I can’t believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he’s onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭
Eh, I stopped paying attention to Linus after the whole debacle last year.
Hmm, no, actually I think I stopped paying attention to him quite a long while ago. I think once they went all in on the clickbaity titles and just non-content, algorithm filler.
I first reevaluated my perception of him (shall we say) after that AWFUL “let’s try Linux” series, and it didn’t exactly get better from there.
The Microsoft ball gargling is ridiculous on its own
I’m genuinely curious how saying that Linux GUI desktop has issues equates to gargling Microsoft’s balls?
Tribalism I’m guessing is why it’s being said
The Linux series was one of the best, because it showed what would happen if someone who didn’t know what they were doing tried to move to Linux. Linux shills have been preaching “it’s the year of the Linux desktop” forever now, but since it’s so different from windows and macOS there’s a massive learning curve that only shows up once you’ve switched.
I would bet 8/10 people who have used windows/macOS for 30+ years would have many of the same problems as Linus did. I know I’ve made many of the same mistakes that were made by Linus/Luke in that series, including accidentally nuking my DE.
Linux sucks as a desktop if you aren’t already familiar with Linux from the terminal. There’s a few edge cases, but for the most part it’s not a good experience if you do anything more than web browsing.
I’m no Linus shill, though I do enjoy their content for the most part. He’s not a tech god like people make him out to be, he’s just a slightly above average tech nerd who’s a good presenter. And that’s the audience that the Linux shills are trying to push the OS onto.
I think what you’re saying is that Linux desktop is going to be a bad experience if you come in with your expectations from macos or windows. In neither of those can you “accidentally” uninstall your de because you’re not reading terminal prompt.
This kinds of problems are for people who think they know what they’re doing
His let’s try Linux series was amazing. Showing how dogshit it really is when you get out of the circlejerk.
For those that haven’t seen it: His Pop-OS desktop environment got un-installed by Apt when he tried to install Steam.
So many people forget that while they understand how to use a Linux terminal and how Linux on a high level works, not everyone does. Plus, learning all of that takes time, effort, and tenacity, which not everyone is willing to do. Linus’s whole conclusion was that as long as that learning curve exists and as long as it’s that easy to shoot yourself in the foot, Linux desktop just isn’t viable for a lot of people.
But Linus has done a lot of public fuck ups therefore everything he says must be inherently wrong.
I’m an absolute mouth breathing imbecile, with no IT/SysAdmin/Otherwise technical background or knowledge outside of what I gained by just being a typical windows user.
I cold turkey switched to linux with relatively few issues with nothing but a weekend of sporadic research done beforehand. Learning curve for everyday shit hasnt been that deep or curvy.
Its not 1997. Linux is not that hard to use, even for gaming. Especially with some modern distros built specifically for the task (like Nobara)
No, its not for everyone, but its not this incomprehensibly obtuse and mystical monstrosity that people try to constantly paint it as, 30 years ago maybe, but not anymore. as long as you can follow basic instructions and have a modicum of common sense (Which is asking a lot from the average person, I know…)
Linux is free if you don’t value your time.
I spend far more time dealing with issues in Windows than I do Manjaro. I only boot my windows partition when I absolutely have to
Fuck, I made a hackintosh and windows was still more maintenance intensive if you’re the type that doesn’t like persistent problems. Most windows users just close error windows until something completely breaks and act dumb when I have to fix their shit. One time, Windows 10 auto update broke and I have to reinstall from scratch because none of the fixes worked. I spent about 10 times longer doing trouble shooting then I would have just doing a clean reinstall.
Yup, and I’ve spent hours troubleshooting dumb fucking issues on Linux servers that often end up with me just blasting it away and starting again because the further I get into it, the more shit I find broken.
Linux is stable and repeatable, that’s why it’s great for servers. But I’ve wasted way too many hours of my life troubleshooting dumb problems that shouldn’t even be problems and often I just say fuck it and rebuild it. I don’t want to do that on my desktop thanks. Especially because sometimes I do random mindless shit. Look how Linus uninstalled his UI because he didn’t know any better. The last time I uninstalled the entire UI on windows was when converting a Server 2012 machine to server core.
But I think the bottom line is, let people use what they want.
My friend only uses arch and there’s a few games we want to play together but it doesn’t work on Linux, there’s also plenty of times we have to wait while he’s troubleshooting shit when we want to play games.
He’s an SRE with about 22 years of experience. It’s not even a skill issue.
