• ArbitraryValue
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    11 months ago

    I’ve been watching the Fairphone closely but while I love the idea of a phone designed to last eight years, the price tag is still too high to make it worth buying for me. Since I don’t mind having an older phone, I think I’m still better off buying three decent used phones in succession for about the same total price. By the time I get to the third one in 5 years, it’ll be significantly superior to the then five-year-old Fairphone.

    I suppose folks particularly enthusiastic about fair trade and environmentalism might be more interested than I am, but from my perspective as someone who just wants a robust phone for a good price, discarding and replacing still makes more sense than repairing.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      As an environmentalist myself, the fairphone is amazing. However, it’s far more ecologically friendly to keep the phone you have until you absolutely have to replace it

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      11 months ago

      The reason it is expensive is because it uses fair trade materials.

      You are essentially paying to not use slave labour on your phone.

    • dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      right. I mean, good for them, but $600 for one phone is just way, way too expensive.

      my phone cost me less than $100 second-hand three years ago and it’s still perfectly usable. it’s a budget model with several LineageOS ROMs available, so I’m good with software support. the battery isn’t like new but this was a 5000 mAh model to begin with, so even diminished it’s still good enough. I don’t see me upgrading in the next couple of years.