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Fairphone Is Finally Selling Its Repairable Phone in the US
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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I'll be that guy. No headphone jack, no sale. As others have said, I'd love GrapheneOS as well, but I know why that isn't in the cards.
Yeah, no jack no thanks ...
Not a deal breaker for others but it is for me. Their rationale saying that the USB-C is more resilient than the jack is weird because I've never had the jack fail and even if it does isn't that why you're selling a repairable phone to me ...?
Anyways, I see they're selling earbuds so I'm going to assume that that's their main motivator.
I’ve had several 3.5mm jacks fail. I’ve yet to have a USBC port fail, but I’ve also had fewer USBC ports and for fewer years.
I've had them both be problematic. Nothing deoxit can't fix.
Headphone jacks have a hell of a lot of leverage on that port. An IP68 headphone jack is honestly pretty bulky.
I'd rather have one. I also also like us to go back to phones that are 1cm+ thick and just fill it out with battery.
Yeah it's pointless having a super thin phone if the camera array is still an inch thick
Oh oh oh I can do this one.
6 USB-C port failures in my 1.75 years with the phone.
Fuck HMD Global (then Nokia brand) and their absolute trash USB ports.
That's wild.
I had a micro USB charging port give me an issue once, but I've never had a program with a headphone jack or USBC port. Wow.
Whatever reason q company give for now headphone jack is always bs. Its plain and simple they wanna sell you their wireless earbuds.
Interesting, when I was still using wired headphones I've never had a jack survive the lifetime of the phone, and only on my Nexus 5 was I able to replace it
I've had GrapheneOS for a little bit now, and while it's great that 'Google' has been stripped from it, but the giant warning that you can't avoid when restarting the phone, so many services simply breaking, it feels a lot like the old days of custom ROMs. Maybe for certain people it can be a daily driver, but goodness it's difficult to diagnose and fix bugs when it all comes back to Google permissions and services that you really can't get around.
I've been using it for almost a month and I'm a big fan. I was planning to wait for the Motorola phone but my screen on my old phone was rapidly becoming unusable.
I'm using it to divorce Big Tech. I created two secondary profiles, one for work and one for Big Tech. The Big Tech profile is where I'll enable Google services and permissions. I don't let it run in the background so once I switch back its like I turned off Big Tech. I can still use all the apps and services I'm used to, but I added enough friction that it's causing me to explore alternatives every day.
My owner profile has Play and Play Services totally disabled. I get push notifications for Signal using Sunup for UnifiedPush. I get apps mostly through Accressent, Obtainium, and Aurora. If apps complain about missing Google services too much, they get relegated to the Big Tech profile while I find an alternative. Most of the apps that complain about it (like Ring) still work fine. Most of the "apps" I use are just PWAs that run in Vanadium and have icons on the home screen.
The biggest issues I've had were around RCS messaging. I was able to get it to work in the Owner profile, but it's a known issue that it doesn't work in secondary profiles. I'm just not getting group texts from iPhone users anymore. Oh well, everyone who matters will contact me on Signal or SMS directly. I was never able to get E2EE working over RCS with iPhone users anyways, even though my carrier supposedly supports it and the iPhones were updated.
It's also exposing just how much I depend on Big Tech. I'll probably be switching to Proton for mail, calendar, and VPN. My one gripe is they don't have a way to sync contacts to my phone. Still, Ill happily pay $10 a month for storage and services that don't spy on me for advertising instead of paying $3 a month for a service where I can't expect any privacy.
I'm still using Big Tech while driving unfortunately, haven't explored alternatives to Maps and Spotify yet.
I use Organic Maps very often. It's not perfect. It wrongly identifies a shop next to me. It also occasionally gives less than ideal for my taste directions. However, it is subjectively 99% good and right about the map objects and the directions. It is reliable, basically.
Google's app has given me issues too in the past. It's not like Google is without its chinks.
So I am happy with it and would recommend it at least for a spin. For me it's a daily driver app.
Apparently a bunch of lead devs for Organic Maps split off (and forked) to make CoMaps. I don't know much beyond that, but CoMaps is getting regular updates
Thanks for the tips. Amazon/Alexa/Ring are next on my list after the de-Google.
Fastmail seems like it's worth a try. Privacy from data brokers and ad companies is my main goal so Fastmail gets a green check mark there. It doesn't seem like they claim E2EE but they do claim encryption.
I guess I was thinking Proton because the E2EE "we can't even see your data" claim is appealing in an age where corporations are hungry for data to train their AI models.
I am also interested in the bundled VPN with Proton, but yeah the price is a little off-putting and it seems like it is going up.
Been meaning to check out Librewolf, but Vanadium has been pretty good so far.
Comaps is really good but I haven't found anything that provides traffic data... So also using google maps for driving
I've used Proton for quite a bit, and it's well worth it personally, just the VPN blocking ad's is pretty fantastic, along with storage and everything else. For Maps, I haven't found a 'great' solution, and instead of Spotify, I just run a Navidrone server at home, and that easily allows me to stream all my audio at the bit rats that I want.
