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).