One thing. To the few of you saying "the 600 dollar fair phone is worth it because it will have longer security updates than an older phone" fair enough! And if that trade-off makes the fairphone worth it to you, then it makes sense to get that phone. I'd personally be happier to get a phone that's a few years old, get whatever security updates it has left, and be okay with having less security updates. Seems a better deal on price, sustainability, and phone quality. But to be clear, I'm not a phone reccomending channel! Do what you like! In any case, I think it's very valid to say, "this phone performs substantially worse than much older phones, which makes it a worse deal."
I think you're missing the point a little bit with this take. If the new phone has longer security support and can be repaired easily it can easily be used even longer than that used phone you get now. You benefit from that even if you didn't buy it new yourself.
The software thing is not *as* valid as you'd think because there's plenty of projects out there that aim to make new custom Android distributions for older model phones to keep them as up to date as possible, Android is open source after all. LineageOS is a big one. The caveat being you need some tech knowledge to flash your phone. But there's good tutorials out there.
I agree with you on everything but the sustainable part. There are good used phones because there are even better new phones that are built on an unimaginable amount of human suffering. On the other hand people won't be buying a product just because it's made fairly, unless they are trying to make some sort of a statement. Even if you were to go Diogenes, there's some random celebrity, or politician, who's responsible for more damage to the world than you could be doing throughout the next 60 years. Just enjoy this unfair world if you can, while you can, and hope that you won't live long enough that it becomes your problem too.
@@sluxi I dont think he missed anything... he's assuming that his audience is sart enough to figure themselves that buying a 3 year old phone and then simply buying another older model when that dies is still significantly cheaper than buying ONE fairphone. Not even considering the cost of paying someone to repair a fairphone
i have to say little joel, i have been watching youtube on my fairphone 5 for the past 10 hours and 25 minutes and your response to the fairphone 5 representative's response has really
The dev actually missed a huge opportunity to plug some of the good features of this phone, like in the battery life section he could have mentioned that you can just swap in a charged battery rather than having to go charge the phone and in the software review he could have mentioned the fact that its very easy to boot with a degoogled OS. I don't think fairphone is meant to compete with the flagships because it is targeting a different demographic, and he should have leaned into that more rather than getting heated when his product was criticized
It definitely gives off a reaction rather than a response. Like he didn't script his response or think it through he just jumped on responding immediately
Great point, you want to actually sell people on the phone and clarify the demographic you're initially targeting, knee-jerk reaction to criticism isn't helping anyone.
@@abigaillilac1370 No s right? Forgot to charge your phone or you had to use it for something that drained the battery big time? It's times like that where a simple battery swap is handy!
I think he meant it as "what are you doing watching CZcams on your phone for 10 hours anyways and how is that more important than ethically sourced metal"
@@michaelcordeiro12CZcams is not the most strenuous test. It's just a consistent one people relate to. If it only lasts 10 hours on CZcams, it can last far less time in other apps. The point isn't to buy another flagship with less ethically sourced materials. The point is to not buy a new phone at all. Buy used.
@@michaelcordeiro12 which is baffling. they are selling you a product at profit for $600. battery quality is an important metric. thats an easy way of testing battery life. what does he expect? Linus is giving context to 10 hours of CZcams time to how a different phone performs. Saying its "ethically sourced" isnt a catch all defense of a shit product
Clearly the CZcams playback was used because it was a high drain feature that required no actual screen input that they could monitor pretty easily. It's actually an extremely fair test, but it could be that the Fairphone has better 'dormant' battery life so would be more reliable in every day use. The fact this wasn't the response and "You want to watch 10 hours of CZcams?" was said instead leads me to believe the battery is just bad.
but doesn't that make less sense when you take into account the other 5000 phones dont do this "big thing" of being more repairable? It's not trying to do the exact same thing as other phones, so that makes the tiny thing being a "dealbreaker" seem more unnecessarily petty when the primary appeal of this one is not found in the 5000 others
@@user-zr9hu3tf1yyou're right, firstly. however, practically speaking, the real challenge with something like the Fairphone that is in the position of having to justity the resource extraction intrinsic to producing it by significantly impacting the design of other phones through better practices or by taking up more market share, is that it has to be able to compete with all of the 4999 traditional options which don't prioritize repairability. we should work to change the systems that necessitate that mass consumerist adoption to have an impact, ideally through coherent and cohesive legislation written by people who know what they're doing, but there is still the matter of having a positive short-term impact *alongside* that larger work, and in this sense i feel the deep flaws of the Fairphone make it unable to truly fulfill its intentions
@@dildswagginz3408I would be mortally offended if I had to recharge my phone during the day, and some days I do listen to/quasi watch 10+ hours of CZcams.
That would be awesome but it would be 1 million times more awesome if the fairphone guy’s mom responded to this LJoel’s video with her own reaction video.
Hey bro. I made exactly one mechanical keyboard two years ago, and you were a big help. I use it everyday with great joy for work, and you helped make that world accessible to me. …I will not be checking into the drama though.
Honestly keyboard drama is insane. I remember getting flamed on reddit for a whole month. Because I used a micro controller in my keyboard people didn't like.
@@camelopardalis84 I thought it was just me. Granted I don't have *youtube* playing, but I'll download some choice cozy videos onto an MP3 player and sleep to that lol
@@Colddirector There's also a subreddit called r/futuramasleepers for people who fall asleep to futurama, so do with that what you will. More oddballs like you and me.
A lot of the book review chanels that I've been watching recently repeat over and over a phrase that I think applies really well here: "reviews are for readers." Reviews aren't to stroke the egos of the people making the thing being reviewed, they're info for the people who might consider buying that thing
@@vodkaboyit's sort of in a weird place between advertising and journalism. You do actually address an issue here that is a big open question in all kinds of review and industry news: that you need access to the industry you write about to be able to do your job, but you can't be on overly friendly terms with the companies you write about, lest you lose credibility in the eyes of your audience.
I like that. I wrote a review on an Etsy store of a product that I really liked. I tried to be thorough, and as such, I included a couple potential limitations of the product, while still being overall positive. The crafter who ran the store apologized for the problems, so I felt bad for including those things, but I think it's better for potential buyers to know what factors to consider before buying. (The product was ear cuffs. They stay on by resting on the outside of the ear. I included information on how vigorously I could shake my head before they fell off. This would help someone who might want to go dancing in them. I didn't see it as a negative that they can fall off, but I guess the crafter did.)
Honestly, though, if FairPhone took the feedback in the video and fixed easy stuff like the volume, and took the opportunity to explain some of their design choices and tradeoffs (e.g. battery life vs battery replaceability), then I think it could benefit them too.
Oddly enough neither linus nor the fairphone guy address the main reason to buy a fairphone: repairability. Going through hell trying to unglue the screen from my 5 year old phone when it smashed was enough to convince me not to get another 5 year old phone. Also it's one of the only phones these days that still has an SD card slot
Yeah I feel like this phone might shine maybe 5 years down the line when they will be the used phone you probably should buy, but this one may actually be completely repairable and supported unlike the current second hands you can find.
Also, a 5 year old android doesn't get security updates. The fairphone has such weak performance because they use a really weird chip mostly used in server or smarthome applications. The chip allows them to get 8 years instead of the usual 2-5 years of software support, and for previous phones they've given updates for longer then promised.
incredibly funny how linus doesnt address this at ALL, considering how he owns part of fucking framework. y'know, the laptop company that is pretty heavily based around the same thing. thank you linus
I also think it's a pretty noble project, make a more ecological phone that is easily repairable, companies seem to prefer doing the opposite (lack of parts, strong adhesive, software pairing), but the enormous price tag on a middling phone, and a publicly defensive spokesperson isn't helping their case at all. The only reason why buying a phone from a couple of gens ago can be a problem is that companies stop updating them and vital apps such as ID and bank services can become unsupported at an indeterminate amount of time (consider getting an android you know has an unlockable bootloader so you can install the latest OS on it).
You can buy a refurbished like-new-condition Android flagship phone (e.g. samsung galaxy S) from 2-3 years ago for about 1/3 to 1/4 the price of a new phone and it will serve you perfectly well for 3-4 years.
And honestly, that's what the fair phone guy should have been emphasising, not complain about an otherwise fair critique of the phone, that just seemed to have missed the point. Instead he went "what do you want to do with a phone? Watch videos? What are you, a baby? An idiot? You want to catch up on the skibidi toilet lore, you stupid infant? Googoo gaga, I can't stare at my phone all day instead of singlehandedly saving the world. You won't get another review copy from us to prove how great we are.".
Its important to note a 5 year old android doesn't get security updates. The fairphone has suck weak performance because they use a really weird chip mostly used in server or smarthome applications. The chip allows them to get 8 years instead of the usual 2-5 years of software support, and for previous phones they've given updates for longer than promised.
It's a noble cause, but I don't see it going anywhere. By definition, avoiding the sketchy cost-saving and profit-pushing practices of other companies leaves you with a device that costs far more than the competition, and only a tiny percentage of people will even consider buying something like that. Most people buy phones off their carrier's menu or from used-phone sites, and pay little attention to any brands besides Apple and Samsung. Government regulation might be able to change industry practices (the EU has been working on that) but this isn't a situation where a disruptive company can make a difference.
You're about one recommendation away from finding one of the dozens of popular channels in the "soft spoken guy checks out 15-35 year old tech so viewers can take a nap with the video on the background" genre.
I don't remember when this was, but a fairphone representative said that the most sustainable phone is the one you already have, which I hope is still one of the company's ideals (as opposed to other companies who want you to just buy more and more). They should support getting a used phone Hopefully, this drama is just a marketing thing to bring a bit more attention to fairphone and the idea that we really don't need new phones all the time
Honestly, it's not even that weird to get defensive about it. It's more the fact that he doesn't have good responses and is just getting flustered in front of a camera for his "response."
@Elon.Emeralds Call it the EPhone X because Elon and X are two brands I trust and it definitely won't cause you to run into any copyright issues at all
@@OnewhoRuminatesandStudiesStratit's also not so weird when the person is one of the biggest reviewers in the space that's relevant to your primary audience, rather than just a "random internet person" lol
Nah, just put chips into people's brains that function worse than ten year old cellphones. "I don't have this high pitched whistle in my head and smoke pouring out of my ears when I use the Galaxy Note."
My sister and my mum had various fairphones in the last 5 years and they both switched back to other brands because of performance issues, bugs and reliability (both got their phones repaired multiple times and the service was always good!). It's pretty sad that you can't get top of the line parts while also being more ecologically friendly (at least that's my theory on why it performs worse)
@@sunbleachedangel Honestly, chipset and battery capacity should allow it to run longer than it does. Combine that with lots of bugs and you realise the main issue is actually their software department. Too little manpower and or skill.
Yeah, the software is honestly kind of miserable, just incredibly buggy. The only bright side is that at least ime, their updates do tend to fix major bugs. My Fairphone had a lot of software issues when I got it, but has steadily improved over time after a slew of updates.
@@sunbleachedangel it isn't hard at all, devices were easily repairable before, even the cutting edge ones. Its that phone companies have giant fabrics that can make phone chips and parts in mass, meanwhile the fairphone people do what they can. It's like buying something in a local store, you'll always find that same thing cheaper in a big store, or with a discount, or in big quantities at a fair price If phones nowadays are so hard to repair on your own is because they want you to buy a new one
i really don't think that's the case here as the overall build quality seems to just not be that good. lots more people with defects than apple or samsung plus it isn't even entirely a hardware issue
For the longest time, I assumed LinusTechTips was run by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, but it turns out that it was actually former Denver Nugget Linas Kleiza the whole time.
