Wait is it just me or are there multiple downgrades on the Fairphone Gen 6 specs compared to the Fairphone 5?
I can’t really find a detailed spec sheet for the 6 on their website, but it seems that the front and ultrawide cameras are worse?
Also, I’d be fine with a screwed battery cover if it meant greater water resistance. But it seems that the 6 has the same IP55 rating as the 5 so like what the fuck? The Fairphone 5 was prettier too I think, specially the sky blue color (that doesn’t seem to be available anymore unfortunately).
Found the specs sheet.
The front camera and ultrawide camera seem to be considerably worse.
The normal wide camera seems to be better, except it lost the electronic stabilisation (not sure how important that is tbh).
The battery is better, but it needs a screwdriver to be changed so no more switch during the day if you don’t have a screwdriver always on you. This comes with no added water resistance, which makes me wonder why they did this.
The display seems to be worse? The resolution is smaller which makes sense since the size is smaller, but also it seems to have less PPI than the Fairphone 5. The refresh rate is higher tho.
It has worse USB-C connectivity as well, the Fairphone 6 has just USB 2.0 (!!!!) compared to 3.0 on the Fairphone 5.
They also got rid of the sky blue color (which was the prettiest imo) and of the transparent option.
I don’t really understand Qualcomm processors, but at least the new GPU seems to have a better benchmark score?
Honestly I’m really disappointed. Why releasing a new model if it’s worse than the previous one?
Fairphone 5 always seemed like a miracle, a phone that actually cared about being fair and that had good postmarketOS support while still having good modern specs compared to other companies phones out there. Fairphone 6 had me excited since the obvious assumption would be even better hardware, but then that’s what we got? Damn, is the dream of a fair phone with good specs over?
As it is today, I’d probably buy a Fairphone 5 over a Fairphone 6. But then once that became outdated, which will happen eventually, it seems that I’d just be orphaned without a phone to upgrade to…
I hope they revert this when they make the Fairphone 7.
Please tell me that the dream of a postmarketOS phone with great specs isn’t over…
Also I really hope postmarketOS support for Fairphone 5 doesn’t stop evolving now that the gen 6 was released
It’s really nice that the 6 already has preliminary support on pmOS, but its specs are worse so I’m actually considering buying a Fairphone 5. Tho the 5 isn’t available on sky blue anymore which is really sad bc it was super pretty.
No, that doesn't really ever happen.
PostmarketOS is maintained by volunteers, most often those that daily-drive these devices. The fact that Fairphone makes some source code available at code.fairphone.com is sometimes useful but not necessarily required. Though Fairphone never stopped providing this code, ever.
postmarketOS for the entire line of fairphone devices [wiki.postmarketos.org] isn't going anywhere.
@alexia I mean yeah, but also afaik Fairphone 5 support is mostly done by someone that works for Fairphone? Not sure if officially or otherwise tho
From what I can tell, No.
And even if, it's outside of employment at fairphone, as part of the contributor's free time.
You can take a look at his pmOS Wiki page listing many more non-fairphone devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/User:Z3ntu
or his blog that goes back to 2015: https://lucaweiss.eu/
@luana I love my Fairphone 5 but the 6 seems to have a lot more people excited over on Reddit.
Maybe software updates will fix or improve the camera in its current state, but I agree the screwed in back seems like a really weird design choice if it doesn't improve anything else.
@null how much better is the gpu?
@luana worse USB-C connectivity is really disappointing to see as someone who wants a phone that can be an actual portable computer
@benteg that button isn’t there on mobile, weird. Found a small “Check all tech specs” button on the page which shows the specs tho.