tit for tat loop.
You're spending a lot of energy here, on a post that is about a nice milestone for FairPhone. The only reason GrapheneOS comes up is that both FairPhone and GrapheneOS target the conscientious technology user. Perhaps you should realize the effect of your style of communications on such users. Is this all helping you?
You are quite probably right about the technical details, subsequently taking a guiding stance towards FP and Murena feels like the more adult thing to do right now. It is the stance conscientious technology users would appreciate.
Thank you for your hard work and thank you for GrapheneOS, it is a super valuable product, it should be in the hands of as much people as possible.
I purchased a Fairphone 6 thinking I was going to solve a lot of issues I had with more popular phone models. This has not been the case. I think that when all is said and done, Fairphone will have done more to hurt the concept of device repairability than help it.
Examples:
Within a month of purchase, the little upper speaker grill/mesh sticker fell out. Now this is why I bought a Fairphone - a few clicks, a few days wait and a few screws later and I can easily replace it... not the case. They wanted me to warranty/send in my phone for a sticker replacement on "the world's most repairable phone." Not a great first impression.
Another system update they shipped bricked my sim card. No support, no help, just me with a permanent fear of installing any updates in the future.
A lot of people forget that "right to repair" means that YOU fix it. There is no silver bullet. You can either rely on a company to fix it for you and not screw you over, or you can do all of the work of sourcing parts and labor, and if you mess up the repair then you own the pieces.
Love this idea but carrier limitations, eSIM limitations, kind of an odd start. I am sure it’s licensing and radio costs or limitations. But I would assume anything launching nowadays would support esims 100% and could jump networks without an issue.
174 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 11.1 ms ] thread> Critical Notice: The device does not support LTE Band 13 (Verizon's primary coverage frequency).
Presumably that frequency isn't used in Europe? It also says that it's "not certified for use on the Verizon Wireless network." I don't know if that means Verizon might block it (which sounds like a very US thing) or it's related to not supporting the frequency that Verizon uses for LTE.
That's some of the European over-regulation that everyone complains about, compared to unfettered American competition.
I can’t believe how few choices we have in cell phones in the United States. Where is all the innovation I keep hearing everyone talk about?
The beginning of your sentence - "I can’t believe how few choices we have..." - can be applied equally sadly to other areas here in the U.S....such as but not limited to lack of choice of residential ISPs, or lack of choice (or generally mis-incentivized) healthcare providers, or lack of choice of mobile service providers, or, etc., or etc. And, of course, your last part of your comment asking where the innovation is? Well, innovation often is pocketed in those who control the capital, and only released little by little at the whims of releasing more capital. Sorry, i have to step away, cuz felt sad instantly just citing my own comments here. :-(
Mobile network via satellite might increase number of network providers by 1 or 2, but the physics problem of needing tons of physical assets to create a wireless network usable by small, low powered devices remains.
I guess you could innovate some new physics that allows you to send wireless signals through more surfaces, that is also not ionizing radiation to animal and plant tissue, and doesn’t need a lot of power to send from a mobile device. That is a lot to ask, though.
No more infrastructure needs to be built.
Also, there are enough dead zones that satellite direct to cell is a thing.
If you as a user want a modern, high end or top of the line cell phone, you're pretty much just stuck with Apple or Samsung. Maybe Google. If you remove the minor variants each has that's just 3.
We used to have many more - OnePlus obviously, Honor, Huawei, LeEco, HTC, LG, ASUS, Essential, Blackberry, etc.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/28825-is-there-any-chance-o...
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
> Their partnership with Murena along with promoting it themselves with misleading marketing means no possibility of working with us.
I want to like GrapheneOS, but the pettiness of its leadership is a real problem for the long term prospect of the project.
How? In what way? Source?
> To implement this approach, we chose to use the OpenAI gpt-4 transcribe API that has been designed for this purpose, is cost-effective and efficient.
https://community.e.foundation/t/clarification-about-voice-t...
On my /e/OS phone, I've installed Whisper+ voice input and disabled 'Murena Voice to Text'. I never use this features.
