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Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

I bought a Fairphone 3, released in 2019.

The charging port wore out. I bought another one in 2023. They still sell that part today. https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/fairphone-3-bottom-module-37

In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015. First-party parts 10 years later, what a concept! https://shop.fairphone.com/spare-parts

I don't know your friend's scenario, but this was mine.

It's not an either-or, like "either buy first-party parts for a Fairphone OR buy a second-hand Samsung". You can buy a second-hand Fairphone too. It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.

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I bought a second hand Fairphone, and I'm very happy with it, except that my wife, a colleague of mine, and some friends of ours now also gave Fairphones, so when one buzzes we all instinctively check our pockets because they all sound the same...

I also bought headphones from the same company, and while they're probably not the best for audio quality, it was great being able to repair them when the headband broke. Generally, I'm a very happy Fairphone customer.

> when one buzzes we all instinctively check our pockets because they all sound the same

Isn't that the same for every brand? I have a friend who worked in cybersecurity in a certain phone company and was getting very stressed whenever my phone, which happened to be from the same brand, was ringing :D

I guess one can change the default sound, isn't that the case with fairphones?

I have a Samsung Moto, and it has a very default ringtone, not really a tone since it says "Hello, Moto" which is embarrassing but I haven't made the effort to switch tones, at any rate while I will be confused if someone in proximity to me gets a call on their Moto, my experience they don't have to be very far from me before I realize instinctively, that sound is far enough away it can't be my phone, although it irritates me nonetheless.

And I've been seated eating with people who had the same phones and I realized no, it must be their phone (although I feel a strong urge to check), because my ears are able to determine direction of a sound.

I'm also old and keep getting told I'm going deaf, so my question is, are people really not able to tell it's not their phone or are they just not thinking it through before checking.

Samsung Moto? Two different companies with very different phones. I'm surprised that such a mutant exists. Reads to me Car (with square wheels).

Moto is the only big brand I ever consider for a phone, while Samsung has never been as much as a consideration. Moto has had, which is changing, a bit of freedom - enough to tweak it into resembling a pure android experience. Samsung is incorrigibly infested - and if they ever start giving phones to prisoners, they'll be Samsung.

you're right, for some reason I had my son's Samsung Galaxy Tab in mind, and I made the mutant.

My experience with the latest Moto I have is the AI assistant is an anti-pattern but the phone is nearly unusable for a lot of things without it.

Just in case you wondered, and even if you didn't,

I admire ignorance of smartphones and consider such as virtue. I obtained my first in 2018 after years of resistance. But driving a semi and not being the best with maps and logistics, I finally capitulated.

And back then, although cyanogenmod was gone, they weren't too bad. 2019 changed a lot, with autonomous, respawning, immutable "services" and things have digressed severely since. Hence my visiting this post for Fairphone.

So take pride in your purity. It only gets worse the more you know.

It's less the sound, and more the buzz when it's on vibration. I've never found a way of changing that, unfortunately. It's probably true for other brands, but I've never really had a phone that other people have also used, whereas now I'm in a (very small) bubble that seems to be happily converging on Fairphones...

This is what makes sense. You want to be able to replace the charging port, screen, and camera. And of-course update the software, where software stability is IMHO the weakest point of Fairphone.

If the logic board breaks, you want to upgrade to the newest chip model you can get. Because third-party software becomes slower every year. If you want a phone to last as long as possible, thus getting the latest chip. For Fairphone it is more interesting, since they use a particular Snapdragon model range with longer driver support.

The elephant in the room is of-course software getting too slow and developer not optimizing their apps.

> In fact, I see they still sell parts (the screen, at least) for the Fairphone 2, released in 2015.

You can still source an iPhone 4s screen+digitizer assembly on eBay for a reasonable price. There is, however, little practical value of it in everyday use.

> It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.

You can? They're happy to repair even 7+ year old phones, I'm sure there's a cutoff but I haven't heard of anyone running into it. Might depend on the country though. Unless you mean buying those parts separately but they don't even let you do that for new phones, so "years after they're released" doesn't matter then.

It's nice that Samsung repair phones, I also don't know how long for, but you can't rely that they always will, and not all phone manufacturers are Samsung. You shouldn't have to rely on the whims of the manufacturer.

