--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 8:59 PM, Wolfgang Romey hier@wolfgangromey.de wrote:
Hello Luke,
I am a bit surprized about your harsh reaction, but do not want to open a discussion about fairphone.
it's not harsh - it's realistic. the evidence comes from their own forums, with people asking them for security updates... which they *COULDN'T PROVIDE* because they had based the Fairphone 1 around an "abandonware" Mediatek GPL-violating processor.
.... all they had to do was ask people in the software libre community, "what's the best processor and design strategy to use which will help us fufill the ethical sustainable considerations that we hold dear".... they didn't do that... end-result: landfill.
You are right, that they started with a task, which is gigantic, but they learned and hopefully will learn more. Some aspects which are for ME important:
- they will offering an update of the os for the fairphone I. I has been hard
work as they made mistakes in the beginning, but they succeeded. For my two years old LG-D855 there is no update in sight.
why are _they_ offering it? why are they not providing full source so that people can do the updates themselves?
- they offer a google-free android for the fairphone II and it will be possible
to install other OSs like Sailfish or Ubuntu mobil. They try to built a community
interesting. so it looks like they're learning from the really hard lesson of the Fairphone 1. that's really good.
- they got 10 points on ifixit for the easy way to repair it and their modular
construction.
- the are using more conflict free minerals and there are better working
conditions in as with the great players.
fantastic. except they're not big enough to deal with the cartels in the LCD manufacturing in order to ensure that conflict-free minerals and manufacturing techniques are used there. it's a start though...
Do you know any other smartphone, which is a better choicel than the Fairphone?
*sigh* because of the spying that goes on through the modems, not a single one of the smartphones can be considered "a better choice". i have a stricter set of ethical criteria than they do, and will not *use* a smartphone until i have full control over the hardware. i would rather do without one.
i used to own *9* smartphones - i was involved in the xanadux.sf.net project behind xda-developers before it became really popular (due to android). look up the irc logs on #htc-linux dating back to 2003.
i've just set up a page http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/hybrid_phone/ lot happening in a very short amount of time. this proposed phone design has a hardware kill-switch on the modem. cuts the power entirely.
l.