> The earlier Voice to Text was a Premium-only, online feature: it streamed your speech to a third-party AI transcription service [...] The new Voice to Text is free, offline and on-device
https://doc.e.foundation/os/apps/voice-to-text
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe. Here are 2 clear examples:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
GrapheneOS and /e/OS' goals are different - the former is about security tightening and the latter is about deGoogling. They just had a public falling out and refuse to let it go.
(Wish it was though.)
This said, I would never use /e/ and Murena as I read too many things I don't like.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch with no movement to updating to a newer one. Fairphone 6 is set to end up in the same situation and it isn't far away. They nearly entirely stop providing Linux privacy and security patches once this happens.
Android patches come around half a year late since the Android Security Bulletins themselves are published very late and Fairphone lags 1-2 months or more behind those.
There's extremely little information available on Fairphone's ODM partner T2Mobile and their supply chain. The information is mainly a list of suppliers without information on working conditions, pay, environmental protection or nearly anything else. T2Mobile has been their ODM since the Fairphone 4 and earlier information is no longer relevant. They moved away from their original ODM partnership to another with the Fairphone 3 and then to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4. It's unclear if pay and working conditions are better at T2Mobile for Fairphones than they are for their other products and in what way they're better. It's unclear how it comes to Foxconn for Apple and Google phones.
Apple and Google design their devices and handle the firmware and software. Fairphone is using hardware, firmware and software provided by T2Mobile. Fairphone is heavily reliant on what's provided by their ODM. For example, their move to T2Mobile coincided with dropping the 3.5mm audio jack. It's likely not something they wanted to do and many of their supporters were unhappy about it, but it's not really their phone hardware. The phones are essentially T2Mobile devices and there's not a lot of information available. It isn't clear why they switched to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 or why the earlier switch to another ODM happened with the Fairphone 3.
Fairphones are currently designed and assembled by T2Mobile. T2Mobile even signs the firmware on the devices. Prior to the Fairphone 4, they had 2 previous ODM partnerships. They're limited to what their ODM offers which was likely the reason they dropped the 3.5mm audio jack when they moved to T2Mobile for the Fairphone 4. The working conditions and supply chain management are largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone.
There's a severe lack of actual evidence for Fairphones having a more ethical or sustainable assembly and supply chain than Apple. It's likely each one takes more resources to produce and they definitely don't provide comparable updates.
There's a severe lack of actual evidence for Fairphones having a more ethical or sustainable assembly and supply chain than Apple. It's likely each one takes more resources to produce and they definitely don't provide comparable updates.
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116353973732143171 (full interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQV7498NRQw)
As another commenter mentioned, this voice to text feature is now an offline feature and no longer sends data outside the device.
As another note, this Fairphone can be purchased without /e/OS at all. It’s now being sold in the US without Murena being involved at all.
/e/ and Murena repeatedly claiming privacy/security hardened devices mainly benefit criminals and falsely claiming they're mainly used by criminals shows what they believe:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
/e/ lacks many crucial standard privacy/security patches and protections:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
Fairphones don't provide a reasonable level of privacy and security without /e/ either:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354807
It's absolutely OK to disagree with another project's security stance, but spending your time going to the HN comment section of the other project's announcement and spamming disparaging comments there isn't, at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354807
I used to feel a bit similarly. But I've since realized they are one of the very few software projects that actually make sensible privacy and security choices.
CalyxOS drastically reduces privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project. It recently went a whole year without privacy and security patches. They're currently months behind on providing current Pixel driver and firmware updates. It has never been a privacy or security hardened OS but rather the direct opposite.
It's more private than whatever slop gets installed on an android by default. thats what matters to me. perhaps i care less about security than privacy.
Graphene doesnt support my phone, and im not interested in buying a pixel, so kindly sit the fuck down.
Murena does not provide private or secure products and has positioned itself to be against what GrapheneOS provides. A partnership with a company opposed to GrapheneOS and spreading misinformation about it would not be beneficial, and it is not petty to make the smart choice for the benefit of privacy and security.
I have to side with graphene. Fairphone is a cool concept, but its a expensive phone, early on i had problem with the speakers and mic. Security updates are extremely slow, support is extremely slow.