We often jokingly say “have you tried using windows?” or “this wouldn’t happen on windows” and dumb shit like that. But he uses Arch and wr all accept that and that there are some issues and the things said are in jest. He sometimes hits us with the same shit. But overall we respect that we want different things from our PCs and I do enough of this shit at work for me to want to do anything at home besides click on some UI shit and things just work.
Its okay to be different and it’s okay if you use Linux and I use windows, bashing on about how bad it is isn’t winning any friends or favor and the general toxicity with this shit puts a lot of people off of even trying Linux.
Fewer years than I’ve been using windows. 20 years of Linux, 25 years of Windows. I personally think the stigma that Linux has is due to the past. I would agree that it was difficult at points in the past.
Step 1: open “pop shop” in the task bar
Step 2: search for “Steam”
Step 3: Click download
This concludes my guide on how to download Steam on Pop!_OS.
afair they fixed and improved stuff since the video tho
- Steam was in the pop-shop at that time.
- The start up guide explains what the pop-shop is.
- Meaning Linus just ignored this user friendly option because…idk why.
idk why.
You know why.
Do you think he’d have gotten as many eyes on the video if it went smoothly and he read what he was supposed to?
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For a customer who wants the best phone for their money, the Fairphone is objectively worse
Objectivity worse in performance, sure. Some people consider more things than just being a fastest bang for the buck. Unethical mining, forced labour, e-waste, data mining, and lots of other things. If you care at all, that is.
If you want to compare that to a product made by a billion dollar company, no one is stopping anyone. There is cost associated with doing things ethically. Small companies aren’t financed to eat those costs to gain the market. It speaks more about principles than anything else.
I don’t disagree with Linus’ suggestion at the end: even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone
is it? The person who sold the phone is most definitely going to buy a new phone and if they sold the phone released last year they will most likely do so every year. The reason there’s a second hand market with a year old phones is because people obsessively buy new phones. How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?
Duchebag is spouting capitalists “trickle down” economics. Rather than fix the cause, find the flex tape to hide it. Rich people buy new phones, less rich buy phones from the rich, and so on. No one needs to look past the marketing into ethics in how they were made and companies keep profiting in billions by exploitation of the poor. So so environmentally friendly.
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How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?
The difference is you can produce only the best phones. There aren’t throw away/cheap phones. The only difference is then how old the phone is.
It’s the difference between buying an old Lexus and a new base model Kia. They both might cost the same, and yeah the Lexus driver almost definitely got a new car, but the Lexus is probably going to outlive the Kia.
“It’s better than the Fairphone 4” doesn’t really matter when I’m comparing the Fairphone to a Pixel phone.
What, why?
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I think Framework and Fairphone are solving similar but different problems.
Fairphone is “keep this phone as configured working.”
Framework is more “I have this laptop but it can become this other newer laptop without me needing to buy all the parts again AND I can buy replacement parts.”
It’s really not even remotely the same calculus in my book.
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Chiming in on the SIM/SD: as far as I can remember, my phone didn’t let me hotswap neither SIM or SD, always required a restart to handle it properly.
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All Samsungs - Note 4, Note 8 (had two), S20 FE (current). Always says the media was not safely removed (SD) and requires a restart, or outright refuses to recognize there is even a SIM card until I restart.
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but half the battery life in video decode means charging your phone twice as often even if you don’t watch Youtube all day
Most of the power goes into the screen. The Pixel 8 has a ridiculously power efficient screen. I have one. It also costs $300 to replace. The Fairphone’s is $100.
other phones have sliders or slots that will let you live swap either card without even taking the back off
Slots and sliders inevitably weaken the phone frame making it easier to break. They also cost more to machine.
even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone.
Replacing a battery to rescue a Pixel will run you $100-200.
Many design choices make a lot of sense when looked through the repairability, durability and cost of repairability lenses.
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You’re making a lot of good points here, but I feel like this last bit goes against how most people would evaluate purchasing such a phone after the fact.
For a customer who wants the best phone for their money, the Fairphone is objectively worse. It’s marketed at the niche segment of people who are willing to spend extra for a mid-tier phone to get more environmentally and socially conscious hardware. (…) Most people will be incredibly unhappy with a Fairphone 5 if the alternative would’ve been a Pixel 8.
People don’t walk around comparing what they have to what they don’t have based on specifications alone (that’s just successful marketing). Their actual experiences are what matters. The FP is a good enough phone that most people will experience no issues having one. Most people simply don’t need the best of the best, and whether it’s a FP or a Pixel doing what they need their phones to do is of very little consequence to them.
