# Fairphone 168 Hacker News commenters recommended Fairphone and 107 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (19 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended for easy self-repair, manufacturer-sold spare parts, long support, ethical sourcing and official microG support, though critics say OS and security updates lag well behind. ## Why people recommend it - Easy repair, available spare parts (11 comments): "Fairphones are easy to unlock, repairable, have a long lifetime and offer a variety of different operating system distributions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49372769)) "Fairphones have certain advantages over Pixels such as better repairability and more ethically sourced labour/components." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345626)) "in terms of keeping old phones alive with authentic parts and easy to execute disassembly steps, they are pretty good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46677448)) - Official microG and alternative OSes (6 comments): "FP is the only vendor to support microG, and (in contrast to "unofficial" microG setups) it doesn't require sacrifices in convenience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571217)) "Fairphones are easy to unlock, repairable, have a long lifetime and offer a variety of different operating system distributions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49372769)) "FP provides official support for microG, so this has been without noticeable loss of stability/quality for my use cases so far." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49773762)) - Ethically sourced materials and labour (5 comments): "Might be worth it compared to the very real benefits it has around the world by paying good salaries and fairer material sourcing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46679690)) "Fairphones have certain advantages over Pixels such as better repairability and more ethically sourced labour/components." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345626)) "it obviously works great, at least for those willing to pay the premium for as-fair-as-they-can-make-it part sourcing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48578459)) - Long-term software support (4 comments): "I have the Fairphone 5, for which they picked the IoT equivalent of the mobile chipset so they could ensure 10 years of driver availability" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592678)) "Fairphones are easy to unlock, repairable, have a long lifetime and offer a variety of different operating system distributions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49372769)) "with the long-term support and access to spare parts (the university can stock them), this seems like a good move" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46677341)) ## What people warn about - Slow kernel and security updates (7 comments): "Fairphone 6 (which is one of the better /e/OS devices when it comes to updates) is still on Linux 6.1.138 from May 2025." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50328834)) "Fairphone has made it very clear they don't consider their awful updates and lack of important hardware-based security features to be a significant problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363163)) "FP4 was released with support for 5 years but SoC was only going to be supported for 2 more years so no firmware updates for 3 of them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49656241)) - No GrapheneOS support (3 comments): "Fairphone has made it very clear they don't consider their awful updates and lack of important hardware-based security features to be a significant problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363163)) "They've given concrete reasons to not work with them. If Fairphone made devices that fulfilled the requirements, then there wouldn't be any issue." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49018990)) "Fairphone repeatedly expressed disinterest and is partnered with a company taking AOSP in the opposite direction from us" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060094)) - Android 16 IPv6 WiFi bugs (2 comments): "Fairphone 3 was an improvement over Fairphone 2" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348512)) "Android 16 on FP6 has some IPv6 bugs that breaks WiFi connections after a few minutes for a substantial number of their customers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567289)) - Weak vibration and haptics (2 comments): "It's less the sound, and more the buzz when it's on vibration. I've never found a way of changing that, unfortunately." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678142)) "my only real gripes with it are the extremely weak haptic engine and that power button placement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348984)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Apple iPhone](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iphone.md): 706 recommend - [Apple iPhone Pro](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iphone-17-pro.md): 144 recommend - [iPhone 13 mini](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iphone-13-mini.md): 141 recommend - [Jolla Phone](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jolla-phone.md): 88 recommend - [iPhone SE](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iphone-se.md): 84 recommend ## Where to get it - [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Fairphone+6+smartphone&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link) - [Official site](https://www.fairphone.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Fairphone", https://hackerapproved.com/p/fairphone/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).