I think the most interesting aspect of Fairphone is how it pushes the rest of the industry to be more ethical and have better repairability (and inspire legislation that demands that of companies).
can't help but respect the fact they immediately jumped to making a completely unfiltered response as opposed to what the bigger companies on the market usually do
oh my i love love love how he went "why are you comparing specs when out phones have other advantages". BRO ITS A PERFORMANCE/SPEC TEST MADE SPECIFICALLY TO COMPARE PERFORMANCE. Tho honestly, i so wanna see that phone succeed. Like, performance on par with today's standard AND you can fix and customize it yourself? actual dream
He's criticizing that they're even bothering to do a performance comparison for that exact reason. Their concern was primarily that the phone _works._ Good enough.
The problem with buying used phones is the degrading battery life (which could be solved by having a user-serviceable battery) and the incompatibility with newer OS versions (which could be solved by introducing legislation that requires manufacturers to support OS versions with security updates for a longer time). All of these are planned obsolescence issues
The security updates are a big deal. I have a used Pixel 6, which was released in 2021. It is still getting updates now, but Google only promises to give phones security updates for 5 years after launch. So if I want to use a phone with modern security updates, I will need to swap my Pixel 6 in 2026, even if it still works perfectly. And the OS updates will stop in October 2024, so I'm encouraged to swap it out even sooner. Realistically if I only replace my phone every 4 or 5 years and always buy used, I'm still saving a lot of money. But I really wish we'd move away from planned obsolescence. I'll try to recycle my phones but they'll probably just end up in a landfill after I'm done with them. Not sure if the BestBuy recycle bin actually does anything with them.
Yeah, it's WILD that Linus would act like a five year old phone is an alternative considering how the Android update cycle works and how poor long-term support is.
To me Fairphone represents more of an investment - a way to push the industry in a sustainable direction, because in its current state it is simple not an attractive solution for most people. Getting a used phone is fine and also the choice I've ended up making. The problem is that app support will be limited by its already outdated hardware and firmware, the latter of which can often (but not always) be replaced by independently developed semi-opensource alternatives, but it is hardly sustainable to be dependent on unpaid labour.
I hope Little Joel keeps looking into this because the entire discourse lately has been, "How dare this reviewer, who reviews tech, review my gadget and say honest things about it." It's a huge theme right now and it's amazing and hilarious how entitled and angry the tech merchants are about their products not being given a minimum 9.8, to the point of demanding that journalists be fired for the temerity of repeating the actual tech specs of the device.
If a company that tries its best to get its materials from ethical sources and manufacture using ethical practices is THIS over lapped by their competitors who don't care if slave labor was used to create 30% of their phone, then it shows we have major extortion problems in our market and an even worse case of apathy from the consumers.
I think one of the main issues with fairphone is the chip used is for industrial use so it was a lot more expensive than the alternative from a competitor And the lack of economies of scale, they're relatively small so they still have a lot of overhead And the extra overhead of verification of source of material at a small production didn't help At least this time their phone is comparable to a phone that was 150$ and not 50$ like their previous ones
@@andreas4010 That doesn't explain why the phone is so goddamn slow. The chip inside the fairphone is faster than a snapdragon 855 yet it performs worse on actual use than any 855 phone
In my experience, the charging plug also tends to go after 2-3 years. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but it's happened like a lot. So buying used, I'd expect that issue to happen even sooner.
Companies seem to use the “UR GONNA BE HACKKED” as a fear tactic to encourage consumerism. Sure, I might have a bitcoin miner on my IPhone 6. But I’m not a govt official, no one is gojng to seriously hack me. Its the same fear to move to a better neighborhood so you dont get stabbed, despite that high comparative number still being INCREDIBLY unlikely.
Glad to see Google and Samsung promising 7+ years of support with their new models though. You can even buy genuine replacement batteries for Pixel phones.
Idk fairphone is also investing in industry that pays their workers better and more ethical companies, so buying a fairphone helps build up said industry and better working environments meanwhile buying a used iphone means the person you bought it from is incentivised to buy the next iphone because they know they'll be able to sell their old one. Not that the latter matters much, the former point is much more important
That’s a lot of money to spend to do that though, money that most people would very much benefit from putting elsewhere. The whole fairphone branding just screams performativity to me. It’s a product for well-off people so they feel better about themselves.
Hm now I'm torn. If it makes them feel better about themselves but it is actually a workers Coop and shit or at least unionized than it's more than just making you feel good it's supporting labor. But I need proof they are actually like that
My gut rebuttal to that is that makes it, like, worse? Right? If the company is marketing itself off of being more ethical succeeds and makes a good product that's awesome, a real kick to the teeth of any defense the less ethical companies could make. But what message are you sending to the industry if your company has issues because of the quality of your product? You're basically handing them a talking point. I'm sure there's probably more nuance to the issue I'm overlooking, this is my literal first exposure to the issue, but on first blush this feels to me like a tragically doomed venture and maybe not that good of an idea.
@@Ezekiel_Allium Hmm its hard not to "hand someone a talking point" there because anything union made or done ethically is always going to cost more, so if its priced at 699 like other phones than its going to worse bang for buck in every case, but buying ethical is more about the principle of it I guess. That being said I'm too broke to support a company on principle like that
@@spyczech I'm actually fine with the hardware being a little behind industry standard for the reasons you stated, my issue is that they apparently delivered a bad quality product on top of those limitations. Like, genuinely what does any of that have to do with weak motors in the vibrator or not thinking to allow the volume of your ringtone to be changed? Even the creator admits that's something that's a simple software patch away from being included so... why wasn't it on release? And if they didnt even think to do something as basic as that, I can only imagine what kind of less obvious issues there are that slipped past.
This was stressful to watch, but I think I'm gonna "Like" the video anyway because it's just part of the game we play interacting with alternate Joel sizes
It's not that the fairphone is too expensive, it's that new phones are too cheap and do not price in externalities like damage to the environment and the labour conditions in the factories. But Joel's point stands - about the best we consumers can do is buy an old phone.
@@danielsan901998 that's just a lazy shill excuse to allow companies to get away with planned obsolescence. Regulate the companies and mandate 10 year LTS for security updates. Besides that, I just checked and I'm running a 4 year old Android that's running the latest Android 14, so what are you even talking about?
If your solution is to regulate everything to death, might as well just use a trusty Nokia 3110. No one needs a constant stream of new smartphone models so in a fair and just world there just wouldn't be, right?
@@glib4233 your arguments are bad. some regulation is not regulation to death. The nokia was great, but new phones have new features - yet features like cameras and performance have reached a plateau and have been more than good enough for years for the majority of consumers
To be fair - pretty much all of the thing the Fairphone does during manufacturing and use (Good repairability, better sourcing of materials, better working conditions) is something we all could agree should be mandatory for ALL manufacturers. So I think the mission to show that this can be done is a very important one. Manufacturers cannot hide from their responsibility because Fairphone shows that it is possible.
To be fair a 4 year old android doesn't get security updates. The fairphone has such weak performance because they use a really weird chip mostly used in server or smart home applications. The chip allows them to get 8 years instead of the usual 2-5 years of software support, and for previous phones they've given updates for even longer then promised. Basically its a phone which might be worse right now, but if you can keep it for more then 8 years instead of the usual 2-4 it may be worth it
That's not fair, that's false. A decent amount of android phones get security patches for 4 years or longer. Especially when you take custom roms into consideration.
ok, who does a good job testing phones "properly" and any summary of what makes it "proper"? these comments are so weird...tech reviewers are testing new products, thats pretty normal. and ya, this phone sucks compared to a much cheaper phone. some of that is dependent on hardware. thats how it works...lol wtf dude
@@nothingisawesome linus tech tips has been caught doing shit like testing an item with an incompatible product and then just declaring it didn't work, along with some ugly behind the scenes stuff like they're not reliable because their methodology is bad
@@thomasstone3480 im aware of the history of LTT and the GN video. thats the whole point to the original criticism. You are just dismissing his review as bad without data. what did he say that was wrong in THIS review. edit: also, the summary of the GN wasnt that their methodology was bad as a whole. nobody said that. it was editing mistakes, selling a prototype product they didnt own at an auction, etc.
The repair-ability and longer term security updates was the one reason I heavily considered getting a FairPhone, but I couldn't get it in the US market at the time. For people who are using their cellphones as primarily phones with light "smart phone" usage, most of the benchmarks (besides battery life) aren't as big of a deal compared to how many years I can hold off on buying another device. Ultimately, I went with an iPhone because at least I knew people who had been using their devices for +6 years, and at the time most Android phones stopped pushing security updates after 2 years. From what I hear, some other phone companies have committed to extending these updates, but nothing as good as I've heard from Apple.
It’s crazy to me that companies don’t c these reviews as an opportunity, ur never gonna beat the tech reviewers by going at them. U win with simple statements like “thanks for pointing out the issue, our team will look into it so our phones can be as polished as possible for our users.” Even if u don’t fix all the issues it still signals to the customers that u care & they’ll b more interested in the fair phone 6 or even just software updates.
@@gislimagnusson5275 yes, their PR department made the video that they posted so I’m suggesting they do better PR, they don’t need to respond in the first place but if they choose to they better be careful about how they handle it
Love the mission statement for Fairphone, love the idea. Very good thing to try to do, making a good new phone that isn't such a disaster socially and environmentally. But that sounds really hard! It's the kind of thing you might expect to be unsuccessful, it might even be impossible. Is there really something so wrong with, you know, checking? Checking whether or not they succeeded? He's so offended at the mere act of reviewing as if he didn't expect anyone to check. I'm sure they were careful to make sure the environmental thing was easy to check but what about the 'good' part?
I have a fairphone, and it really is super easy to repair. For me, the experience stripping down and looking inside my fairphone has empowered me to try repairing other devices in my home too. Repairability is the thing I look for most when buying literally any non-consumable item now. It's changed my whole outlook by being so extremely repair-friendly. Honestly, get a second hand FP3 or something. No need to spring for the 5.
You are right except on one part: you actually can not viably buy an older phone because software and security updates on phones are pretty important if you want to use it fully in a connected world, so much that when a phone is not supported anymore it becomes nearly useless. apple is actually ecological at this thing where they will give software updates for 7 years, some Chinese brands only gave 2. A Fairphone gives at least 8 years, maybe 10 if they can. That is unmatched at this moment, but we will see if they can actually do it.
@@mossmeow You may be right. This is yet something 99% of people would not reasonably do. Most people do not even change a single Standard-Setting in their phone. Can you recommend OS that you find pretty good? I would be very interested to try that, thanks in advance!
I feel like both sides (buy used and use as logn as possible, vs push for more sustainable, repairable products) have really good points. I just wish replacing and recycling the batteries was a little easier. Like i dont think they need to be toolless swapable, but just not glued in would be amazing. I replaced a pixel battery before and it was a nightmare compared to changing the battery in my slightly XPS 13 laptop.
It's so stupid because at least in Samsung phones you used to be able to just replace the battery and there was absolutely no issues with that. My guess is that they don't actually want people to do that and instead buy a new phone instead.
i just want devices to have parts that are readily available, as standardized as possible, and built such that anyone with an ifixit kit and some experience can replace things. I want to be able to go to a repair shop and have them fix the device up in 10-20 minutes for like 20 bucks.
As an African I’m not in love with Fairphone’s model for my own reasons, but it’s still better - (and i hate to be that guy) *aren’t* we missing the point though? The PR guy tapped for this also is, that’s the funny part, but I don’t envy him. Like of course the cheaper more performant thing “is bad actually”, that’s the point. If the race to the proverbial bottom can be demonstrated to be completely evitable; then that’s not the worst point
I gave up on LTT a quite a few years ago mainly because of the amount of sponsorships. I would be careful with their recommendations purely because of it. Edit: Truth be told smartphones are a mature product. The Fairphone, The Nothing Phone, OnePlus 12R, Pixel 8, etc. are all fine phones. You don't need a Pro anything tbh. Samsung is the one I would avoid purely because their own UI.