Their missions is to make a fair phone, but is it fair if you are then forced to buy more ewaste because your phone breaks? Look at pixel software support, its really good, and eu made batteries replacement mandatory.
Fairphone 5 and earlier having an end-of-life Linux kernel with the Fairphone 6 coming up next is a disaster. Many months of delays for standard Android userspace patches from when they can first be shipped and years of delays for the full patches is also a major problem. An increasingly small portion of the patches is backported to older releases and they have months of delays for those.
Fairphones are also missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. People have come to expect their device will provide strong encryption with a random 6 digit PIN rather than a very strong passphrase but that's not the case with a Fairphone.
More information:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354623
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
this would be like grapheneOS not using pixel because the stock android that ships with it does not respect privacy.
am i missing something?
Even if you only care about "remote phone hijacking", not being able to provide timely vendor blob/drivers/kernel means you're wide open for EoP exploits.
As for why they take such a hard line on physical security, well it's their project and they can have whatever high standards they want, especially if they want to project an image of being an absolute secure phone. The code's all open source so it's not too hard to port to another device, especially nowadays with AI.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. That's why those are relevant. Fairphones without /e/ still lack reasonable privacy and security, but they're a lot worse with it.
/e/ and Murena have very poor privacy and security for their products combined with very inaccurate marketing. They've repeatedly portrayed private and secure devices as mainly benefiting and being used by criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own explicit choices of words. They've claimed this dozens of times about GrapheneOS including alongside France's national agencies making these inaccurate claims. More information with sources:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
If we add that FSF aims to provide free alternatives to some vendor blobs the landscape begins to look promising.[0]
One party to provide needed specs for hardware, one party to free the hardware from vendor blobs and another party to merge this into a working product.
[0] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/librephone
They're missing crucial industry standard hardware security features. They don't provide proper encryption protecting user data for the vast majority of users not setting a very strong passphrase.
The main hardware and update requirements for GrapheneOS are listed here:
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
We left another reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354807 with more details on how Fairphone doesn't meet those requirements.
They're missing hardware security features needed to provide strong encryption for the vast majority of users not using a very strong passphrase. They're similarly missing hardware-based protections heavily used in GrapheneOS to protect from exploitation including remote attacks.
Fairphones have atrocious updates, privacy and security. They lag many months and even years behind on providing crucial standard privacy and security patches. They've failed to respond to the discovery of severe security issues including multiple of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing.
Fairphone lags months behind on providing Android Security Bulletin patches which are themselves delayed by months compared to when OEMs are first provided and allowed to ship the patches. They lag a year or more behind on major OS updates and count this as additional support time compared to other OEMs. For example, a final major OS update being delayed for 3 years is marketed as providing 3 more years of support compared to shipping it on time.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel branch and the same fate awaits the Fairphone 6. Pixels move to newer kernel branches and are currently moving to 6.12 and then on to 6.18. Other OEMs are also beginning to use newer kernels and move to new branches. Linux LTS branches are only going to have 2 years of support going forward.
Fairphones are designed and assembled by an ODM. Fairphone has very limited involvement in engineering the devices. The working conditions and supply chain are also largely up to T2Mobile rather than Fairphone. Whether either of those are better than Pixels or especially iPhones should be demonstrated with evidence. There's extremely little information available on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of the assembly and supply chain for Fairphones.
Fairphone replaced their own open source OS without Google Mobile Services with /e/ as part of a close partnership with Murena. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly claimed highly private and secure devices mainly benefit criminals and pedophiles along with peddling other authoritarian talking points. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS devices are mainly used by criminals and aren't useful to regular people. Fairphone has chosen to stand with this company included when contacted by the media about criticism.
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
https://clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-interview.ht...
Despite the marketing, /e/ has very poor privacy and security. /e/ has their own invasive services with tracking, gives highly privileged access to default enabled Google services and doesn't keep up with basic updates. It greatly rolls back privacy and security compared to the Android Open Source Project.
https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/divestos-website/raw/co...
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338285
The 6+ is a different model, but the announcement says the camera module is the same.