Don’t get me wrong. If you’re price oriented, and you want to get the most bang for the buck, there’s better options. But I would argue that this doesn’t matter all that much for most people’s satisfaction, which is probably much more by affected long support and repairability (even if it’s just that you can swap the battery).
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but other phones have sliders or slots that will let you live swap either card without even taking the back off
Modern phones on purpose dropped SD card support but yeah, slimmer phones still have those sliders. To be fair you need a tool for that, unlike their option.
especially for a company that small
We really have to keep that in mind. When they planned the FP5 they likely had no idea Google would do the same. They take what Qualcomm offers, unlike tech Giants Google and Samsung that can basically dictate update lifespans.
relatively spotty history when it comes to patching
They are the ODM unlike GrapheneOS and comparing them to Google is really unfair. Google makes Android, so they know the code best. They patch very quickly, the updates work for their phones out of the box, less work for GrapheneOS.
Fairphone on the other hand has to maintain a unique device which is way more work, they get early access because of that though.
And their noncompliance with all the GrapheneOS security demands is the reason I dont use it.
seems to take issue with seem to be the LineageOS/Android defaults
Fairphone is Google certified and thus needs to ship unmodified Android including all the Google crap. There is a company called Murena that creates some hacky LineageOS-based OS and sells Fairphones with it preinstalled.
This /e/OS looks nice and has very nice integrations, but is fundamentally flawed and less secure than GrapheneOS for example (microG, depending on unmaintained apps, even slower updates,…)
even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone.
Regular phones dont get 8 years of updates so they will be outdated and should not be used. This argument makes no sense.
I got a used Pixel 6a with 2 years left, so used but way less long updates, so I hope on getting a used Pixel 8 which means roughly 1,7 phones instead of one, should be equally sustainable.
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7 years is only for Pixel and S24 phones. The vast majority of existing Samsung phones will only get 5 years of security updates.
https://www.howtogeek.com/797200/how-long-will-my-android-phone-be-supported-with-updates/
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Thanks for the nuanced response. Obviously both FP and LTT are defending their own interests and neither are inherently better.
I think their point about framework laptops is actually a stupid one. The fairphone is not a modular device (although they always seem to be trying to claim that), which the framework laptops are. The fact you have to remove the battery to do anything kind of proves that it’s not modular, we’ve seen modular phones so we know what they look like and they don’t look like this.
So it just seems a weird comparison to have made. The fairphone is easier to repair than your average smartphone, but it’s still a lot less repairable than phones from the early 2000s. It’s not a simple repair unless you’re talking about a battery replacement. It doesn’t have swappable buttons, It doesn’t have swappable chassis. Basically it’s a cheap Android phone that costs more money than it is really worth with the justification of environmentalism. I would take a truly modular and easy to repair phone over this any day of the week if one existed, and since one doesn’t yeah I think i’ll go for a Pixel.
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The fact you have to remove the battery to do anything kind of proves that it’s not modular,
Why?
Especially when you seem to suggest that it’s an easy thing to remove…
It’s not a simple repair unless you’re talking about a battery replacement.
I don’t think Linus Sebastian is worth watching during the NCIX days because he always seem like someone who would spend the least amount of effort and say whatever is popular to get the most amount of views. As you can see in this video, a lot of the criticism he made on the Fairphone are really nitpicking and isn’t fair (heh) at all.
For example, the phone thickness, which he measured with a caliper as a point, is not a metric most people outside of reviewers would care about, especially since most people puts a beefy case on their phone immediately anyways, and size is usually the main tradeoff with modularity.
Or their point about using a Qualcomm industrial chip instead of a Snapdragon chip as a point against Fairphone, when they have previously stated that it is to get a longer time of support.
That being said, having a long, uncut and unfiltered reaction video towards criticism by having the co-founder improv on the spot was not the smartest thing to do on Fairphone’s part. He came off as defensive and completely unprepared in the video and failed to address the criticism effectively (with some easy rebuttals if he was given even a little time to prepare) effectively, which is not great for PR.
The video could be much more effective if they cut it down to half the length with an actual script. It’s a YouTube video, there’s no reason to do it completely live and unscripted.
Or their point about using a Qualcomm industrial chip instead of a Snapdragon chip as a point against Fairphone, when they have previously stated that it is to get a longer time of support.
Of course the support is great, but some other phones also achieve that without a slow and old SoC.
The Fairphone seems pretty nice in theory but the performance is pretty poor and the price is high.