@@Somone_final_final_v2 Wasn't there a problem with LTT having tight deadlines that messed up data accuracy in nearly every review? That and favourably reviews for inferior products that Linus is invested in?
It's worth noting that almost all phones perform like phones from 5 years ago. Smartphone performance has plateaued, the only performance increase you can see is in synthetic benchmarks. Phone reviewers love making content out of smartphone "performance" even though their synthetic loads have no bearing in real consumer use
As somebody that upgraded from a 6 year old phone recently, the difference is honestly **night and day,** apps open and close so much faster on the new phone, it is _way_ more responsive, and as the cherry on top it also crashes way, way less often. I'm all for the "use it until it doesn't work anymore" model (I literally used a phone for six years solid, who does that?) but unless there was a huge leap forward from 6 to 5 years ago that made all the phones released since identical in performance, it really doesn't do anybody any good to try and say "they all run the same outside of synthetic benchmarks"
I got a Fairphone 4 a few months ago because my old phone was smashed and I didnt wanna wait for the new one to come out. I knew when I bought it that, for the same prize I could get a better phone or, for a lower prize one just as good that was a bit older. For me personally, (and it is always a personal preference isnt it) I knew I didnt need the 2% better performance or whatever, if it works, shows videos in good enough quality (it does) and lasts me through the day then thats good enough for me. And I am happy to pay the extra for the ethical sourcing of material and knowing that when the screen does crack or the battery does give out, I can just open it up and swap it out without much hassle. (Also I got free wireless headphones with it yay) I do appreciate the Fairphone company trying to create a source of ethical phones. Like, buying 2nd hand is absolutely great and I recommend it, the last I got 2nd hand and kept for 5 years. Although the phones still at some point came from a very unethical source to building up an alternative isnt a bad idea. The manager making the sassy video is very funny, I have to say. As are the passionate fans in Linus' comments :D
People will complain about tech monopolies and anti-consumer practices, and then a company comes along trying to subvert that and people are like "YOU DON'T HAVE PROPRIETARY SUPER ADVANCED TECH?" "WE HAVE TO PAY EXTRA BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE HUNDREDS OF YOUR OWN FACTORIES TO MACHINE PARTS?" "HOW DARE YOU NOT COMPETE WITH CURRENT MONOPOLIES" Like... You aren't purchasing the fair phone because it's the best phone, you're purchasing it because you dislike capitalism and you're trying to make the most ethical decisions within the constraints of the system you're under.
I just bought the FairPhone 5 and it's fantastic IMO. Great experience and no issues so far 👍 That said, the response video from a Fairphone rep was disappointing
@@RealDonaldDrumpf they probably are though idk why they feel the need to defend it lol at no point did anyone say “the fairphone 5 doesn’t work” the point is that it’s a terrible value, which it is
@@cashnelson2306 i just hadn’t heard about the fairphone 5 before this so perhaps I just live under a rock but in my world Apple owns the entire phone market save for a few quirky android fans 💀💀
@@thijmstickman8349 fairphone has not had to support a phone for 8 years up until now, fairphone 4 had 5 years, just like every other manufacturer. google will do 7, that comparison is fairly weak
Okay thank you because I thought I was going crazy! Like I'm not an expert on phone performance metrics but the graphs shown seemed to indicate that the performance of the fair phone was significantly better than the note, and the difference from the FF to the modern pixel pro 8 was negligible by comparison
The reason he's comparing to the Pixel 8 is because the two phones are the same price point. So yes, the Fairphone is twice as fast as the Note 5, but you can get a Note 5 for less than £200, whilst the Pixel 8 is much faster for the same price. The reason is because they're trying to be more ethical and sustainable and I really like that idea, but from the perspective of a buyer the gap in performance vs a phone of a similar price can matter.
@@axel6269 his name is apparently "Miquel Ballester Salva" and he did his studies in Valencia before doing a master's or something in Delft. I don't usually go snooping on people's Linkedin but I was just so darned tootin curious about the accent. So he's originally Spanish but has been living in the Netherlands for 10+ years.
I hate how tech companies keep pushing that "yeah we shipped a crappy product but you can't say that in reviews because we'll do software updates to fix it later" bullshit
the chart linus showed doesnt even show the fair phone being that much worse than modern phones, and its basically twice as fast as the old phone he said is on par. also at this point smartphones have basically been solved so why buy the pixel 8 and not buy the pixel 7. im with fair phone on this
yeah i definitely see this as a comment on the state of smartphones, for Web browsing its rare anything except the lowest end rubbish chokes. For entertainment we've had awesome screens since around 2013 (Galaxy S3?) which have improved in durability and resistance to screen burn. After that it's just camera stuff and battery life (also depending the precisely when the youtube tests were done, the fairphone may have lost bad due to a lack of AV1 hardware decode. Hard to say from here though.
Hope I don't sound like a neckbeard but Ive never gotten why people care so much about having powerful phones, like PCs are better value, tablets have more usable screens, and Nintendo Switches have better games.
I had been using a fairly recent phone until its battery turned into a spicy pillow. So I cheaply moved to a half-decade old thing I had lying around. And it's been fine. I genuinely can't complain about anything. It really makes me question the value of expensive upgrades.
There might be some context that you're missing here. Linus got in trouble recently for giving inaccurate reviews replete with mistakes and not properly correcting them when it is called to their attention. I'm not saying that's the case here, but it has happened enough times for me to side-eye him.
Not to mention the unprofessional work environment from LTT as we were able to see with the harassment allegations the came out around that time and the follow up leaked audio from one of their company meetings.
nothing that he said was inaccurate as far as im aware of. im fully aware of the issues and fully supported GN on this issue but this is like 1% relevant
I've had second hand phones for around a decade now and never complained. It's worth noting that the most premium phone models have the biggest depreciation and are good value. Perhaps because the most expensive phones actually sell really well? Or people get them as company phones. In my experience it's not just security updates that run out. The phone will, more critically, stop running new apps the longer you use it. I have friends with old iPhones who can't run WhatsApp anymore, which can be fun when you work for the same organisation. I just hope that, with used phones becoming such a big business, phone makers don't view it as eroding their sales and respond by screwing with the phones.
@@cashnelson2306 Fine, let me be clarify so that even someone with no charitability can understand: The only issue I had was that the headphone jack broke after 2 years, but I ordered a replacement module and was able to repair it within a week.
Tbf pun intended you can actually swap parts out of the fairphone unlike any of the other phones. So in even like a year the fairphone will run better for most people. I do agree with Linus on the fact that it's super overpriced. But unless he did a repair ease comparison it is kinda skewed to the competition.
@@TweenkPLcan you just pop off the back and do the replacement with no tools or expertise? (This is a genuine question, because I don't know) Having little modules that plug into sockets like a tiny PC is arguably not as good as being able to desolder the individual components and replace them, but the latter requires expertise to perform and always risks further damaging the device. Also, my understanding is that the Fairphone modules can have a higher specification than the original ones that came with the phone, so you can in theory upgrade parts of the same device instead of replacing the entire thing and the firmware and drivers for the phone support you doing so.
For the Fairphone, in contrast to framework laptops for instance, its only reparable and not upgradable. Some parts are also not even repairable (fingerprint sensor and Mainboard as far as i know). So performance should not improve. That being said, when your battery degrades, which it will, you can swap it for a new one.
Explain me this idea: How not buying a new piece of tech/equipment leads to less natural resources to be used? Why it depends upon my decision and not the manufacturer, if its already been mass produced and kept in shelves?
3:44 "The phone from 10 years ago is almost as good as the Fairphone 5" It's 3 times faster than the highest end phone from 8 years ago while being much closer to the Pixel 8 than to the Note 5.
Thank you!! I was so confused about how he got that line from that graph! The Fairphone was less than a tenth of a second slower than the Pixel for all 4 apps lol
I remember that review. I still think it's so weird Linus makes it sound like the Fairphone is on par with a ten year old phone. They even show the performance graphs for it and it's not even close. Like, several times more than the difference between the Pixel 8 from the same year they're comparing it to. Was not aware that Fairphone did a sassy response, though, that's hilarious.
I see a lot of people saying that Linus didnt talk about the "Main reason you would get a fairphone: repairability".. and "he is being a hypocrite bc he owns shares in framework" 1) he literally did in the video, joel here was more focused on the ridiculousness of the drama so understandably he chose to omit it 2) what a company like the Fairphone lacks that another like framework excels at is making a product that is user repairable/upgradable that ALSO is very capable within its (relative) price range and provides other compelling features! yes frameworks are priced a bit higher than their relative specs, but they offer a lot more than just repairablity, for example, swappable IO, and user-upgradable CPU's and GPU's. for the general consumer, a device that works how you expect it to is important first over the added bonus of repairability, if you are buying a fairphone for the sake of repairability, then more power to you that linus video was clearly not ment for you...
I thought the biggest selling point is fair labor. They don't use African children to harvest metal unlike Big Joel who is happy with that to publish his Disney videos.
I will say it's funny and rather hypocritical for Linus to be the guy going in on the fairphone, when he's also the guy who very publicly praised and invested in the Framework laptop, which could be criticized in pretty much all the same ways. It's also a product trying to be more repairable and sustainable, it also costs a bit more more and performs a bit worse than contemporary laptops, and it also has a litany of small usability problems (I know because I have one). That is the kind of tradeoff you make when you buy a more niche product from a newer company that is trying to make a something better along one or two specific dimensions. Major brands don't do planned obsolescence and make unethically-sourced, hard-to-repair products just for the heck of it, they do it because it's cheaper and more profitable. So yeah, of course the alternative is going to be more expensive for the same specs, that's sort of the point.
To be fair, regardless of this specific review, Linus "I'd rather publish misinformation than spend another $300 doing testing" Tech Tips should no be viewed as a credible source for tech reviews. It's not particularly weird that he would ignore the flaws of Framework given that, as you said, he's invested in the company and stands to profit from them doing well. LTT is many things, but unbiased is not one of them.
all the fairphone guy needs to say is yeah its got compromises but you get an ethically sourced, repairable phone. people arent buying a fairphone for the best specs so you dont need to care when a guy says your phone doesnt have the best specs lol
@@din3885 Wasn't the video a review, though? Granted I'm not subscribing to the "Linus is untrustworthy" line of reasoning. I have no reason to, and being wrong or making some mistakes isn't reason enough.
I used to watch Linus back in 2013-14 haven’t really watched since. What happened? If you don’t mind telling me i am being very lazy and don’t want to do my own research lol
I never really watched him because he seemed annoying. NGL the bad stuff coming out about him is wierdly cathartic because I have a more legit reason to not like him now lol
@@Yourgurtisgood Gamers Nexus did a good break down of the issues surrounding LTT & the way they've been doing reviews. It's worth a watch. Simply put though, the company grew too quickly, spitting out as many video's as possibly but didn't spend enough time on research & the quality control went out the window.
I have a Fairphone 4 and to be honest it's pretty hard to recommend. The best thing about it is the modularity is great and it's super easy to replace stuff. I broke the screen and it literally took me five minutes to replace the screen. But the SIM card keeps shaking itself loose and needs to be re-seated, which is pretty easy to do but that shouldn't need to happen, the screen isn't bright enough, I went to Portugal a couple of weeks ago and in direct sunlight it was pretty hard to see what was on the screen. The software has been a bit all over the place, it seems to have gotten there now. For example the GPS would stop working and need a reboot and the Bluetooth was a little bit temperamental and would end up crashing the battery if the power was low.