I’m holding on to my iphone mini, but apparently people buy the razr and just leave it closed 100% of the time.
That’s $700, and not having the dumb hinge mechanism and internal facing display would be a selling point for many.
Fairphone (in contrast to Apple) are also known for introducing really bad bugs and then not fixing them for months. Like how the FP4 could only keep a single app in memory after they introduced a memory management bug or how currently a lot of FP6 users are affected by a bug where WiFi stops working (due to an IPv6-related bug) that has been reported in March.
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/dns-over-tls-ipv6-issues-apps-...
To be fair, Apple has nearly the same design.
> I got it because I like their mission
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Yeah, I should criticize them for it too. Though the issue rarely occurs for me on iPhones I think the reason is that the volume buttons are much higher up on the iPhone. So when you do the movement one-handed where the left side rests on your palm and you use a finger to press the power button, the palm doesn't hit volume-down, which does happen on FP6 since the volume buttons are much lower on the side.
It still happened all the time on the FP6 for me after 2 months or so.
Same here. This is why we need to be buying them now, while they are working out the bugs. Small sacrifice in my mind.
Fairphone has been around since 2013 and all of their models have been plagued by really bad software and hardware issues. I think part of the problem is that the actual hardware and software development is not done by them, but a Chinese ODM (T2Mobile). For clarity, this is not a "everybody produces phones in China". If you look at their Git trees, most commits are from this Chinese ODM. I guess this introduces a delay in fixing issues plus Fairphone is probably just one of their customers.
Also, for anyone worried about security, yes it uses opaque binary blobs of Chinese origin (camera processing stuff by TCL). Well, that aside from usually being months to years behind on Qualcomm firmware blob versions (who do monthly security bulletins) and Linux kernel sources. So Fairphones typically have many known high/critical CVEs.
As an owner of Fairphone 4 and 5 I disagree with you that all their soft- and hardware had really bad design flaws. Fairphone 3 was an improvement over Fairphone 2 (which had quite severe flaws), but 4 and 5 have been good. They innovated long-term support and repairable smartphones, which contributed to legislation in EU.
Fairphone 6 WiFi IPv6 has known workarounds. But it takes too long till the known fix is backported.
I also have no issue using my Fairphone with one hand, while it is in a car kit. For using it with one hand solely, device is too large (and heavy) for me.
There's enough I don't like about Fairphone. For example, software switch on side, silly change to green, renaming Gen 6 (nobody calls it that), too much marketing BS, long support queue (for like, ages), no SFOS (should've partnered with Jolla; I was excited for such announcement today). I wish they spend some more money on support instead of marketing.
And the charging issue with Fairphone 6 seems severe, but there's only like 50 people on forum who reported. It isn't a common issue, but FP 6 sold more than 4 or 5. Ie. yes it is an issue, but the WiFi issue us way more common, as were the many issues with the 2.
[1] FOSDEM 2026 - Luca Weiss https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/speaker/luca_weiss/
100% agree that official Sailfish would be awesome. I don't think it is at the point where I could use a SFOS phone as my main, but I definitely want to try it at some point. It's great that there is a company that's working outside iOS/Android.
I share that pain. I use a Fairphone 6 as my main phone, and my only real gripes with it are the extremely weak haptic engine and that power button placement.
I bought a Fairphone 4 from Murena years ago (and am still using it), and I bought a pair of Fairbuds XL just in April from the same.
Directly buying from FP is a huge deal for me.
I love my Airpod Maxes but I have spend way too much money and time keeping this thing maintained. Once it finally kicks the can, I really want to try something more repair friendly.
AI-like typing detected.
I would assume they don’t, and they assume many people aren’t reading it either. Which includes me, even before LLMs came out. I would always skip the marketing and jump to tech specs and pictures/video.
The tech specs aren't safe either. Last year the official Google Store had some laughable AI translations in the specs for their Pixel phones. Eg. "Rear video" was translated to "Rückansicht" ("Rear view"). That nonsensical translation for an audience of 80 million persisted for months. In 2025 blessed vibe-translation of formerly reputable sites really stood out to me.
Nobody gives a fuck about anything anymore.
