Fairphone

Long-term owners

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

Jun 2026 · comment

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Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 440 comments. Each links to the original.

1. 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

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users”

2. FP is the only vendor to support microG, and (in contrast to "unofficial" microG setups) it doesn't require sacrifices in convenience

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+”

3. Might be worth it compared to the very real benefits it has around the world by paying good salaries and fairer material sourcing

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

4. Fairphones are easy to unlock, repairable, have a long lifetime and offer a variety of different operating system distributions.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Google replaced Git tags for certain source code with obtaining via Google Drive”

5. FP provides official support for microG, so this has been without noticeable loss of stability/quality for my use cases so far.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “I tried the new Fairphone, a phone designed to be repaired”

6. Fairphones have certain advantages over Pixels such as better repairability and more ethically sourced labour/components.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”

7. 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.

   Mixed · Nov 2026 · in “Smear Campaign Towards GrapheneOS”

8. It's less the sound, and more the buzz when it's on vibration. I've never found a way of changing that, unfortunately.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

9. it obviously works great, at least for those willing to pay the premium for as-fair-as-they-can-make-it part sourcing

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users”

10. in terms of keeping old phones alive with authentic parts and easy to execute disassembly steps, they are pretty good

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

11. As an owner of Fairphone 4 and 5 I disagree with you that all their soft- and hardware had really bad design flaws.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”

12. with the long-term support and access to spare parts (the university can stock them), this seems like a good move

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

13. The batteries are easily replaceable, they have a video on their website. It's no thicker than many other phones

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027”

14. Fairphone or Pixel with GrapheneOS are currently the best bets if you actually want to own your phone.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes”

15. one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+”

16. Fairphone 6 WiFi IPv6 has known workarounds. But it takes too long till the known fix is backported.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”

17. The earpiece broke. I ordered a replacement; it arrived within 3 days and was very easy to replace.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

18. with a phone as easy to repair as Fairphone I don't really care that repair shops won't repair them

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

19. new companies focusing precisely on different dimension, namely repairability rather than top specs

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else”

20. The only manufacturers in the world publishing device trees nowadays must be Fairphone and OnePlus

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “EOL hardware should mean open-source software”

21. my only real gripes with it are the extremely weak haptic engine and that power button placement

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”

22. We should promote brands like Fairphone and Framework that are trying to make a difference here.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “The RAM shortage is bringing back DDR4”

23. parts are sold by the manufacturer directly for fairphone, so they're very easy to get hold of

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

24. ethically sourced, repairable hardware and a security and privacy (from big tech) focussed OS

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+”

25. I have the assurance from the vendor that I will have software updates for a very long time.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users”

26. The charging port wore out. I bought another one in 2023. They still sell that part today.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

27. Each new Fairphone has pushed the boundaries of what a modular and repairable phone can be

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Fixing a Bricked Framework Laptop”

28. Fairphone 3 was an improvement over Fairphone 2

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”

29. 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.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”

30. 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.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Fairphone 6 wide camera experimental Linux support”

31. 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.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026

32. Android 16 on FP6 has some IPv6 bugs that breaks WiFi connections after a few minutes for a substantial number of their customers

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+”

33. Fairphone lags significantly behind on OS updates and patches with only a small subset of what should be provided being shipped.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple”

34. some of the mistakes FP has made in the past could probably be widely exploited, so it doesn't instill a lot of confidence

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees”

35. Fairphone repeatedly expressed disinterest and is partnered with a company taking AOSP in the opposite direction from us

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Fairphone 6 wide camera experimental Linux support”

36. Fairphone also stops providing kernel updates very quickly and delays userspace/driver/firmware backports for months.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users”

37. Even the Fairphone 5 already lacks standard Linux kernel security patches due to having an end-of-life kernel branch.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “GrapheneOS fixes Android VPN leak Google refused to patch”

38. Fairphone doesn't provide anything close to proper updates.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “GrapheneOS fixes Android VPN leak Google refused to patch”

39. At some point, only charging worked (and for one usb-c cable only on one side, which is weird given connecter is symmetrical), data and usb-audio stopped working.

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Nintendo announces new product revisions in Europe with replaceable batteries”

40. I reached out to support quite a few times for my wife or I (for order reasons, issues with operators, bugs, etc) and they have always been excellent for me.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Fairphone is now officially available in the United States”