Poor in comparison to what though? I know what the benchmarks say but I don’t really notice any differences between the Fairphone 5 (what I’m currently typing on) or my previous phones (Huawei Mate 10, Zenfone 6, Zenfone 8 Flip) in terms of daily driving (aside from battery maybe). I’m sure there is for gaming, but that’s the one thing I don’t use my phone for.
I haven’t used it personally but apparently it’s general usage is pretty slow.
What are people using their phones for that require such beefy processing power? I have a Fairphone 4, which presumably is slower than the Fairphone 5, and it is perfectly snappy for all my needs. Actually curious. Is it gaming?
Whenever I see Linus I feel like everything is rushed and not thought through. He barely knows what he is holding. He just doesn’t care; he has 20 more reviews he has to record today. Or something like that.
“Deal breaker! It doesn’t even do my laundry.”
I know what phone I’ll be looking for when the piece of shit in my pocket finally dies. That maneuver where he popped the cover with a fingernail and hotswapped the battery sold me.
Hey, totally unrelated question: Didn’t linus recently take a lot of flak for shady/unfair reviewing practices?
He’s trash and the people that defend him are useful idiots.
Yeah. He took flack. It was more about the completeness and accuracy of the reviews rather than being unfair… at least from what I recall.
They did a whole show of the matter, suspended uploads for a week or so, did some internal restructuring, hired a new CEO. Linus is now chief vision officer or some such nonsense.
Bluntly, I liked LTT videos more when they were a scrappy bunch of nerds working out of a house, putting out a couple videos a week…
You knew the information wasn’t perfect and that was fine. It was enough to give you an impression of what to expect. They did a recent comparison that confirmed something I already knew, by taking a smattering of the “same” CPU and testing them against eachother. They found that some were quantifiably better than others. To me this was proof that all reviews are skewed. You never know which way they’ll be skewed, and it really doesn’t matter. The fact remains that all tech reviews are going to be different than personal experience. They’re also going to differ from reviewer to reviewer since, even if they’re using the “same” hardware, that hardware might be slightly faster or slower than other reviewers by a small margin. Once upon a time the hardware was so similar and the differences were so small you could effectively ignore this variance. Modern hardware is so fast that even a small variance can make a pretty significant difference to benchmark performance.
So you have to take literally everything posted as a review with a grain of salt. It’s not accurate to what you would experience buying the exact same stuff off a shelf. As lithography gets smaller and smaller the relatively minor variance will have a larger and larger impact to the final products performance.
It’s the way of things. All things. Whether it’s a car or a computer, some just roll off the line different.
I seem to recall something to the effect of “theft of a prototype:” like a custom water block or something like that he was supposed to review, and then gave a rushed, improper review, and then misplaced or in some way failed to return the prototype. IIRC.
They were sent some form of prototype cooler from a startup for a specific GPU, I believe it was LTT used a different GPU that the cooler wasn’t meant for
LTT complained the cooler was shit and didn’t work up to standard, which is to be expected when using it on something it wasn’t meant for.
And then sold the cooler at some kind of expo or show when the startup specifically asked for it.
This is mostly right, I remember this part clearly:
The water block was a custom block for both a CPU and GPU combined into one mass. It was supposed to sandwich a specific CPU series chip and a specific GPU. They used the right CPU series with it, but used the next GPU up in the series… I think it was built for a 3080 or something and they put a 4000 series on it.
They realized their mistake, even during the shoot, but Linus didn’t want to spend the time, effort and money into retesting it with the proper components, and just steamrolled ahead with the video.
After all that, their team neglected to return the prototype promptly, and took months to even properly communicate with the manufacturer. During those months they held some kind of gathering, either LTX or one of their LANs, and during the event someone suggested the prototype water block for the silent auction, and Linus agreed, so they auctioned it off and gave the money to charity.
There was some drama about it, and Linus did his usual thing of speaking before thinking and digging his grave even further, then eventually made a public apology. They committed to paying the full price for the prototype, well above $20k, if I recall, so that the company could have a new one created.
Linus is full of shit in a lot of videos
Whatever you wanna say about the fairphone, LTT shouldn’t have any say in the review industry after their back-to-back lying to the public AND sexual harassment debacles. They’ve been sleazy for years, taking money from companies they claim to review impartially, and twisting everything into a meme factory instead of putting the tiniest amount of effort into quality reviews and tech journalism.
Linus is absolutely the last guy you should be listening to on anything unless he’s explaining how he managed to salvage his reputation after covering up toxic and predatory workplace behaviour and still coming out the other side a multimillionaire.