If they wanted to pay trained copy editors, they wouldn't use A.I.
Professional Editor and Proofreading Course - https://careertraining.uwp.edu/training-programs/professiona...
> Professional editing is both an art and a discipline of diagnosing what a text needs and applying the right level of editorial intervention without flattening voice or intent. This skillset requires language mastery, analysis, and workflow efficiency that many aspiring editors lack. This editing and proofreading course closes that gap by treating editing as a structured profession with repeatable methods. You will discover editing style systems to help you perfect your skillset, while covering specialized domains, ethical considerations, tools and technology, as well as business operations that will help you succeed in your career as a professional editor.
> You will progress through 10 sequential modules and build real-world editor workflows, such as style sheets, author queries, consistency systems, and professional deliverables. You will also strengthen your editorial judgment across various genres and contexts. This online proofreading training program culminates in a capstone editing project that produces industry-standard artifacts, including a marked-up manuscript, editorial letter, style sheet, author queries, and reflective analysis, that will help you demonstrate your competence to prospective employers and clients.
---
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If anything, that sentence tells me that they are insecure of their features being perceived as bullshit.
Or something in that vein. Like this isn't very hard to write?
For an MSRP increase from 599€ to 649€ that seems like a decent deal to me.
level 1 AI psychosis, really mild symptoms
I've also noticed several times the deployment of "It's not about the X, {because} it's actually about the Y" where the connection between the X and the Y has no real logic in it upon examination. That can often be translated to "I want to change the topic to Y" without much loss. I think this is one of the primary ways that AI writing can be really exhausting to work through logically and it gets people who are for whatever reason thinking sloppily, including just the sheer exhaustion of the amount of thinking navigating the modern world takes even for someone who nominally understands how to penetrate this sort of sloppy thinking, into so much trouble when they just trust the torrent of words going by. AIs can very easily hallucinate "fake becauses" at a rate no human could possibly keep up with.
I don't think this is true. Someone probably had to write like this, but a base model has to be able to write like anyone. The specific mannerisms of AI appear in post training, either as things that are rewarded or as mode collapse artifacts. ChatGPT didn't get obsessed with goblins because that's incredibly common among humans.
> ‘When you bring people in from overseas [to Scotland], you’re working on their mindsets,’ he says. ‘You make them get a feeling for Scotch. It’s not about an advert, it’s about this magical industry with its rich heritage and this history.
> ‘It’s not about kilts and drums, but it’s about the Highlands, the water, the peat, the stories, and I call it softness – it’s very gentle marketing. A lot of what you’ve got to do is to win the hearts and minds.’
The waybackmachine has it first in 2019, but that's early enough to know this is 100% human trite bullshit. https://web.archive.org/web/20190823030911/https://scotchwhi...
edit: Ironically that last sentence is not super clear (but hey writing is hard and I'm constantly exposed to slop). My point is the nature of AI makes its writing worse than its training data, it's not all bad training data.
It's also lacking the toaster dash. Clear bio-signature of the unaffected hearts and minds.
Just checked, as of now all the Fairbud parts seem to be out of stock defeating the entire purpose. Maybe they will get more stock once the sales kick off.
That's a dealbreaker for me, especially for something touting modularity, repairability, and user control.
I figured that had largely vanished for a while now.
People who say, “You can use a dongle” or “Just buy Bluetooth earphones” are missing the point. It’s never about what compromises we, as consumers, can make; it’s about users’ choices and preferences.
I’m fine with manufacturers wanting to make more money by selling dongles or Bluetooth earphones, but I’ll never accept them doing so by removing features to force us to buy them.
But it's a shame, people like me really, really appreciate the way FairPhone builds smartphones, and really, really like the way you build a smartphone OS.
So instead of this back and forth I'd really, really love to see you guys (in stead of pointing out flaws) take a more constructive stance and approach FairPhone with something like an action plan. Something like: This is what would be needed, implement these things and we can start talking. And then give FairPhone a chance to respond. You're all stuck in a tit for tat loop, someone's gotta break the loop with a constructive response. I'll be telling the FairPhone people to approach you with an "Ok, fine, what would we need to do to get the ball rolling hardware-wise." (Although I think I saw that information out there at some point already right?) - But just stick to that level of communications.
