I can’t believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he’s onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭
I can’t believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he’s onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭
Objectivity worse in performance, sure. Some people consider more things than just being a fastest bang for the buck. Unethical mining, forced labour, e-waste, data mining, and lots of other things. If you care at all, that is.
If you want to compare that to a product made by a billion dollar company, no one is stopping anyone. There is cost associated with doing things ethically. Small companies aren’t financed to eat those costs to gain the market. It speaks more about principles than anything else.
is it? The person who sold the phone is most definitely going to buy a new phone and if they sold the phone released last year they will most likely do so every year. The reason there’s a second hand market with a year old phones is because people obsessively buy new phones. How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?
Duchebag is spouting capitalists “trickle down” economics. Rather than fix the cause, find the flex tape to hide it. Rich people buy new phones, less rich buy phones from the rich, and so on. No one needs to look past the marketing into ethics in how they were made and companies keep profiting in billions by exploitation of the poor. So so environmentally friendly.
People are going to buy new phones regardless. You not buying used phones is not going to change that.
Buying used or refurbished keeps the devices they‘d throw away (or keep in a drawer for 10 years, then throw away), if they couldn’t sell them, from landfills.
Also, I know plenty of people who are well off that buy second hand phones and even more people who couldn’t even afford a Fairphone (which starts at almost 500€ for a 4 and 650€ for a 5) that buy a brand new 200-300€ phone every two years.
And those low end phones are the least environmentally friendly because they‘re definitely unethically made they most likely break more quickly than higher end options, they usually don’t get updates for very long, if at all, and there’s no noteworthy second hand market for them because people just throw them away (or into a drawer) if the phone stops working or when they feel like getting a new one, because who buys a 2 year old low end phone second hand?
Buying used instead is a great option. You get a higher end device for cheaper without anything new having to be made for you. It‘ll still last you years and you’ll have a better experience than with a cheap new phone.
Yes, it would be better if all phones were ethically produced, easy to repair and would last a long time. Especially if there are ethically phones in the sub 300€ market. Won’t be easy to achieve, if at all, and wouldn’t stop blind consumerism but it would make for an even better second hand market. Because, you know what’s better than a fairphone? A second hand fairphone.
The difference is striking, though. It’s half as fast at the starting line. I can only imagine what’ll happen to it once it runs Android 23 in eight years.
That’s fair, but then buying a second hand iPhone should solve all of those issues for you. No additional materials beind mined, no days collection, and the only forced labour you’ll be adding to the market is you forcing open the back to replace the battery.
It does, but principles don’t translate to tangible benefits for the products.
It is, unless Fairphone manages to make an impact. To make an impact, they’ll need to convince “normal” people to buy the phone. And to do that, they need to put a phone out in the market place at a competitive price.
It’s good that there’s an ethical new phone out there, but the simple truth is that the general consumer will ignore this thing if it costs twice as much as a phone with similar specs.
I’m not sure how companies benefit from a second hand market, though. Second hand flagship phones compete directly with their budget and mid-range models. If they legally could, they’d block you from being able to sell your phone.
And yes, reusing an old phone is more environmentally friendly than buying a new one even if the new one is sustainably built. If you care about the environment, you should be happy with the second hand market, and encourage others to buy second hand phones. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” is said in that particular order for a very good reason.
Perhaps the truth is that the review was unfair, because there is no competition to put the Fairphone against. It’s a product built for a specific niche that has no other devices to choose from. But then again, if it only competes in that particular niche, why send one for review to a general tech reviewer at all? There are other reviewers that focus on sustainable technology that would be a lot more positive about this thing, nicely targeting the people who would consider buying such a device.
The difference is you can produce only the best phones. There aren’t throw away/cheap phones. The only difference is then how old the phone is.
It’s the difference between buying an old Lexus and a new base model Kia. They both might cost the same, and yeah the Lexus driver almost definitely got a new car, but the Lexus is probably going to outlive the Kia.
That’s the stupidest argument against 2nd hand market I’ve ever heard. It read as you’re too proud and too much nose on your imagined status to buy “used shit”