Fairphone 2
Shares rank 38 of 46 smartphones by recommenders
People recommend it for long software support and repairability, with parts still sold years after release. Critics say it has the same replace-every-few-years pattern as other phones and that some owners were left with unusable devices.
5 people recommended Fairphone 2 in Hacker News comments and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 11 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 10 of those comments still count.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- mixed feelings
- 0
- warn against or regret it
- 5
The record
Recommended in 4 of 12 months
In 4 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 4 threadsNeeds 5 or more, not met.
- The biggest thread supplies 40% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 9 of the 10 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Parts still sold a decade later
“FP2 is 11 years old & there's still (a limited subset of) parts for sale for it”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees” “First-party parts 10 years later, what a concept!”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Update left phone unusable
“Got a software update when I moved back to Australia. Bricked it.”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+” “was completely unusable at the end”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+”
Other smartphones people recommend
The four most recommended other smartphones, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple iPhone | 438 | 190 | 789 | 36% | 12 | 7 yrs97 people | — |
| Fairphone | 110 | 42 | 94 | 54% | 12 | 3 yrs14 people | — |
| iPhone 13 mini | 105 | 32 | 44 | 70% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Apple iPhone Pro | 90 | 45 | 138 | 39% | 12 | 4 yrs24 people | — |
| Fairphone 2This page | 5 | 0 | 5 | 50% | 4 | — | — |
Also compared with iPhone SE, Jolla Phone, Nokia N900 and Apple iPhone 12 mini.
What people said
9 of the 10 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“they have the same obsolescence/replacement model as any other phone”
“was completely unusable at the end”
“it was modular and repairable”
“Got a software update when I moved back to Australia. Bricked it.”
“I used an FP2 for about a year.”
“Fairphone 2 came out in December 2015 and saw the last release in March 2023. That's 8 years of software updates”
“FP2 is 11 years old & there's still (a limited subset of) parts for sale for it”
“First-party parts 10 years later, what a concept!”
“They are still selling screens and camera modules but not the rest of the parts unfortunately”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.