The issue with buying an older device is the radio isn't likely to work especially as things move forward. Cell companies refarm frequencies to newer standards while the older devices won't have the correct radio for receiving the signal. When I worked in the industry I got to explain this to people with iPhone 5 and older because their data was using an old 2G data format that was refarmed to LTE. Currently cell companies are retiring the old voice line system to switch to voice over LTE meaning older devices won't even be able to make voice calls moving forward. Also 3G data lines are being switched to 5G which was initially used mostly in the ghrtz range other than T-Mobile which set it to 600mghrtz as they had recently purchased that spectrum when 5G hit market.
oh my god i never thought that these two worlds would collide, i watched the fairphone response when it dropped and it seemed unbelievably petty, thanks for spreading the good news henry big joel
Wait till you hear about the mini drama from nearly EVERY LTT video. People get mad at everything they do like people at LTT have final say of how the world works. It's annoying.
It's weird that Linus says the older phone is almost as good, but it seems it's like over twice as bad in this test? So, why not just find a phone that is actually equivalent and tell us how old/expensive that one is? Sounds like some shenanigans, but I'm not sure. I don't get it, but maybe I'll check out the full video. Apart from that, yeah, buying used phones is really the best, but if Fairphones were ubiquitous, buying old phones would be much easier and cheaper, cause like, yeah, obviously - phones become unusable real fast nowadays, and are very hard to repair. So I'd say at this exact moment it might be best on an individual scale to buy an old flagship and install Lineage on it, but also everyone who buys new should ideally buy Fairphones, so us peasants can buy them in five years. Like, I think it's important that even though you're buying a new product, it's a product that will live longer, so right now it's less environment-friendly, but it maybe will be in its whole lifespan. At individual scale, buying used might be the most ecofriendly, but at the societal scale, I'd say supporting Fairphone might be a better option and more forward-looking. Still, I'm not buying one cause I'm broke lmao. And like, anyway, every phone is good enough for most people nowadays. They don't hang, they work fast, they all have decent cameras, it's difficult to buy anything that will suck. So I'd say the repairability is much more important than other features, just by virtue of performance not actually being that important in 2024.
"The Fairphone has 10 hours of battery life" Oh boy, that's enough time to get through almost 1/3 of Quinton's review of The Beverly Hillbillies! Super glad I've got that ready to go on my 12 hour trucker route because my radio is just fucked. So this phone is all I really have. Hope it keeps going the whole way in-case my wife has to text me something!
Austin Green did a good video a few months ago covering Linus's history of being dishonest in his reviews and refusing to admit mistakes, which directly led to the bankruptcy of small companies, so this probably contributed to the backlash Linus's review got. That said, Fairphone's response to this was pretty awful lmao
I think it's scarier to think that to make a phone fair to the environment and people producing it, as well as making it profitable for its company, it costs 600$ for the consumer, and not even getting a good one as far as performance is concerned. Then again, maybe for some it's better to have a slower phone that's not drenched in other people's blood, as most technology is nowadays, not only considering labor practices and repairability, but also the work and toil connected to the extraction of the raw materials inside. And I say this writing on a Samsung phone that I want to be as fast as possible for my entertainment. Still when I had to buy new headphones I turned to fairphone, and even if they were not the best for sound quality or price I am very happy with my purchase and the possibility to repair them easily and have sustainably sourced materials inside, unlike other headphones I had.
Come on, Joel. That rep was responding to a very particular type of criticism; if you want them to remain completely, 100% professional under that specific circumstance, I just... I don't know what to say to you. Is that really such a deal-breaker for you?
Yes lol if a phone is being loud and annoying when there are thousands of other options to go with... Deal breaker? No dawg it's a NO BRAINER to go with a company that doesn't suck like that. You clown lololol
I see a similar argument like the one for organic food here. Organic vegetables will often look a little less bright and perfectly buff and whatever; and organic sweets in particular will often taste a little less... awesome. The reason for that is that organic vegetables are less rigorously treated with harsh chemicals, since that would be quite bad for the soil etc.; and organic sweets just contain less... you know. Less sugar. It is that simple. So one could argue that these two kinds of food are actually not entirely comparable, because they meet different objectives, in a way. Where "normal" food is simply aiming to taste awesome (without immediately killing you), organic food is aiming to taste awesome and(!) to be healthy and(!) to protect the soil and(!) to be good for biodiversity and the planet as a whole. If one puts it like this, it becomes apparent that one of these tasks might be a little harder than the other one. Or indeed a lot harder; I actually do not know, not being a farmer or a... food producer. So the analogy to this "Fairphone" is obvious: The respective company is trying to do something similar to what other phone companies are doing; but they are not actually doing the identically same thing. As I understand it, the Fairphone is very modular, so that one can easily repair it oneself or at least let some professional repair it without too much of a hassle. I am told that this feature alone might actually slow down performance quite a bit; at least as long as you aren't able to put the same billions into the respective research as other phone companies are putting into... finding the perfect colour for their earbuds, what do I know. Moreover, this company apparently tries to not have little children dig through toxic soil for them 14 hours a day until they collapse into a kind of sickness very few of us can even imagine; and to achieve still getting the metals they need they establish a new infrastructure they basically have to set up from scratch. And they are doing all this while designing their phones and all that, which is probably not something you do in an afternoon, you know. So, this is already very tl;dr. I guess my question would be: If a phone reviewer compares a phone to other phones strictly in regard to the one objective other phones are exclusively focused on, while entirely ignoring the other objectives in question and what kind of "worth" these objectives could or should mean comparatively to an ethical consumer, is that an intelligent way of comparing products? Or to put it even more fittingly in this particular context: Is that actually... fair?
May we all keep it in our minds, that LTT is not the kind of channel to put your unwavering trust in when it comes to any in depth tech reviews. They intentionally have tight as fuck deadlines that have resulted in significant errors and misconstruing of others' products as worse than they are. And the guy in those clips does have a point at times. It's not a Samsung, they're still updating the software. LTT even in the reviews they get right tend to review everything as if it's for the average consumer and not the actual kinds of people who'd be interested in the product to begin with, and it really shows here.
You make an excellent point. Phones from 10 years ago really are entirely adequate for most people's needs. And not only will a refurbished phone save you a ton of cash, it is the most ecologically responsible way to buy electronics. Refurbished refurbished refurbished.
Same thing with the guitar world but even more so. New guitars are literally made with less quality woods over all since we love burning this planet to the ground. Going with older models isn't just better for comfort or tone. You burn less of the world too. Typically spend less too unless you're going for super rare models.
One thing. To the few of you saying "the 600 dollar fair phone is worth it because it will have longer security updates than an older phone" fair enough! And if that trade-off makes the fairphone worth it to you, then it makes sense to get that phone. I'd personally be happier to get a phone that's a few years old, get whatever security updates it has left, and be okay with having less security updates. Seems a better deal on price, sustainability, and phone quality. But to be clear, I'm not a phone reccomending channel! Do what you like! In any case, I think it's very valid to say, "this phone performs substantially worse than much older phones, which makes it a worse deal."
I think you're missing the point a little bit with this take. If the new phone has longer security support and can be repaired easily it can easily be used even longer than that used phone you get now. You benefit from that even if you didn't buy it new yourself.
The software thing is not *as* valid as you'd think because there's plenty of projects out there that aim to make new custom Android distributions for older model phones to keep them as up to date as possible, Android is open source after all. LineageOS is a big one. The caveat being you need some tech knowledge to flash your phone. But there's good tutorials out there.
I agree with you on everything but the sustainable part. There are good used phones because there are even better new phones that are built on an unimaginable amount of human suffering.
On the other hand people won't be buying a product just because it's made fairly, unless they are trying to make some sort of a statement. Even if you were to go Diogenes, there's some random celebrity, or politician, who's responsible for more damage to the world than you could be doing throughout the next 60 years.
Just enjoy this unfair world if you can, while you can, and hope that you won't live long enough that it becomes your problem too.
@@sluxi I dont think he missed anything... he's assuming that his audience is sart enough to figure themselves that buying a 3 year old phone and then simply buying another older model when that dies is still significantly cheaper than buying ONE fairphone. Not even considering the cost of paying someone to repair a fairphone
@sluxi they clearly understand that. No need to fanboy here.
i have to say little joel, i have been watching youtube on my fairphone 5 for the past 10 hours and 25 minutes and your response to the fairphone 5 representative's response has really
all timer
Comment of all time
1025 cascade number spotted
lol 😂
beautiful
The dev actually missed a huge opportunity to plug some of the good features of this phone, like in the battery life section he could have mentioned that you can just swap in a charged battery rather than having to go charge the phone and in the software review he could have mentioned the fact that its very easy to boot with a degoogled OS. I don't think fairphone is meant to compete with the flagships because it is targeting a different demographic, and he should have leaned into that more rather than getting heated when his product was criticized
It definitely gives off a reaction rather than a response. Like he didn't script his response or think it through he just jumped on responding immediately
Great point, you want to actually sell people on the phone and clarify the demographic you're initially targeting, knee-jerk reaction to criticism isn't helping anyone.
I agree, swappable batteries is actually a feature I really miss in phones.
@@abigaillilac1370 No s right? Forgot to charge your phone or you had to use it for something that drained the battery big time? It's times like that where a simple battery swap is handy!
He's definitely a terrible spokesman, all he said here was "do you really need it?" "That can be fixed" okay but I do need it and it's not fixed yet
2:51 I hear “having a really weak vibrator” is the real, actual reason Joel dropped his Adam and Eve sponsorship
Joel knows what’s up
I love how the Fairphone developer posits the low battery life as a screen time management feature instead of just the phone not being perfect
I think he meant it as "what are you doing watching CZcams on your phone for 10 hours anyways and how is that more important than ethically sourced metal"
@@michaelcordeiro12CZcams is not the most strenuous test. It's just a consistent one people relate to. If it only lasts 10 hours on CZcams, it can last far less time in other apps.
The point isn't to buy another flagship with less ethically sourced materials. The point is to not buy a new phone at all. Buy used.
He clearly doesn't watch Quinton Reviews
@@michaelcordeiro12 which is baffling. they are selling you a product at profit for $600. battery quality is an important metric. thats an easy way of testing battery life. what does he expect? Linus is giving context to 10 hours of CZcams time to how a different phone performs. Saying its "ethically sourced" isnt a catch all defense of a shit product
Clearly the CZcams playback was used because it was a high drain feature that required no actual screen input that they could monitor pretty easily. It's actually an extremely fair test, but it could be that the Fairphone has better 'dormant' battery life so would be more reliable in every day use.
The fact this wasn't the response and "You want to watch 10 hours of CZcams?" was said instead leads me to believe the battery is just bad.
The dealbreaker moment is so funny. YES, with 5000 phones to choose from, tiny things are a dealbreaker.
I still use a 4 year old Google Pixel 4a 😢 but it does the job maybe 🤔 thats good enough, i feel like little things would put me off a new phone
Reminds me of how people pick cars based off cupholders.
but doesn't that make less sense when you take into account the other 5000 phones dont do this "big thing" of being more repairable? It's not trying to do the exact same thing as other phones, so that makes the tiny thing being a "dealbreaker" seem more unnecessarily petty when the primary appeal of this one is not found in the 5000 others
@@user-zr9hu3tf1y but being able to use an old phone is the counter
@@user-zr9hu3tf1yyou're right, firstly. however, practically speaking, the real challenge with something like the Fairphone that is in the position of having to justity the resource extraction intrinsic to producing it by significantly impacting the design of other phones through better practices or by taking up more market share, is that it has to be able to compete with all of the 4999 traditional options which don't prioritize repairability. we should work to change the systems that necessitate that mass consumerist adoption to have an impact, ideally through coherent and cohesive legislation written by people who know what they're doing, but there is still the matter of having a positive short-term impact *alongside* that larger work, and in this sense i feel the deep flaws of the Fairphone make it unable to truly fulfill its intentions
"Do you want to be watching CZcams for 10 hours?" I feel personally called out
using your data with no access to electrical outlets? i guess the homeless may have issues with their $600 phones
@@dildswagginz3408I would be mortally offended if I had to recharge my phone during the day, and some days I do listen to/quasi watch 10+ hours of CZcams.