I can see it not working for everyone, but I already used custom ROMs and I don't use basically any services on my phone. If you're using GrapheneOS and using Google Play Services in a sandbox, it does get quirky and break some things. I didn't want Google anywhere near my phone anymore. As soon as I can use the OS without a Pixel I'll be doing that since I hate that I am even using their hardware.
Is it not worth repairablity and potential headphone jack upgrades? Their pr is really moving quick now... 🤔
How would they sell a headphone jack upgrade?
That's not the same thing. There's also nothing worse than being on a long journey wanting to listen to music but needing to also charge your phone before you reach your destination.
they make em with a usb-c + 3.5mm -> usb-c still not the same, but a way to get by
I use one of those every night and they're awful. I buy them 5 at a time because they're not very durable, and you end up with this especially irritating tangle of cables.
it's always something.
Listen man, if the phone doesn't have a 3.5mm jack, IR Blaster, FM radio receiver, pop out rotating 6mp camera, micro SD slots, 2g compatibility, Native flash support and a physical keyboard that pops out like the fucking matrix, then it's a complete piece of corporate shit and you're a complete neo liberal bum bandit if you think otherwise...
I mean you're obviously being sarcastic.
but why cant phones have a radio receiver? That would be super useful, and something I'd use often.
Some phones do have built in radio receivers. If that's genuinely a feature you want, they're available.
I'm not sayin it doesnt exist, to be clear, but the only phones I've ever seen that had built in radios were, like, asian market phones. Nothing that'd work on my area.
That's fair. There are some available in other markets but they're definitely fewer and further between.
Well, bluetooth, wifi and cellular are radios, so my guess is it depends on what frequencies you wanna cover and how much extra you are willing to sacrifices in price & space.
Uuuh, space trader, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I played it on my Palm Zire back in the day.
don't forget the nipple blasters, bidet, shower squeegee, AM radio, FM radio, CB radio, xray, zray, and replicator.
Okay but I sure miss having a phone with an IR blaster. Was quite fun to sit in the corner of an empty restaurant and change the channel on the TVs that show the menu back when I was a drunk gremlin
Do you have phone recommendations? I like your list.
Well the phone's modular for a reason...
I don't think it's modular in that way
I suppose you're right. :(
They have a great team, sadly they continuously aimed for a broad target audience in lack of support for degoogled OSes (only doing the bare minimum) and the headphone jack indeed. Also, sadly, the long life thingie is a joke when you are a cautious user and you don't break your phone. 5-7 years after purchase, spare parts are no longer available :/
Even if you don't have the need for spare parts, don't forget that they deliver security updates longer than any other manufacturer that I've heard of. So longevity is not just about the hardware.
EDIT: Also, they just newly stopped selling fairphone 3 spare parts. That's 7 full years of stocking parts. Not bad IMO. And you can probably still find them in stock at resellers. I see display modules on ebay (from china) and at least one german eshop
They deliver security updates for the pre-installed OSes they support. Those updates are no good for most users that load their own flavour of OS. What counts is hardware that has open source drivers (Also - holy fuck - the homepage almost gave me a seizure and I am not an epileptic). Where they are doing OKish, but not great.
As for "7 full years of stocking parts" - the first 3-4 years are next to useless, almost no phone breaks that fast unless physically damaged. And it only becomes relevant for most people who take care with their phone after 5+ years. And that's exactly when the support period ends. Which is unfortunately, the opposite of the "sustainable phone" that they promise.
As said, they do have a great team, and they do do Fair Trade, and they do engage with the community - all good things. But I am quite disappointed in the "by the time you need a replacement part, it's out of stock" lesson learned.
Having worked in a smartphone after market organisation, I can assure you that phones do break due to user error also in the first few years. Screen breaks, phones are dropped, charging ports are subject to user violence... while this is apparenrly not true for you, there are probably hundreds of thousand of fairphone users, so I think their spare parts availability is really good. And as I said, even now you can buy spare parts for discontinued fairphone models from ebay and other 3rd parties.
This is exactly why I just keep buying the cheapest Motorola on the market. Battery that lasts 3 days, quick charge on USB c and a aux port. Reliable, works every time, and if I loose it only only out a couple hundred bux. Just wish graphene os was on it, but supposedly that might be in the works. Here's to hoping it's out before I need a new phone!
From what I just read, initially only the top end Motorola phones will support GrapheneOS starting in 2027. So chances are all the existing phones won't get support. Also, this sadly means it is unlikely that they'll have a headphone jack. I am truly gutted.
Magnetic ink screen, that's my make or break. It's so damn nice to just look at my phone in broad daylight, and it keeps me from wasting time on youtube.
Headphone jack is a close second though. Shame, maybe we'll see what the fairphone 7 looks like
Like Samsung, pixel and iPhone have headphone jack bro! But yea, stick with iPhone, pixel and Samsung that can't even change the battery!
I am stuck with a shitty pixel with no headphone jack right now since my previous pixel, which DID have a headphone jack, finally died. I am not buying a new smartphone without one. Fairphone touts repairability and longevity, but by forcing people to either use shitty bluetooth headphones or put double duty on the charging port using a dongle is going to cause more waste. I am using a DAP for music right now so i can use my headphones, but it honestly sucks needing to use two devices when my phone would be perfectly capable of doing it had they not followed Apple's greedy lead.