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Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

(www.androidcentral.com)
402 points Bluestein | 8 comments | 23 Jun 25 15:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.974s | source | bottom
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squarefoot ◴[24 Jun 25 06:54 UTC] No.44363502[source]▶
All phones eventually become obsolete, but their guts could be used in so many ways. I'd love for example if someone made an enclosure acting also as multi port docking station so that old phones with unlocked bootloader (Fairphone being one of them) could be reflashed with a different operating system then used as mini PCs, media players, IoT wall terminals with bigger screens or other uses. Seeing all that perfectly good electronics going into landfills because planned obsolescence says so just irritates me. Can we do that at least for unlocked ones? Framework did something similar for their laptop mainboards, minus the docking station.function as they already have more ports than a phone. Any chances that this could be doable with Fairphone hardware?
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palata ◴[24 Jun 25 08:53 UTC] No.44364135[source]▶
> then used as mini PCs, media players, IoT wall terminals with bigger screens or other uses

If they can be used like that, why couldn't they be used... as phones?

Changing phone every two years is not sustainable, even if the old phone is used as an IoT wall terminal: it's still "consuming" one phone every two years. In a sense, an old phone in a drawer uses less energy than an old phone staying powered to control a lightbulb.

> planned obsolescence

Nitpick: I like to call it "premature obsolescence". Planned obsolescence is the idea of engineering the product to not last more than some time. I think nowadays it's often not the case; rather we engineer the product to last for the time of the warranty (1-2 years) and not more. And a product dying after 1 year is "premature", even though it was not actively engineered for that.

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1. TheDong ◴[24 Jun 25 09:10 UTC] No.44364214[source]▶
People will usually only carry one phone, and they'll want one that is capable of running recent apps, storing their photos and music, and also taking high quality photos.

If you upgrade a phone to get a new one with a better camera, well, the processor on the old one is probably decent still, it could be a mini PC where the camera quality doesn't matter.

Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.

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2. palata ◴[24 Jun 25 09:17 UTC] No.44364249[source]▶
> they'll want one that is capable of

My feeling is that phones are not evolving that quickly anymore, though.

> If you upgrade a phone to get a new one with a better camera, well, the processor on the old one is probably decent still, it could be a mini PC where the camera quality doesn't matter.

Sure, but if you didn't need the mini PC in the first place, then it's not more sustainable than throwing it away. It's actually less sustainable, because now you consume energy for a mini PC you didn't need.

Not saying people should not get their new toy. Just that they should not pretend it's sustainable :-).

> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.

Around me it's become more and more of a status symbol to not upgrade. It's sometimes almost a competition of "who has the oldest phone", and nobody is impressed by someone buying the latest iPhone. So... it's not the same everywhere :-).

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3. ikurei ◴[24 Jun 25 09:18 UTC] No.44364261[source]▶
> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.

This is a huge part of the change we need. I felt proud in a way to show off that I was still using an iPhone 8 until a couple of years ago, and I admire some (techy) people I know still using a phone from that time.

Is pride a healthy, wholesome motivator? May be not, but we're human.

4. WhyNotHugo ◴[24 Jun 25 09:36 UTC] No.44364348[source]▶
> Also, it's a status symbol, you can't just _not_ upgrade.

You can choose not to upgrade.

Obtaining status symbols is a choice (and a pretty vain one too). Even if your lifestyle requires these empty displays of status, that's a choice of lifestyle that you've made.

You can be perfectly successful in life with a 5 years old phone.

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5. lan321 ◴[24 Jun 25 09:42 UTC] No.44364384[source]▶
> People will usually only carry one phone

On that note, please, someone make a phone with more than 2 active SIMs. At this point, I have four SIMs, and they're more likely to increase than to reduce...

6. komali2 ◴[24 Jun 25 13:17 UTC] No.44365937[source]▶
Maybe we can do to phones what tech bros did to suits in the early 2000's. There's that saying, something along the lines of, "It used to be that everyone looked to the one in the suit, now everyone looks to the one in a hoodie." Maybe we can convince people that a run down secondhand phone is a display of wealth and power :P
7. parineum ◴[24 Jun 25 15:11 UTC] No.44367107[source]▶
> Around me it's become more

You've become older and the status symbols have changed.

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8. palata ◴[24 Jun 25 15:31 UTC] No.44367306{3}[source]▶
Sure, that's part of it.

But I stay convinced that in the beginning of smartphones, they would dramatically improve every year. Now... not so much.