Average Quinton reviews fan
@@Yamartim no thanks
10 hours? Rookie numbers
Hoping for fairphones to respond and escalate this into a 5 part drama
That would be awesome but it would be 1 million times more awesome if the fairphone guy’s mom responded to this LJoel’s video with her own reaction video.
manifesting this rn
@@MarcosElMalo2 Then we'd have to get Little Joel's mom Big Joel to respond to that! The cycle of vi(de)olence would never end!
"Hoping for fairphones to respond"
Me too, I've tried every button but it still won't respond.
A five part drama that includes a 10 hour response from fairphones.
Wait till you hear about mechanical keyboard drama
Hipyo is a little Joel enjoyer!? 😮 I knew you were my favorite mechanical keyboard weirdo for a reason
Hey bro. I made exactly one mechanical keyboard two years ago, and you were a big help.
I use it everyday with great joy for work, and you helped make that world accessible to me.
…I will not be checking into the drama though.
Honestly keyboard drama is insane. I remember getting flamed on reddit for a whole month.
Because I used a micro controller in my keyboard people didn't like.
Lol I have no idea about drama, I just build my big split orthos and learn about mods from hipyo
I saw it on my feed yesterday and was saving it for today. It's been a hot time on the cold tech town this last week.
no, no i don't wanna watch youtube for 10 hours. youtube is a 24/7 commitment i need 24 hrs bro
I could ask you whether you don't sleep, but as a person who has fallen asleep to youtube playing I won't.
@@camelopardalis84 I thought it was just me. Granted I don't have *youtube* playing, but I'll download some choice cozy videos onto an MP3 player and sleep to that lol
@@Colddirector cuteness
@@Colddirector Cirrently, I am not doing it on purpose. But there have been days when I did.
@@Colddirector There's also a subreddit called r/futuramasleepers for people who fall asleep to futurama, so do with that what you will.
More oddballs like you and me.
A lot of the book review chanels that I've been watching recently repeat over and over a phrase that I think applies really well here: "reviews are for readers." Reviews aren't to stroke the egos of the people making the thing being reviewed, they're info for the people who might consider buying that thing
Exactly, Linus from LTT said that, Marques from MKB said that, amen to that
so, it's advertising, right ?
@@vodkaboyit's sort of in a weird place between advertising and journalism. You do actually address an issue here that is a big open question in all kinds of review and industry news: that you need access to the industry you write about to be able to do your job, but you can't be on overly friendly terms with the companies you write about, lest you lose credibility in the eyes of your audience.
I like that.
I wrote a review on an Etsy store of a product that I really liked. I tried to be thorough, and as such, I included a couple potential limitations of the product, while still being overall positive. The crafter who ran the store apologized for the problems, so I felt bad for including those things, but I think it's better for potential buyers to know what factors to consider before buying.
(The product was ear cuffs. They stay on by resting on the outside of the ear. I included information on how vigorously I could shake my head before they fell off. This would help someone who might want to go dancing in them. I didn't see it as a negative that they can fall off, but I guess the crafter did.)
Honestly, though, if FairPhone took the feedback in the video and fixed easy stuff like the volume, and took the opportunity to explain some of their design choices and tradeoffs (e.g. battery life vs battery replaceability), then I think it could benefit them too.
Oddly enough neither linus nor the fairphone guy address the main reason to buy a fairphone: repairability. Going through hell trying to unglue the screen from my 5 year old phone when it smashed was enough to convince me not to get another 5 year old phone. Also it's one of the only phones these days that still has an SD card slot
Yeah I feel like this phone might shine maybe 5 years down the line when they will be the used phone you probably should buy, but this one may actually be completely repairable and supported unlike the current second hands you can find.
Also, a 5 year old android doesn't get security updates. The fairphone has such weak performance because they use a really weird chip mostly used in server or smarthome applications. The chip allows them to get 8 years instead of the usual 2-5 years of software support, and for previous phones they've given updates for longer then promised.
Nokia makes smartphones that are fully repairable as well. You can even take them apart yourself to swap parts in/out
incredibly funny how linus doesnt address this at ALL, considering how he owns part of fucking framework. y'know, the laptop company that is pretty heavily based around the same thing. thank you linus
@@hive-sys Framework recently announced they're moving into the phone space if you want to get conspiratorial about it.
I also think it's a pretty noble project, make a more ecological phone that is easily repairable, companies seem to prefer doing the opposite (lack of parts, strong adhesive, software pairing), but the enormous price tag on a middling phone, and a publicly defensive spokesperson isn't helping their case at all.
The only reason why buying a phone from a couple of gens ago can be a problem is that companies stop updating them and vital apps such as ID and bank services can become unsupported at an indeterminate amount of time (consider getting an android you know has an unlockable bootloader so you can install the latest OS on it).
You can buy a refurbished like-new-condition Android flagship phone (e.g. samsung galaxy S) from 2-3 years ago for about 1/3 to 1/4 the price of a new phone and it will serve you perfectly well for 3-4 years.
And honestly, that's what the fair phone guy should have been emphasising, not complain about an otherwise fair critique of the phone, that just seemed to have missed the point. Instead he went "what do you want to do with a phone? Watch videos? What are you, a baby? An idiot? You want to catch up on the skibidi toilet lore, you stupid infant? Googoo gaga, I can't stare at my phone all day instead of singlehandedly saving the world. You won't get another review copy from us to prove how great we are.".
Its important to note a 5 year old android doesn't get security updates. The fairphone has suck weak performance because they use a really weird chip mostly used in server or smarthome applications. The chip allows them to get 8 years instead of the usual 2-5 years of software support, and for previous phones they've given updates for longer than promised.
@@thijmstickman8349 It's a fair point, but you are betting on the longevity of a fairly small startup in a niche market
It's a noble cause, but I don't see it going anywhere. By definition, avoiding the sketchy cost-saving and profit-pushing practices of other companies leaves you with a device that costs far more than the competition, and only a tiny percentage of people will even consider buying something like that. Most people buy phones off their carrier's menu or from used-phone sites, and pay little attention to any brands besides Apple and Samsung. Government regulation might be able to change industry practices (the EU has been working on that) but this isn't a situation where a disruptive company can make a difference.
You're about one recommendation away from finding one of the dozens of popular channels in the "soft spoken guy checks out 15-35 year old tech so viewers can take a nap with the video on the background" genre.
LGR is very calming
Best thing on all of internet
I'm a massive cathode ray dude fan (although he only half fits into that niche)
which is the gateway into watching big clive electrocute hot dogs and put alcohol in a sodastream
@@swedneck little joel would only watch little clive
I don't remember when this was, but a fairphone representative said that the most sustainable phone is the one you already have, which I hope is still one of the company's ideals (as opposed to other companies who want you to just buy more and more). They should support getting a used phone
Hopefully, this drama is just a marketing thing to bring a bit more attention to fairphone and the idea that we really don't need new phones all the time
Just know they removed the headphone jack on the latest one to sell ear buds just like Apple.
@@shApYT their new buds have replaceable batteries so maybe they're onto something
@@libra_v3 Doesn't excuse deleting the phone hole that can output to the Sennheiser HE1.
@@libra_v3 wired earphones don't need replaceable batteries
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 I know, but the inconveniencing factor of the wire is still a dealbreaker for a lot of people
I should make my own phone that way I can also get weirdly defensive about it when random internet people criticize it. Could be fun.
Honestly, it's not even that weird to get defensive about it. It's more the fact that he doesn't have good responses and is just getting flustered in front of a camera for his "response."
@Elon.Emeralds Call it the EPhone X because Elon and X are two brands I trust and it definitely won't cause you to run into any copyright issues at all
@@OnewhoRuminatesandStudiesStratit's also not so weird when the person is one of the biggest reviewers in the space that's relevant to your primary audience, rather than just a "random internet person" lol
Nah, just put chips into people's brains that function worse than ten year old cellphones. "I don't have this high pitched whistle in my head and smoke pouring out of my ears when I use the Galaxy Note."
Name checks out
My sister and my mum had various fairphones in the last 5 years and they both switched back to other brands because of performance issues, bugs and reliability (both got their phones repaired multiple times and the service was always good!). It's pretty sad that you can't get top of the line parts while also being more ecologically friendly (at least that's my theory on why it performs worse)
Making things easily repairable but also slick and cutting edge is just very hard
@@sunbleachedangel
Honestly, chipset and battery capacity should allow it to run longer than it does. Combine that with lots of bugs and you realise the main issue is actually their software department. Too little manpower and or skill.
Yeah, the software is honestly kind of miserable, just incredibly buggy. The only bright side is that at least ime, their updates do tend to fix major bugs. My Fairphone had a lot of software issues when I got it, but has steadily improved over time after a slew of updates.
@@sunbleachedangel it isn't hard at all, devices were easily repairable before, even the cutting edge ones. Its that phone companies have giant fabrics that can make phone chips and parts in mass, meanwhile the fairphone people do what they can. It's like buying something in a local store, you'll always find that same thing cheaper in a big store, or with a discount, or in big quantities at a fair price
If phones nowadays are so hard to repair on your own is because they want you to buy a new one
i really don't think that's the case here as the overall build quality seems to just not be that good. lots more people with defects than apple or samsung plus it isn't even entirely a hardware issue
Yep the whole with "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is that that is the correct order to do those things
For the longest time, I assumed LinusTechTips was run by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, but it turns out that it was actually former Denver Nugget Linas Kleiza the whole time.
Mom
I think the most interesting aspect of Fairphone is how it pushes the rest of the industry to be more ethical and have better repairability (and inspire legislation that demands that of companies).
I love the guy’s sassy attitude in the response video.
Fairphone was started by activists not business majors and it shows
Yep, them not doing the typical "filtered through a legal team" response is gold
can't help but respect the fact they immediately jumped to making a completely unfiltered response as opposed to what the bigger companies on the market usually do
@@thijmstickman8349 This representative is obviously a business major wdym
Yeah, if I had this kind of money to spare right now his responde would be enough to make me buy a Fairphone 5.
oh my i love love love how he went "why are you comparing specs when out phones have other advantages". BRO ITS A PERFORMANCE/SPEC TEST MADE SPECIFICALLY TO COMPARE PERFORMANCE. Tho honestly, i so wanna see that phone succeed. Like, performance on par with today's standard AND you can fix and customize it yourself? actual dream
He's criticizing that they're even bothering to do a performance comparison for that exact reason. Their concern was primarily that the phone _works._ Good enough.
@@colbyboucher6391 used phones work too, and that is even more ethical if you ask me.
The problem with buying used phones is the degrading battery life (which could be solved by having a user-serviceable battery) and the incompatibility with newer OS versions (which could be solved by introducing legislation that requires manufacturers to support OS versions with security updates for a longer time). All of these are planned obsolescence issues
The security updates are a big deal. I have a used Pixel 6, which was released in 2021. It is still getting updates now, but Google only promises to give phones security updates for 5 years after launch.
So if I want to use a phone with modern security updates, I will need to swap my Pixel 6 in 2026, even if it still works perfectly.