Just shows the lack of knowledge LTT have really. They just dont understand Fairphone at all, or even how people use phones apparently…
ITT people mad at Linus for pointing out all the reasons the phone wouldn’t appeal to a mass market audience
When they ditched the headphone jack fairphone ditched environmentalism.
The fairphone 3+ was their last fair phone.
It’s just another cheap phone now. Made in the same place from the same stuff as other makers, with maybe a year of extra security updates.
They started by doing stuff differently, now they do things the same as everyone else and want to pretend they’re different.
You are wrong but I feel like arguing with you is pointless so carry on.
It’s still a modular, repairable phone. That’s objectively different to a regular phone. Not to mention the broad support for ROMs.
I still wouldn’t buy one because of the cost, reduced performance, reduced battery life, and worse screen than other phones. It’s not worth it even if it’s upgradable as it can’t be upgraded enough to stay relevant forever anyway unlike a framework where you can plop in a new motherboard.
Sounds like you didn’t watch the video
Which part of the video talks about the audiojack? I must’ve missed it.
I disagreed with the video.
Sounds like you’re too keen to spout fallacies as if you’re in a debating match rather than engaging in a discussion.
I’m stating my point because you contradict the video not because you don’t agree with it.
If the lack of jack stock is a deal breaker for you, then it’s a deal breaker for you. From what I see, they still make phones that are great if not among the best performing phones out there, then they are great in other ways, as explained in the video.
The lack of ethics and increase in waste is a deal breaker for me.
They’re not the best performing. They’re generally slow. Other phones objectively perform better.
Not only did the fairphone 4 ditch a feature I needed and would prevent waste in general for many.
It also caused my housemate who owned one no end of issues with every update. Bluetooth dropouts, touchscreen glitches.
Issues with the camera.
Issues with the microphone
Slow charging.
He’s a beta tester and he’s paid a premium for it.
Support from fairphone has basically been pathetic.
It’s hilarious how many supporters of this company are. It must be like the phenomenon of car drivers supporting public transport. They’re hoping everyone else buys a fairphone.
As they’re not even the most environmentally friendly phone it’s all a bit silly.
5 years later
This phone sucks, the display looks moderate at 1° viewing angle, isn’t as powerful as my desktop PC, and we think all resources should be mined in the most unethical ways so we can have 20 more hours of tiktok on a single charge.
Tech channels go further and further from the mark of “good”. I’m not playing AAA games on my phone, I don’t watch YouTube for 20 hours straight, I prefer larger bezels (even if slightly uneven) because I tend to touch the screen accidentally if they’re too small, and I prefer more responsible resources even if it means less battery life or performance.
I don’t need a PC in my pocket and Linus is just going too far into the techbro headspace for me to trust him for anything .
This video is how so many tech reviewers are now, credit to MeatCanyon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GsoZOpw8aE
This is exactly what I felt while watching this. Does anyone really care about bezel width or weight or thickness when the differences have to be measured with callipers? And that stupid yellow tint when you’re not looking directly at your phone. I’d actually like worse viewing angles for my phone because it seems better privacy wise.
Battery life is kinda nice if you’re travelling or just not sure when you’ll next be able to charge, but in those cases the solution is always to just get a battery pack for emergencies. All of these criticisms seem so out of touch with how people actually use their phones.
And when those compromises mean you have your phone longer and buy a more ethical, sustainable product that pays workers… Easy choice.
he’s an investor in framework btw
And?
I think the idea is that Linus is a hypocrite.
Not even that. It’s that his review isn’t an objective assessment of the product because he stands to financially benefit from Framework doing well. He’s worse than a hypocrite, he’s a shill.
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He reviewed the framework. He invests in it. That makes him bought and paid for. He doesn’t become a new person each time he reviews a product, his history exists regardless
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You don’t seem to understand the concept that if a source is biased, then they can be unreliable in areas outside of their known bias. It’s not hard though, really.
did he grope the phone? not intending to watch any of his shit.
Fuck Lingus. Who cares what he thinks about anything?
12 yo’s, probably.
A lot of men who think they are techies because they game or something but really aren’t.
I don’t care what fairphone or Linus says. They got rid of the headphone jack. A “modular” phone my ass.
The second biggest dealbreaker for me after the small battery.
Ok, they have a USB-C to jack dongle, but guess what USB-C port’s wearout is the reason I was looking for a new phone in the first place.
Really wish c wasn’t the standard. Breaks so easily
I don’t know what are you doing with your phones. I have never witnessed someone wearing out a USB Type-C port.
Anyway, if you want to be upset at someone, the implementators of USB standards are: Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Renesas Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments.