Submitted by A few weeks ago, I found myself in need of a repair for a borked camera lens on my iPhone 11. I do everything in my power to essentially encase my Apple products in bubble wrap, but a nearly imperceptible fracture in one lens had greatly impacted the functionality of my phone’s camera. I hadn’t anticipated that repairing it was going to be a whole thing, but finding a way to get it repaired quickly in my area turned out to be futile. And repairing it myself? Pfft, forget it.
This inability to quickly remedy such a small issue stuck with me as I was demoing the Fairphone 3+, a lb425.00 (roughly $550) modular phone currently only available overseas. I desperately wish it or something like it were available in the United States because it makes it so easy to repair that just about anyone can fix their own phone—a rarity in this gadget repair dystopia we’re living in.
This should be more normal than it is.
So… I have the FP3 since May.
So far so good. It seems to do what it promises.
I’ve had a couple of Android updates.
It’s currently running Android 10.
It’s still dragging around Android baggage sadly.
Someone is trying to port PostmarketOS though. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
It probably will be once we get to a point where we can do the whole Desktop/Laptop/Tablet/Phone convergence thing we’ve been promised.
Yeah, what a weight it is having support for things like Citymapper and Uber Eats and other essentials for modern life.
Exactly. Modern civ can burn. Read a book, use a map, take a walk.
Aby would it change antything? Even notebooks are harder to reperair this days.
There would be a bigger market to sustain something like this. The DIY PC market is small, but it’s enough to sustain an ecosystem for manufacturers. I’m assuming the PC part manufacturers wouldn’t go away, but shift form factors.
This works: https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP3/
Supposedly open source and non-Google https://e.foundation/about-e/
And you can buy it pre-installed:
https://esolutions.shop/
Their were some open bugs, but it looks like over time they are getting less and less:
https://gitlab.e.foundation/groups/e/-/boards/12?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name%5B%5D=FP3
The ‘cloud’ part if you want to use it can be fully self-hosted:
https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/infra
If I could get one of these in the US, I’d do it.
I’m still dragging around an iPhone 5s due to form-factor and cost-to-upgrade.
The 5s still does everything I need it to do. I’ve replaced the battery. It’s a fine device. I don’t want a bigger (form factor), and the cost on the new SE is just… bleh. No thanks. My 5s still works.
That`s true, This should be more normal than it is.