And the OS updates will stop in October 2024, so I'm encouraged to swap it out even sooner.
Realistically if I only replace my phone every 4 or 5 years and always buy used, I'm still saving a lot of money. But I really wish we'd move away from planned obsolescence.
I'll try to recycle my phones but they'll probably just end up in a landfill after I'm done with them. Not sure if the BestBuy recycle bin actually does anything with them.
@@dellybird5394its possible to inatall custom roms on older pisels, if you want to experiment and need the special features.
Yeah, it's WILD that Linus would act like a five year old phone is an alternative considering how the Android update cycle works and how poor long-term support is.
@@dellybird5394you can use GrapheneOS to get 3 more years of security updates on your current phone.
@@dellybird5394 what critical vulnerabilities are there in older versions of Android that are legit security risk?
Fair Phone Five is my favorite British pop band from the early 2000s. They had a show on ABC Family for one season
"do you want to watch 10 hours of youtube?" LOL that's like. The minimum. I regularly get youtube watch times of 35 hours in a single day.
To me Fairphone represents more of an investment - a way to push the industry in a sustainable direction, because in its current state it is simple not an attractive solution for most people.
Getting a used phone is fine and also the choice I've ended up making. The problem is that app support will be limited by its already outdated hardware and firmware, the latter of which can often (but not always) be replaced by independently developed semi-opensource alternatives, but it is hardly sustainable to be dependent on unpaid labour.
I hope Little Joel keeps looking into this because the entire discourse lately has been, "How dare this reviewer, who reviews tech, review my gadget and say honest things about it."
It's a huge theme right now and it's amazing and hilarious how entitled and angry the tech merchants are about their products not being given a minimum 9.8, to the point of demanding that journalists be fired for the temerity of repeating the actual tech specs of the device.
If a company that tries its best to get its materials from ethical sources and manufacture using ethical practices is THIS over lapped by their competitors who don't care if slave labor was used to create 30% of their phone, then it shows we have major extortion problems in our market and an even worse case of apathy from the consumers.
I think one of the main issues with fairphone is the chip used is for industrial use so it was a lot more expensive than the alternative from a competitor
And the lack of economies of scale, they're relatively small so they still have a lot of overhead
And the extra overhead of verification of source of material at a small production didn't help
At least this time their phone is comparable to a phone that was 150$ and not 50$ like their previous ones
@@andreas4010 That doesn't explain why the phone is so goddamn slow. The chip inside the fairphone is faster than a snapdragon 855 yet it performs worse on actual use than any 855 phone
Two issues with an old phone are lack of security updates and battery degradation. So reusing is cool but there's a lot of caveats.
In my experience, the charging plug also tends to go after 2-3 years. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but it's happened like a lot.
So buying used, I'd expect that issue to happen even sooner.
Really the only issue is security updates because batteries can be replaced
Companies seem to use the “UR GONNA BE HACKKED” as a fear tactic to encourage consumerism. Sure, I might have a bitcoin miner on my IPhone 6. But I’m not a govt official, no one is gojng to seriously hack me.
Its the same fear to move to a better neighborhood so you dont get stabbed, despite that high comparative number still being INCREDIBLY unlikely.
@@kassemirclean it out with a toothpick! The port shouldn't "go bad"
Glad to see Google and Samsung promising 7+ years of support with their new models though. You can even buy genuine replacement batteries for Pixel phones.
Idk fairphone is also investing in industry that pays their workers better and more ethical companies, so buying a fairphone helps build up said industry and better working environments meanwhile buying a used iphone means the person you bought it from is incentivised to buy the next iphone because they know they'll be able to sell their old one. Not that the latter matters much, the former point is much more important
That’s a lot of money to spend to do that though, money that most people would very much benefit from putting elsewhere. The whole fairphone branding just screams performativity to me. It’s a product for well-off people so they feel better about themselves.
Hm now I'm torn. If it makes them feel better about themselves but it is actually a workers Coop and shit or at least unionized than it's more than just making you feel good it's supporting labor. But I need proof they are actually like that
My gut rebuttal to that is that makes it, like, worse? Right? If the company is marketing itself off of being more ethical succeeds and makes a good product that's awesome, a real kick to the teeth of any defense the less ethical companies could make. But what message are you sending to the industry if your company has issues because of the quality of your product? You're basically handing them a talking point.
I'm sure there's probably more nuance to the issue I'm overlooking, this is my literal first exposure to the issue, but on first blush this feels to me like a tragically doomed venture and maybe not that good of an idea.
@@Ezekiel_Allium Hmm its hard not to "hand someone a talking point" there because anything union made or done ethically is always going to cost more, so if its priced at 699 like other phones than its going to worse bang for buck in every case, but buying ethical is more about the principle of it I guess. That being said I'm too broke to support a company on principle like that
@@spyczech I'm actually fine with the hardware being a little behind industry standard for the reasons you stated, my issue is that they apparently delivered a bad quality product on top of those limitations. Like, genuinely what does any of that have to do with weak motors in the vibrator or not thinking to allow the volume of your ringtone to be changed? Even the creator admits that's something that's a simple software patch away from being included so... why wasn't it on release? And if they didnt even think to do something as basic as that, I can only imagine what kind of less obvious issues there are that slipped past.
I will spend 10 hours on youtube binging Big/Little Joel videos
irl on wifi or in your room on your computer?
This was stressful to watch, but I think I'm gonna "Like" the video anyway because it's just part of the game we play interacting with alternate Joel sizes
It's not that the fairphone is too expensive, it's that new phones are too cheap and do not price in externalities like damage to the environment and the labour conditions in the factories.
But Joel's point stands - about the best we consumers can do is buy an old phone.
Only if the OS continue providing updates or you do not care about security.
@@danielsan901998 that's just a lazy shill excuse to allow companies to get away with planned obsolescence. Regulate the companies and mandate 10 year LTS for security updates. Besides that, I just checked and I'm running a 4 year old Android that's running the latest Android 14, so what are you even talking about?
If your solution is to regulate everything to death, might as well just use a trusty Nokia 3110. No one needs a constant stream of new smartphone models so in a fair and just world there just wouldn't be, right?
@@glib4233 your arguments are bad. some regulation is not regulation to death. The nokia was great, but new phones have new features - yet features like cameras and performance have reached a plateau and have been more than good enough for years for the majority of consumers
You brought up pricing in externalities.
Haha yes more Small Henry
i love henry bigjoel. his legal name
I'm SO Joel pilled
Okay, I need to call a quick timeout on the memes... Is Joel's name Henry? Or was that just from some dumb AI scraped "who is this person" article?
@isaac_marcus sorry you're finding out this way, but he is indeed a medium sized henry
@@smalltownshaman And you promise you're not some dumb AI scraper making a "who is this person" article? :(
To be fair - pretty much all of the thing the Fairphone does during manufacturing and use (Good repairability, better sourcing of materials, better working conditions) is something we all could agree should be mandatory for ALL manufacturers.
So I think the mission to show that this can be done is a very important one.
Manufacturers cannot hide from their responsibility because Fairphone shows that it is possible.
"enjoy your phones" - small joel
smoel
To be fair a 4 year old android doesn't get security updates. The fairphone has such weak performance because they use a really weird chip mostly used in server or smart home applications. The chip allows them to get 8 years instead of the usual 2-5 years of software support, and for previous phones they've given updates for even longer then promised.
Basically its a phone which might be worse right now, but if you can keep it for more then 8 years instead of the usual 2-4 it may be worth it
That's not fair, that's false. A decent amount of android phones get security patches for 4 years or longer. Especially when you take custom roms into consideration.
@@AbteilungsleiterinBeiAntifaEViirc samsung has long security updates as well, even if their rom sucks
my real problem with this whole debacle is that LTT actually sucks at testing phones properly
I find most tech reviewers don't actually test the phones most people can afford
only 12gigashits of RAM and not enough oversaturation on the camera 1/10 if only it had 20 hours of battery life like this more expensive phone
ok, who does a good job testing phones "properly" and any summary of what makes it "proper"? these comments are so weird...tech reviewers are testing new products, thats pretty normal. and ya, this phone sucks compared to a much cheaper phone. some of that is dependent on hardware. thats how it works...lol wtf dude
@@nothingisawesome linus tech tips has been caught doing shit like testing an item with an incompatible product and then just declaring it didn't work, along with some ugly behind the scenes stuff
like they're not reliable because their methodology is bad
@@thomasstone3480 im aware of the history of LTT and the GN video. thats the whole point to the original criticism. You are just dismissing his review as bad without data. what did he say that was wrong in THIS review.
edit: also, the summary of the GN wasnt that their methodology was bad as a whole. nobody said that. it was editing mistakes, selling a prototype product they didnt own at an auction, etc.
The repair-ability and longer term security updates was the one reason I heavily considered getting a FairPhone, but I couldn't get it in the US market at the time. For people who are using their cellphones as primarily phones with light "smart phone" usage, most of the benchmarks (besides battery life) aren't as big of a deal compared to how many years I can hold off on buying another device. Ultimately, I went with an iPhone because at least I knew people who had been using their devices for +6 years, and at the time most Android phones stopped pushing security updates after 2 years. From what I hear, some other phone companies have committed to extending these updates, but nothing as good as I've heard from Apple.
have you seen marquis brownlees video on the ultra advanced disney treadmill its pretty dope i feel like you could incorporate that into your workflow
this is my favorite comment, it made me so happy
@@fatpenguin0089 thanks you made my day
It’s crazy to me that companies don’t c these reviews as an opportunity, ur never gonna beat the tech reviewers by going at them. U win with simple statements like “thanks for pointing out the issue, our team will look into it so our phones can be as polished as possible for our users.” Even if u don’t fix all the issues it still signals to the customers that u care & they’ll b more interested in the fair phone 6 or even just software updates.
So pr stuff blá bla
@@gislimagnusson5275 yes, their PR department made the video that they posted so I’m suggesting they do better PR, they don’t need to respond in the first place but if they choose to they better be careful about how they handle it
"You don't want to be on CZcams for 10 hours right?" Yeah, this guy needed to talk to a PR person before making a snarky & cringe response video.
Love the mission statement for Fairphone, love the idea. Very good thing to try to do, making a good new phone that isn't such a disaster socially and environmentally. But that sounds really hard! It's the kind of thing you might expect to be unsuccessful, it might even be impossible. Is there really something so wrong with, you know, checking? Checking whether or not they succeeded? He's so offended at the mere act of reviewing as if he didn't expect anyone to check. I'm sure they were careful to make sure the environmental thing was easy to check but what about the 'good' part?
I have a fairphone, and it really is super easy to repair.
For me, the experience stripping down and looking inside my fairphone has empowered me to try repairing other devices in my home too. Repairability is the thing I look for most when buying literally any non-consumable item now. It's changed my whole outlook by being so extremely repair-friendly.
Honestly, get a second hand FP3 or something. No need to spring for the 5.
You are right except on one part: you actually can not viably buy an older phone because software and security updates on phones are pretty important if you want to use it fully in a connected world, so much that when a phone is not supported anymore it becomes nearly useless. apple is actually ecological at this thing where they will give software updates for 7 years, some Chinese brands only gave 2. A Fairphone gives at least 8 years, maybe 10 if they can. That is unmatched at this moment, but we will see if they can actually do it.
you can fix that issue by installing a custom OS on the phone that still provides security updates
@@mossmeow You may be right. This is yet something 99% of people would not reasonably do. Most people do not even change a single Standard-Setting in their phone.
Can you recommend OS that you find pretty good? I would be very interested to try that, thanks in advance!