This is why phones should be modular so the parts that wear/break first are replaceable, and also why those parts should be available to you and third parties, not gatekept by the manufacturer. Repair companies can then stockpile parts themselves, instead of having to scavenge from dead phones, to repair your existing phone even when the manufacturer refuses.

My previous phone was a second-hand iPhone SE for which I had screen, power button, big button and battery replaced at various times. I think the battery was third-party & new, but the other parts were also 2nd+ hand. I don't know about newer models, and presumably there are other things that are more "fair" about the fairphone, but it doesn't have a monopoly on repairability in my experience.

You did all those repairs to your iphone yourself? I imagine that was significantly more technically difficult than repairing a Fairphone, which is made to be _user_ serviceable.

No, I went to a local electronics shop. I don't have a pile of decommissioned phones in my house, nor the eyesight or hand-steadiness for fixing things that small. User-serviceable is definitely a distinction, but I suspect family members would expect me to be their technician anyway, and I'd point them to the electronics shop due to physical issues above, and fear of bricking their devices.

If your family members ever had to mount an ikea furniture or equivalent, they'll probably have an as easy or easier time replacing a part on a fairphone. Especially for the battery. At least for version 3 and older. I don't know for later models. If you know how to swap batteries in a tv remote, you know how on this phone.

Original iPhone SE is relatively easy to work on, two pentalobe screws and a suction cup will get you into it. It’s not waterproof so there’s no glue seals to warm and melt, it’s still mostly screwed together inside, only the battery has glue strips holding it in.

From there I’ve swapped the battery, moved the logic board and home button to a new chassis, taken the camera module out and tried to clean it, had the screen+top chassis off. It’s not for everyone but it’s not technically complex with many specialist tools, it just needs a battery replacement kit, tiny screwdrivers, workspace, and patience.

Interesting! So I shouldn't expect a similar experience fixing a 13 mini when the time comes?

I've never tried, but the original SE I'm talking about is contemporaneous with the iPhone 5 chassis and iPhone 6 internals. The 13 is 5-6 generations and years newer, and likely more hostile or complex in at least some ways.

    > The charging port wore out.

Zero trolling: How did that happen? Can you share some details? (I am not doubting you.) Ideas: You are the type of person who needs to constantly charge your phone, but move frequently, so maybe you have 5x the number of "plugs" compared to an average user. Or, sadly, they used a cheap part, and it broke quickly.

I found USB-C to be pretty unreliable up until the past several years -- I had multiple phones and laptops from multiple brands <=2020 that just had USB-C ports turn fiddly or outright stop working after a year or two.

Things are better now in my experience, but for a device made in 2019, this is pretty darn plausible.

I have this with my phone, but it's because of dust. Did you try cleaning the port?

I feel like, from the hardware point of view, wireless charging should be more durable than using a cable, since the charging connection is done without contact. But then again, wireless charging is less good for the battery then wired, so it's probably a balancing act.

That being said, I know that the moment I switch to a phone that supports wireless charging, I won't be able to go back, so I've just been trying to use the phone I have (POCO X3 Pro) until it'll completely break.

I had the battery replaced, because it was starting to bloat to the point that it was starting to bend the phone. I've had the back panel glued three times, but it still comes off, so now there's always a gap in the phone, most certainly not waterproof anymore, I would have wished that the repair would have been flawless, because as things stand, I am disappointed and had I known that this would be the final result (I could try taking the phone back to the service centre to get it reglued, but I've already done that twice, so now I feel uncomfortable and awkward having to ask yet again, for who know if any improvement.

I don't know what reliability should be, but my previous phone which a had mini-USB connector also wore out after a few years. I put the phone back on a charging stand whenever I'm home and not using it, so that's maybe 10x a day.

I'm having that issue now on my Pixel 9, and I had it before on Pixel 6. My wife mockingly claims that it's me that keeps breaking the ports, but I've never had this issue on earlier phones.

I've never worn one out but I've had to replace two after they got filled with sand (once from being dropped on the beach and once just from my pocket I think). No amount of cleaning would fix them, luckily with cheap Chinese phones one ebay search and €10 later I had a new charging port board.

> It would be nice if you got first-party parts for Samsungs, years after they're released.

I managed to have the curved screen in my 2017 Galaxy S8 replaced in 2023 or so. I don't recall there being an alternative manufacturer of those.

For flagships at least there seems to be a pool of new-old-stock parts.

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