And maybe it's not possible for FP, but at least one of you stated some reasonable terms and everyone can refer to that when this request comes up again.
And I think it's mostly /e/ you have issues with right, not even FairPhone...
I also like your plans with Motorola, don't get me wrong, I'm not replacing my iPhone 12 mini for now because I'm waiting for what's coming. But it's a shame that we have to choose between sustainable/repairable and secure/private.
Can't you all just be friends ;) I think we're all Jedi here.
> https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.
An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.
Fairphone has made it very clear they don't consider their awful updates and lack of important hardware-based security features to be a significant problem. Their response to our points has consistently been to downplay it. Fairphone has also consistently taken the approach of not responding to serious security issues such as several generations of their devices using publicly available private keys for signing firmware and/or the OS. Not acknowledging or addressing a security issue beyond partially fixing it for subsequent devices is worse than simply downplaying it.
/e/ and Murena spent years actively misleading people about GrapheneOS before we began regularly responding to it. They've taken the approach of misleading people into wrongly believing it isn't usable, isn't compatible with apps, somehow isn't a privacy project and much more. Their efforts have done immense harm to GrapheneOS, especially in Europe where they've mislead many companies and governments about it. /e/ and Murena have heavily pushed the false narrative of GrapheneOS not being usable by regular people but rather primarily useful to criminals and pedophiles. Those are their own words. These are 2 examples where they said it more broadly about hardened devices in general:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
They've been doing this towards GrapheneOS specifically for years by misleading people about what it provides and wrongly painting it as an OS for criminals. Fairphone chose to become directly involved in this by responding to questions from the media based on a post with made about Murena with inaccurate claims. They chose to mislead people and to try to make it seem as if the accurate information we provided wasn't correct. Fairphone is not a bystander but rather explicitly sided with Murena in their attacks on GrapheneOS. Claiming highly private and secure devices are primarily benefiting criminals is outrageous and yet Fairphone backs the company repeatedly pushing this.
Fairphone has a very close partnership with Murena and replaced their own open source OS with /e/. /e/ and Murena have repeatedly falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by criminals and isn't useful to regular people. They've heavily propagated false claims about the usability, compatibility, privacy and security provided by GrapheneOS. These years of inaccurate claims have resulted in many people being misled about GrapheneOS and have done immense harm to it.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
I know wireless charging is wasteful... but I've got magsafe pucks everywhere in the house/car now... Let me have this one thing...
Fairphone as a whole feels like a company that prioritises the mission, but only this mission of ethical and reusable hardware. The user experience for power users who are most likely to recommend their devices feels like a let-down.
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
/e/ and Murena have even repeatedly claimed private and secure devices in general primarily benefit criminals and pedophiles:
https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
Murena is explicitly not on the side of people wanting protection from authoritarian surveillance by governments. Fairphone supported Murena's inaccurate claims when contacted by the media and their employees regularly participate in it. This is what they choose to market as private and secure:
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2081837057433915603
You're spending a lot of energy here, on a post that is about a nice milestone for FairPhone. The only reason GrapheneOS comes up is that both FairPhone and GrapheneOS target the conscientious technology user. Perhaps you should realize the effect of your style of communications on such users. Is this all helping you?
You are quite probably right about the technical details, subsequently taking a guiding stance towards FP and Murena feels like the more adult thing to do right now. It is the stance conscientious technology users would appreciate.
Thank you for your hard work and thank you for GrapheneOS, it is a super valuable product, it should be in the hands of as much people as possible.
I meant that comment from a standpoint of "no graphene, no buy".
Examples: Within a month of purchase, the little upper speaker grill/mesh sticker fell out. Now this is why I bought a Fairphone - a few clicks, a few days wait and a few screws later and I can easily replace it... not the case. They wanted me to warranty/send in my phone for a sticker replacement on "the world's most repairable phone." Not a great first impression.
Another system update they shipped bricked my sim card. No support, no help, just me with a permanent fear of installing any updates in the future.