I feel like both sides (buy used and use as logn as possible, vs push for more sustainable, repairable products) have really good points. I just wish replacing and recycling the batteries was a little easier. Like i dont think they need to be toolless swapable, but just not glued in would be amazing. I replaced a pixel battery before and it was a nightmare compared to changing the battery in my slightly XPS 13 laptop.
It's so stupid because at least in Samsung phones you used to be able to just replace the battery and there was absolutely no issues with that. My guess is that they don't actually want people to do that and instead buy a new phone instead.
i just want devices to have parts that are readily available, as standardized as possible, and built such that anyone with an ifixit kit and some experience can replace things.
I want to be able to go to a repair shop and have them fix the device up in 10-20 minutes for like 20 bucks.
Am I the only one who thought he didn't really seem that angry?
He didn't. I think he appeared more anxious about getting his points across in English, which is obviously not his first language.
A little passive aggressive or even sarcasm is what I picked up, not genuine anger though I hope
You kind of have to watch the original video to get the full sense of passive-aggressiveness
@@Altzar2011 I hope it's genuine anger because it makes his somewhat restrained response a lot funnier
As an African I’m not in love with Fairphone’s model for my own reasons, but it’s still better - (and i hate to be that guy) *aren’t* we missing the point though? The PR guy tapped for this also is, that’s the funny part, but I don’t envy him. Like of course the cheaper more performant thing “is bad actually”, that’s the point. If the race to the proverbial bottom can be demonstrated to be completely evitable; then that’s not the worst point
I gave up on LTT a quite a few years ago mainly because of the amount of sponsorships. I would be careful with their recommendations purely because of it.
Edit: Truth be told smartphones are a mature product. The Fairphone, The Nothing Phone, OnePlus 12R, Pixel 8, etc. are all fine phones. You don't need a Pro anything tbh. Samsung is the one I would avoid purely because their own UI.
LTT very honest and upfront with their sponsorship so I'd take that over the channels that suspiciously seem to lack sponsored content.
@@Somone_final_final_v2 Wasn't there a problem with LTT having tight deadlines that messed up data accuracy in nearly every review? That and favourably reviews for inferior products that Linus is invested in?
It's worth noting that almost all phones perform like phones from 5 years ago. Smartphone performance has plateaued, the only performance increase you can see is in synthetic benchmarks. Phone reviewers love making content out of smartphone "performance" even though their synthetic loads have no bearing in real consumer use
As somebody that upgraded from a 6 year old phone recently, the difference is honestly **night and day,** apps open and close so much faster on the new phone, it is _way_ more responsive, and as the cherry on top it also crashes way, way less often.
I'm all for the "use it until it doesn't work anymore" model (I literally used a phone for six years solid, who does that?) but unless there was a huge leap forward from 6 to 5 years ago that made all the phones released since identical in performance, it really doesn't do anybody any good to try and say "they all run the same outside of synthetic benchmarks"
I got a Fairphone 4 a few months ago because my old phone was smashed and I didnt wanna wait for the new one to come out.
I knew when I bought it that, for the same prize I could get a better phone or, for a lower prize one just as good that was a bit older. For me personally, (and it is always a personal preference isnt it) I knew I didnt need the 2% better performance or whatever, if it works, shows videos in good enough quality (it does) and lasts me through the day then thats good enough for me. And I am happy to pay the extra for the ethical sourcing of material and knowing that when the screen does crack or the battery does give out, I can just open it up and swap it out without much hassle. (Also I got free wireless headphones with it yay)
I do appreciate the Fairphone company trying to create a source of ethical phones. Like, buying 2nd hand is absolutely great and I recommend it, the last I got 2nd hand and kept for 5 years. Although the phones still at some point came from a very unethical source to building up an alternative isnt a bad idea.
The manager making the sassy video is very funny, I have to say. As are the passionate fans in Linus' comments :D
People will complain about tech monopolies and anti-consumer practices, and then a company comes along trying to subvert that and people are like "YOU DON'T HAVE PROPRIETARY SUPER ADVANCED TECH?"
"WE HAVE TO PAY EXTRA BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE HUNDREDS OF YOUR OWN FACTORIES TO MACHINE PARTS?"
"HOW DARE YOU NOT COMPETE WITH CURRENT MONOPOLIES"
Like... You aren't purchasing the fair phone because it's the best phone, you're purchasing it because you dislike capitalism and you're trying to make the most ethical decisions within the constraints of the system you're under.
I just bought the FairPhone 5 and it's fantastic IMO. Great experience and no issues so far 👍
That said, the response video from a Fairphone rep was disappointing
Are you being serious about owning the fair phone 5?
@@RealDonaldDrumpf they probably are though idk why they feel the need to defend it lol at no point did anyone say “the fairphone 5 doesn’t work” the point is that it’s a terrible value, which it is
@@cashnelson2306 i just hadn’t heard about the fairphone 5 before this so perhaps I just live under a rock but in my world Apple owns the entire phone market save for a few quirky android fans 💀💀
@@cashnelson2306 No other phone has 8 years of software support and a replaceable battery. Old phones won't get any security updates
@@thijmstickman8349 fairphone has not had to support a phone for 8 years up until now, fairphone 4 had 5 years, just like every other manufacturer. google will do 7, that comparison is fairly weak
1:15 "The Fairphone did beat out the Note... but not by as much as you'd expect" But it did everything twice as fast?
Okay thank you because I thought I was going crazy!
Like I'm not an expert on phone performance metrics but the graphs shown seemed to indicate that the performance of the fair phone was significantly better than the note, and the difference from the FF to the modern pixel pro 8 was negligible by comparison
The reason he's comparing to the Pixel 8 is because the two phones are the same price point. So yes, the Fairphone is twice as fast as the Note 5, but you can get a Note 5 for less than £200, whilst the Pixel 8 is much faster for the same price. The reason is because they're trying to be more ethical and sustainable and I really like that idea, but from the perspective of a buyer the gap in performance vs a phone of a similar price can matter.
You really shouldn't hold the fair phone guy's response against him. He sounded french, that's just their culture.
They're Dutch
@@axel6269 I won't dispute that, but the dutch accent is what you might call "characteristic".
This was not a dutch guy.
@@mmmhorsesteaks I'm French and it's not a French accent either 🤷♂️
Maybe German?
@@axel6269 no not German.
Spanish?
You're right tho, on second listen french English accent is def different.
@@axel6269 his name is apparently "Miquel Ballester Salva" and he did his studies in Valencia before doing a master's or something in Delft.
I don't usually go snooping on people's Linkedin but I was just so darned tootin curious about the accent.
So he's originally Spanish but has been living in the Netherlands for 10+ years.
I hate how tech companies keep pushing that "yeah we shipped a crappy product but you can't say that in reviews because we'll do software updates to fix it later" bullshit
the chart linus showed doesnt even show the fair phone being that much worse than modern phones, and its basically twice as fast as the old phone he said is on par. also at this point smartphones have basically been solved so why buy the pixel 8 and not buy the pixel 7. im with fair phone on this
yeah i definitely see this as a comment on the state of smartphones, for Web browsing its rare anything except the lowest end rubbish chokes. For entertainment we've had awesome screens since around 2013 (Galaxy S3?) which have improved in durability and resistance to screen burn.
After that it's just camera stuff and battery life (also depending the precisely when the youtube tests were done, the fairphone may have lost bad due to a lack of AV1 hardware decode. Hard to say from here though.
Hope I don't sound like a neckbeard but Ive never gotten why people care so much about having powerful phones, like PCs are better value, tablets have more usable screens, and Nintendo Switches have better games.
I had been using a fairly recent phone until its battery turned into a spicy pillow. So I cheaply moved to a half-decade old thing I had lying around. And it's been fine. I genuinely can't complain about anything. It really makes me question the value of expensive upgrades.
There might be some context that you're missing here. Linus got in trouble recently for giving inaccurate reviews replete with mistakes and not properly correcting them when it is called to their attention. I'm not saying that's the case here, but it has happened enough times for me to side-eye him.
Not to mention the unprofessional work environment from LTT as we were able to see with the harassment allegations the came out around that time and the follow up leaked audio from one of their company meetings.
@@flayshonoh I never heard about the leaked audio! Do you have a source?
nothing that he said was inaccurate as far as im aware of. im fully aware of the issues and fully supported GN on this issue but this is like 1% relevant
@@nothingisawesome sure linus u r sus go away
Imagine batting this hard for such a mid phone 😂
I've had second hand phones for around a decade now and never complained. It's worth noting that the most premium phone models have the biggest depreciation and are good value. Perhaps because the most expensive phones actually sell really well? Or people get them as company phones. In my experience it's not just security updates that run out. The phone will, more critically, stop running new apps the longer you use it. I have friends with old iPhones who can't run WhatsApp anymore, which can be fun when you work for the same organisation. I just hope that, with used phones becoming such a big business, phone makers don't view it as eroding their sales and respond by screwing with the phones.
People shit on Fairphones but tbh I've had one for 5 years without major issues. I'm here for the drama though, lol
it’s almost like “major issues” aren’t the criticism made of them
@@cashnelson2306 Fine, let me be clarify so that even someone with no charitability can understand: The only issue I had was that the headphone jack broke after 2 years, but I ordered a replacement module and was able to repair it within a week.
Why did two different people write this same comment?
@@lloxtanridges3010 other one is a bot
@@lloxtanridges3010 I checked & the "Belagracya crazy" account seems like a bot, weird link in their bio.
Tbf pun intended you can actually swap parts out of the fairphone unlike any of the other phones. So in even like a year the fairphone will run better for most people. I do agree with Linus on the fact that it's super overpriced. But unless he did a repair ease comparison it is kinda skewed to the competition.
You can also swap out any part in Pixel phones. Only iPhone has part lockouts
@@TweenkPLcan you just pop off the back and do the replacement with no tools or expertise? (This is a genuine question, because I don't know)
Having little modules that plug into sockets like a tiny PC is arguably not as good as being able to desolder the individual components and replace them, but the latter requires expertise to perform and always risks further damaging the device.
Also, my understanding is that the Fairphone modules can have a higher specification than the original ones that came with the phone, so you can in theory upgrade parts of the same device instead of replacing the entire thing and the firmware and drivers for the phone support you doing so.
@@TweenkPL sont they glue the battery in there to "waterproof it"
For the Fairphone, in contrast to framework laptops for instance, its only reparable and not upgradable. Some parts are also not even repairable (fingerprint sensor and Mainboard as far as i know). So performance should not improve.
That being said, when your battery degrades, which it will, you can swap it for a new one.
This is a crossover of my two sides of my CZcams I didn’t expect
Explain me this idea: How not buying a new piece of tech/equipment leads to less natural resources to be used? Why it depends upon my decision and not the manufacturer, if its already been mass produced and kept in shelves?
3:44 "The phone from 10 years ago is almost as good as the Fairphone 5"
It's 3 times faster than the highest end phone from 8 years ago while being much closer to the Pixel 8 than to the Note 5.
Thank you!! I was so confused about how he got that line from that graph! The Fairphone was less than a tenth of a second slower than the Pixel for all 4 apps lol
@@violet7773 It was twice as slow for one app, but only 25% slower for another app. Meanwhile the Note 5 is 2-3 times slower for all apps.
I remember that review. I still think it's so weird Linus makes it sound like the Fairphone is on par with a ten year old phone. They even show the performance graphs for it and it's not even close. Like, several times more than the difference between the Pixel 8 from the same year they're comparing it to.
Was not aware that Fairphone did a sassy response, though, that's hilarious.
