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Joined 27 days ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2025

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  • What hardware (other than 5G antenna) changed since the first/second one?

    Everything would have changed. Smartphones are not desktop computers, they are not designed to be iterated on piece-by-piece over a long period of time. Fairphone has been trying to convince Qualcomm to develop a modular chipset that can be swapped out like a desktop CPU, but it is just one small European company in an industry filled with global giants. It doesn’t have a lot of bargaining power, unfortunately. The same can be said for its negotiations with suppliers, which is why Fairphones tend to have very middle-of-the-road specs and don’t lead the industry in any area. It is designing and sourcing with long-term availability in mind, because it knows it doesn’t have the market power to go out and demand things.

    Since Fairphone is unable to create a truly modular phone, it is forced to release newer models to keep afloat as a business. It releases one phone every two years, less than most manufacturers, and has a very low profit margin. Less than 0.1% in 2022, for example. It’s also a bit of a misconception that Fairphone is solely focused on modularity or e-waste, because it is also doing a lot of work behind the scenes on industry working conditions and pay rates throughout its supply chain and is taking on an advocacy role within the industry to push for change. For example, in 2020 it launched the Fair Cobalt Alliance which now has over 20 members, including major tech companies like Google and Tesla.







  • Which bit do you disagree with? People have been saying this about the price for 6 years now. “Oh the price will come down when the technology stabilises”. Yet book style foldables in the West have had very little in the way of innovation now for several generations and they’re still the most expensive phones by far.

    As you point out, all phones are large now. So is there really a sizeable corner of the market out there for an even bigger (but not as big as a tablet and in a weird aspect ratio) phone? Compact devices are niche, true, but niches sell because they are catering to a small corner of the market. Book-style foldables don’t even appear to have a niche audience after 6 years.





  • I’m not sure why some journalists are still conflating the two styles of folding phones after so many years, particularly when it comes to their issues. Flip phones are much cheaper and more durable (relative to the larger book-style foldables) and it’s no surprise that they are selling better. They also offer a solution to the market problem of phones increasing significantly in size whilst also decreasing significantly in size variety. The larger book-style foldables are really the ones we should be questioning, considering their price, durability issues and lack of a clear reason to exist.


  • I’m not sure if I’d blanket recommend it to everyone. Whether you get something out of it probably depends on if you have an angle of interest going in. Like for me, I didn’t know much about the way a jury in Australia (NSW) works so it was interesting to see a semi-real version of something I’ve only ever seen depicted in fictional films and TV series.

    However, the producers obviously picked a few people based on their backgrounds/belief systems and that made it quite annoying as well. Like there were true crime fans in there who were obsessed with this idea that they had to “solve” the crime, even though they were repeatedly told that was not their role at all. Then there were people with very black and white ideas about crime or strong religious beliefs that meant they just completely ignored all evidence and insisted on pushing a narrative/verdict that they had basically arrived at from day one. It was so frustrating at times to witness the mental gymnastics these absolute morons would go through to defend an indefensible position, and even more frustrating knowing that there could actually be people as stupid as this out there impacting the lives of real people and that such a process could be called “justice”.

    So yeah, if that second paragraph doesn’t put you off then maybe it’s worth checking out. But you’ve been warned!







  • Has anyone recommended Laya’s Horizon before? It’s a Netflix-exclusive game where you wingsuit fly around a big island with different biomes. There are a lots of different activities to do and as you complete achievements you unlock new magical capes (the game’s equivalent of wingsuits) that change how you fly. The gameplay really fits mobile devices because there’s no real story or main objective and you can complete a single run down the mountain in just a minute or two, which makes it perfect as a “time waster” type game. The controls are very fun and intuitive and it runs quite well on modern mid-tier devices (Snapdragon 7 Gen 1) and above.