As the title suggests, it has been about a year since I made the switch to the Fairphone 4 from my old Google Pixel 4.
Why I made the switch
My contract for the Google Pixel 4 had ended well before I made the switch. I had been plodding along quite happy with where things were. But, like pretty much all tech, it begins to degrade a little over time. The battery needed charging daily with minimal use, but, I couldn’t just buy a new battery and replace it like the good ol’ days.
So, I went looking for something where I could do that if I needed to. I wanted to find my next phone with the idea of keeping it longer than the Pixel (which was about 4 years).
Enter the Fairphone 4
I had been aware of company for a little while, and kept tabs on their progress as a business. The 4 had been out for a short amount of time, and was a big improvement from the 3, which had lacked good reviews.
The 4 however was getting really good reviews, excellent repairability scores, and had the tech the most modern devices from other manufacturers had. It used Android, and mostly the base Android system like the Google Pixel did. I liked that. It was also cheaper on a contract than my previous phone was out of contract. So, a win win for me.
I took a few months to decide before I actually bought it. Like many decisions I make, especially around any kind of tech, I mull it over quite extensively.
One year on
So, to the point. It’s now been about a year. What’s good about it, what’s bad? What would I like to see improved, and can they be improved?
The good things about a Fairphone 4
The phone generally runs well. The battery holds reasonably – though I do have to charge it daily and occasionally use the battery saver mode. The interface is pleasant. It supports all the apps I would want to use. The phone is solid, especially with one of their own cases wrapped around it. It has survived one or two small drops with no damage. It’s a good phone. Teamed with a decent network, it certainly does what it needs to the vast majority of the time.
The materials are produced well, recycled or humanely sourced. You don’t get loads of extras you don’t need when you buy it. Most people these days have a usb-c cable and a plug, so the phone doesn’t arrived with one.
You get a 5 year warranty, which is impressive for a phone.
You can take it apart with one mini screw driver. You can replace vast quantities of the hardware yourself, buying the spare parts directly from the manufacturer. When you do come to the end of useful life of the device that cannot be repaired anymore, you can send it to Fairphone to be recycled fully. These are all good things for the planet. More phones should be as repairable as Fairphones. With new laws coming into place, at some point, they will have to be.
The bad things about a Fairphone 4
One of my biggest gripes about the phone is that my old Google Pixel had updated to Android 12 in October 2021, many months before I stopped using it. It had some nice features that allowed you to customise the look and feel of the interface. Google Pixel’s are now on Android version 13, and very soon version 14 will be ready for public launch. Sadly, the Fairphone has only recently updated to version 12, but made no indication that it had done. It gets security patches, but in terms of staying up to date with the latest features of the base operating system, it is STILL severely lacking. The features Android 12 included, such as the ability to style the interface with “Material You”, are not included on the Fairphone. It is still one of the biggest gripes I have, and one reason why I have contemplated going back to Google Pixel’s.
The second major gripe I have is the camera. Again, my old Pixel 4 had a pretty amazing camera for the time. The operating system coupled with the reasonable lens was really quite good at capturing all kinds of photos without a lot of effort. The same cannot be said for the Fairphone 4. I have never been able to take particularly good photos with it. Despite having higher pixel densities, more megapixels and multiple lenses, the Fairphone just doesn’t seem to be able to take as nice a photo.
I’ve tried all the modes, even pro mode where you can play with aperture, shutter speed, exposure etc, but even then the photos of something static one foot in front of me seem to come out somewhat blurry. I’m not a pro photographer, but I co-ran an outdoor adventure blog for 5 years where quite a lot of the photos were taken on my phone and looked pretty great. If I had this phone back then, I would not have produced the same results.
How I feel about the Fairphone 4
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied one year on. I really wish Fairphone would update the operating system features to keep up to date, or at least reasonably up to date, with the latest base Android version. I’m not a phone developer, but it doesn’t seem like they are adding much on top of the base Android system, so I am quite confused as to why it takes them so long to make these updates. I have reached out to them a couple of times to query this, without much of a response. In my opinion, it is one of the biggest things holding the phone back from others adopting them. Certainly, it makes me question my choice of continuing to own one for the longer term.
I do think the camera is lacking quality. I expect if I played around with more settings and set the phone on a mini tripod I could get some better results. But that isn’t very real world usage. You see all the adverts for Google Pixel phones and how amazing the camera is at capturing people, skin tone, action shots, landscapes; just about anything. Then, you see your own photos and don’t even want to share them. Or just delete them because they are pretty rubbish by any kind of comparison. It’s a shame.
With the Fairphone 5 potentially launching soon, does it make me want to upgrade? No. I haven’t even seen the specs of it, but that is the whole point. I shouldn’t want to upgrade. I should be satisfied with the 4, as the selling point is that these phones are meant to be kept for much longer to improve the environmental impact of e-waste and devices.
Would I suggest others to buy one over a Google Pixel or an iPhone? To be brutally honest, I’m not sure I would. They work, sure. Could they be a lot better compared to the competition? Maybe. Could they keep users happy by updating the software more often, absolutely.