I see a lot of people saying that Linus didnt talk about the "Main reason you would get a fairphone: repairability".. and "he is being a hypocrite bc he owns shares in framework"
1) he literally did in the video, joel here was more focused on the ridiculousness of the drama so understandably he chose to omit it
2) what a company like the Fairphone lacks that another like framework excels at is making a product that is user repairable/upgradable that ALSO is very capable within its (relative) price range and provides other compelling features!
yes frameworks are priced a bit higher than their relative specs, but they offer a lot more than just repairablity, for example, swappable IO, and user-upgradable CPU's and GPU's.
for the general consumer, a device that works how you expect it to is important first over the added bonus of repairability, if you are buying a fairphone for the sake of repairability, then more power to you that linus video was clearly not ment for you...
I'm even more proud to own a Fairphone now
I thought the biggest selling point is fair labor. They don't use African children to harvest metal unlike Big Joel who is happy with that to publish his Disney videos.
I will say it's funny and rather hypocritical for Linus to be the guy going in on the fairphone, when he's also the guy who very publicly praised and invested in the Framework laptop, which could be criticized in pretty much all the same ways. It's also a product trying to be more repairable and sustainable, it also costs a bit more more and performs a bit worse than contemporary laptops, and it also has a litany of small usability problems (I know because I have one).
That is the kind of tradeoff you make when you buy a more niche product from a newer company that is trying to make a something better along one or two specific dimensions. Major brands don't do planned obsolescence and make unethically-sourced, hard-to-repair products just for the heck of it, they do it because it's cheaper and more profitable. So yeah, of course the alternative is going to be more expensive for the same specs, that's sort of the point.
To be fair, regardless of this specific review, Linus "I'd rather publish misinformation than spend another $300 doing testing" Tech Tips should no be viewed as a credible source for tech reviews.
It's not particularly weird that he would ignore the flaws of Framework given that, as you said, he's invested in the company and stands to profit from them doing well.
LTT is many things, but unbiased is not one of them.
Yeah I immediately thought of his love for Framework too.
LinusTechTips is a rabbithole all his own
I would LOVE to see you cover more tech drama/news
That guy really didn't seem that mad at all, if anything he seems slightly fed up at one point, but 'holding back rage?' wtf?
the guy is being smug to linus because linus is an untrustworthy pos in this space now but it is very funny without that context tbh
all the fairphone guy needs to say is yeah its got compromises but you get an ethically sourced, repairable phone. people arent buying a fairphone for the best specs so you dont need to care when a guy says your phone doesnt have the best specs lol
@@din3885 Wasn't the video a review, though?
Granted I'm not subscribing to the "Linus is untrustworthy" line of reasoning. I have no reason to, and being wrong or making some mistakes isn't reason enough.
I used to watch Linus back in 2013-14 haven’t really watched since. What happened? If you don’t mind telling me i am being very lazy and don’t want to do my own research lol
I never really watched him because he seemed annoying. NGL the bad stuff coming out about him is wierdly cathartic because I have a more legit reason to not like him now lol
@@Yourgurtisgood Gamers Nexus did a good break down of the issues surrounding LTT & the way they've been doing reviews. It's worth a watch. Simply put though, the company grew too quickly, spitting out as many video's as possibly but didn't spend enough time on research & the quality control went out the window.
Personally, I enjoy a company that tries minimizing slavery and child labor in their product.
It would be really cool if the product was good.
I have a Fairphone 4 and to be honest it's pretty hard to recommend. The best thing about it is the modularity is great and it's super easy to replace stuff. I broke the screen and it literally took me five minutes to replace the screen. But the SIM card keeps shaking itself loose and needs to be re-seated, which is pretty easy to do but that shouldn't need to happen, the screen isn't bright enough, I went to Portugal a couple of weeks ago and in direct sunlight it was pretty hard to see what was on the screen. The software has been a bit all over the place, it seems to have gotten there now. For example the GPS would stop working and need a reboot and the Bluetooth was a little bit temperamental and would end up crashing the battery if the power was low.
The issue with buying an older device is the radio isn't likely to work especially as things move forward.
Cell companies refarm frequencies to newer standards while the older devices won't have the correct radio for receiving the signal.
When I worked in the industry I got to explain this to people with iPhone 5 and older because their data was using an old 2G data format that was refarmed to LTE.
Currently cell companies are retiring the old voice line system to switch to voice over LTE meaning older devices won't even be able to make voice calls moving forward. Also 3G data lines are being switched to 5G which was initially used mostly in the ghrtz range other than T-Mobile which set it to 600mghrtz as they had recently purchased that spectrum when 5G hit market.
I recently got a Motorola. It has flash light go on when I shake it 😳
go into settings you can turn that off
@@b4tsnbugs no, I like having a quick to use flashlight.
I love my Motorola. It's slow, a bit dated, but it's at least straightforward and cheap. And it supports SD cards.
oh my god i never thought that these two worlds would collide, i watched the fairphone response when it dropped and it seemed unbelievably petty, thanks for spreading the good news henry big joel
Wait till you hear about the mini drama from nearly EVERY LTT video. People get mad at everything they do like people at LTT have final say of how the world works. It's annoying.
i want to be ten hours watching little joel
It's weird that Linus says the older phone is almost as good, but it seems it's like over twice as bad in this test? So, why not just find a phone that is actually equivalent and tell us how old/expensive that one is? Sounds like some shenanigans, but I'm not sure. I don't get it, but maybe I'll check out the full video.
Apart from that, yeah, buying used phones is really the best, but if Fairphones were ubiquitous, buying old phones would be much easier and cheaper, cause like, yeah, obviously - phones become unusable real fast nowadays, and are very hard to repair. So I'd say at this exact moment it might be best on an individual scale to buy an old flagship and install Lineage on it, but also everyone who buys new should ideally buy Fairphones, so us peasants can buy them in five years. Like, I think it's important that even though you're buying a new product, it's a product that will live longer, so right now it's less environment-friendly, but it maybe will be in its whole lifespan.
At individual scale, buying used might be the most ecofriendly, but at the societal scale, I'd say supporting Fairphone might be a better option and more forward-looking. Still, I'm not buying one cause I'm broke lmao.
And like, anyway, every phone is good enough for most people nowadays. They don't hang, they work fast, they all have decent cameras, it's difficult to buy anything that will suck. So I'd say the repairability is much more important than other features, just by virtue of performance not actually being that important in 2024.
Reusing the devices that are already out there is ALWAYS better than buying a new phone.
joel geting into linus discourse and I am here for it
All 3 of the people in this video have the same facial hair
i love any tech youtube drama, its all ridiculous
"The Fairphone has 10 hours of battery life"
Oh boy, that's enough time to get through almost 1/3 of Quinton's review of The Beverly Hillbillies! Super glad I've got that ready to go on my 12 hour trucker route because my radio is just fucked. So this phone is all I really have. Hope it keeps going the whole way in-case my wife has to text me something!
Welcome Joel. I have no idea why I've been returning to this content well for so many years, but it sounds like I'll be seeing you around
hes smiling. hes definitely not mad and just thinks its funny. he just thinks its funny is all. not mad
He's not mad, he's actually laughing
Austin Green did a good video a few months ago covering Linus's history of being dishonest in his reviews and refusing to admit mistakes, which directly led to the bankruptcy of small companies, so this probably contributed to the backlash Linus's review got. That said, Fairphone's response to this was pretty awful lmao
I couldn’t take my eyes off the open cabinet
I think it's scarier to think that to make a phone fair to the environment and people producing it, as well as making it profitable for its company, it costs 600$ for the consumer, and not even getting a good one as far as performance is concerned.
Then again, maybe for some it's better to have a slower phone that's not drenched in other people's blood, as most technology is nowadays, not only considering labor practices and repairability, but also the work and toil connected to the extraction of the raw materials inside. And I say this writing on a Samsung phone that I want to be as fast as possible for my entertainment. Still when I had to buy new headphones I turned to fairphone, and even if they were not the best for sound quality or price I am very happy with my purchase and the possibility to repair them easily and have sustainably sourced materials inside, unlike other headphones I had.
Come on, Joel. That rep was responding to a very particular type of criticism; if you want them to remain completely, 100% professional under that specific circumstance, I just... I don't know what to say to you. Is that really such a deal-breaker for you?
Yes lol if a phone is being loud and annoying when there are thousands of other options to go with... Deal breaker? No dawg it's a NO BRAINER to go with a company that doesn't suck like that. You clown lololol
Ah if it isn't the little rat thief Linus back in the zeitgeist again
I see a similar argument like the one for organic food here. Organic vegetables will often look a little less bright and perfectly buff and whatever; and organic sweets in particular will often taste a little less... awesome. The reason for that is that organic vegetables are less rigorously treated with harsh chemicals, since that would be quite bad for the soil etc.; and organic sweets just contain less... you know. Less sugar. It is that simple.
So one could argue that these two kinds of food are actually not entirely comparable, because they meet different objectives, in a way. Where "normal" food is simply aiming to taste awesome (without immediately killing you), organic food is aiming to taste awesome and(!) to be healthy and(!) to protect the soil and(!) to be good for biodiversity and the planet as a whole. If one puts it like this, it becomes apparent that one of these tasks might be a little harder than the other one. Or indeed a lot harder; I actually do not know, not being a farmer or a... food producer.
So the analogy to this "Fairphone" is obvious: The respective company is trying to do something similar to what other phone companies are doing; but they are not actually doing the identically same thing. As I understand it, the Fairphone is very modular, so that one can easily repair it oneself or at least let some professional repair it without too much of a hassle. I am told that this feature alone might actually slow down performance quite a bit; at least as long as you aren't able to put the same billions into the respective research as other phone companies are putting into... finding the perfect colour for their earbuds, what do I know. Moreover, this company apparently tries to not have little children dig through toxic soil for them 14 hours a day until they collapse into a kind of sickness very few of us can even imagine; and to achieve still getting the metals they need they establish a new infrastructure they basically have to set up from scratch. And they are doing all this while designing their phones and all that, which is probably not something you do in an afternoon, you know.
So, this is already very tl;dr. I guess my question would be: If a phone reviewer compares a phone to other phones strictly in regard to the one objective other phones are exclusively focused on, while entirely ignoring the other objectives in question and what kind of "worth" these objectives could or should mean comparatively to an ethical consumer, is that an intelligent way of comparing products? Or to put it even more fittingly in this particular context: Is that actually... fair?
Buying a used phone is more environmental than buying any new phone. The end. Can never beat this fact.
The funniest shit with LTT was the drama from a few months ago.
there wasn't any "drama" he literally stole a prototype from a small business and sold it without their knowledge. that isn't drama, it's crime.
No the funniest shit with LTT is the "hard R" clip
@@deesnutz42069that was the least important part of that whole situation lol
@@deesnutz42069 crime drama? Like the ones my gran used to watch?
😂@@deesnutz42069good lord you're gullible
May we all keep it in our minds, that LTT is not the kind of channel to put your unwavering trust in when it comes to any in depth tech reviews. They intentionally have tight as fuck deadlines that have resulted in significant errors and misconstruing of others' products as worse than they are. And the guy in those clips does have a point at times. It's not a Samsung, they're still updating the software. LTT even in the reviews they get right tend to review everything as if it's for the average consumer and not the actual kinds of people who'd be interested in the product to begin with, and it really shows here.
Unlike Samsung they only release one model at a time. And releasing beta quality software is unfair in a way too.
‘…that I don’t wanna buy’ LMFAO
You make an excellent point. Phones from 10 years ago really are entirely adequate for most people's needs. And not only will a refurbished phone save you a ton of cash, it is the most ecologically responsible way to buy electronics. Refurbished refurbished refurbished.
Same thing with the guitar world but even more so. New guitars are literally made with less quality woods over all since we love burning this planet to the ground. Going with older models isn't just better for comfort or tone. You burn less of the world too. Typically spend less too unless you're going for super rare models.