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by subaquamille 1941 days ago
Fairphone is doing interchangeability for... phones https://www.fairphone.com/en/ Although the feature/price is a bit below average brands, they are greatly priced if you take into account the sustainability. I Hope more brands will go this way so concurrence could help get better products and reduce electronic trash.
2 comments

I was excited to take the leap and try the FP2, and ended up really disappointed by it. The quality of both hardware and software was just pretty bad. The casing would warp and pop off over time; I had to order 2 replacements in the 2 years I had it. Separately, at the time (maybe still the case), they didn't ship parts at all to the USA, so when I moved there, I was unable to get replacement parts. My microphone module got so flaky that it would periodically lose a good connection to the bus and the person on the other end wouldn't hear anything I was saying, which took a while to figure out. The connectivity was also awful, maybe also a USA thing. I couldn't get reception at either my work place or several apartments I rented. It was incredibly frustrating because I really wanted it to work. That they phased out FP1 parts after 4 years confirmed to me that it just wasn't worth it. I keep my phones for that long anyways, it may as well at least be built well. Oh, there were also compatibility problems with Android apps because FP OS development often lagged pretty behind, but that's a different story.
I got my FP3+ on Friday, so here's to hoping for another 5-8 years of not buying another phone and repairing what I have :) (Switched after 8 years of using Nexus 5s and I did have to repair it, but someone gave me a new-ish one during that time.)