Everytime I read GrapheneOS news I search for news related to Fairephone. It's such a shame that there's still no official plan for Fairephone to work on requirements for GrapheneOS. The combination of those 2 would be fantastic. It would also open a big new market (I assume) for Fairephone so not sure why there seems no clear sign in that direction at all (to my knowledge).
Everytime I see Fairphone mentioned whenever there's news about GrapheneOS I'm confused as to why people keep on conflating both when they obviously have very different goals.
? Not conflating, just we want a phone with both goals ...
+1
Every time Fairphone release new device I check width size. Still waiting for small device.
I wonder if Meta pays phone manufacturers under the table to keep their size large
The overwhelming majority of consumers just prefer larger screens (myself included). People seem to forget that Apple releasing the Mini was them listening to the minority and the sales numbers if it were poor versus the rest of the lineup.
And why would Meta even do that?
The follow-up strategy of “smaller width and height didn’t work, let’s try thickness next” reportedly not going any better.
I really think COVID shutdowns did the mini in. People couldn’t go to the store and try holding a phone where they could use it comfortably one-handed again. And then by the time they could, Apple axed it.
- facilitate the infinite scroll
- remind you that the phone is in your pocket, to initiate the infinite scroll
Sorry but this is maximum level conspiratorial thinking. Meta probably has some created some incentive for OEMs to make larger screens by way of people liking content consumption but the idea that they’d be paying for that is ridiculous lol.
I forgive you I guess
I find reading ebooks and long texts like wikipedia a lot more enjoyable on my 6.8" AMOLED panel than on the smaller screens i've had before. You can also doomscroll on smaller screens.
Or maybe the majority of people buying a new damn phone every other week just prefer it'd be a tablet
Just today I giggled and reminisced over the old XDA Developers Nexus 7 posts about LTE and wifi calling hacks…the many few of us worked hard to only rely on a tablet! Ironically, there is now not a second of my day in which id find a folding phone useful or logistically feasible. Alas…13 years too late.
> the sales numbers if it were poor versus the rest of the lineup.
For one, the sales were still perfectly respectable. "Versus the rest of the lineup" is doing a ton of work here, because the rest of the iPhone models sell like crazy. For two, it is still bizarre that manufacturers refuse to make small phones even with that in mind. If you wear very small clothes (or very large clothes) that won't sell as many units, your options are limited, you have to pay more, but you aren't forced to go naked. But there's nobody out there doing the equivalent strategy for phones.
Bro the Mini was a flop for Apple, it could barely surpass 5% of all iPhone sales during its run. It would be nonsensical for a publicly traded company to leave money on the table and keep an underperforming product alive when they could put that towards the better performing bigger screen iPhones instead.
For a small company sure it could be considered a success.
I don’t think tech can be compared to the fashion industry. Also that example doesn’t really work. Because you basically have a locked in group who needs the clothes. Just also culturally there’s reasons why these clothing sizes exist. Nobody needs a small phone.
But across the board it makes no sense for any OEM to make small phones when the data all shows that bigger screens sell more. That’s just absorbing an unnecessary opportunity cost.
I think the only real way small phones will reach the market at this point in time is via a private company that’s basically run as a passion project.
Honestly in this case the consumers do share the blame. They begged for the mini and didn’t show up. If apple couldn’t do it it’s unlikely that the android oems could.
A brief search says that iPhone sales in 225 were approximately $200 billion. 5% of that is therefore approximately $10 billion. If you call that a "massive flop", your standards are completely unrealistic. That is a massive success.
And no, the clothes analogy is not flawed. The point is that in other markets, niche tastes and needs get served even if it isn't as cheap or plentiful. It's only the phone manufacturers which refuse to try to get sales from a smaller (but still quite extant) market.
I think it's obvious that the target audience has a huge overlap...
HN readers aren't a huge demographic.
A huge overlap in two groups would obviously be at most 100% of the smaller group.
Is there a huge demographic for grapheneOS and/or fairphone? Let alone one that doesn't overlap with the archetypes that post here?
To be honest the specs of the Fairphone are middling and the device is rather expensive for what you get. The Pixels are a much better value, especially with a series. If you want something truly high end, wait for the Motorola with official GOS support.
Without support of alternative OS Fairphone is basically a landfill. Why would anyone buy this apart from novelty factor.
Supporting an alternative OS wouldn’t change the fate of Fairphone, imo. Most people don’t care to move away from the stock version of Android that comes with their phone or iOS.
I mean, aside from /e/OS as a first-party option, there are also official Lineage builds[1]. And they're at least a target for PostmarketOS[2], even if that wiki doesn't actually describe something daily-driveable yet.
[1] https://forum.fairphone.com/t/official-lineageos-23-for-the-...
[2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
You should search for the many times where GrapheneOS has stated they won't work with Fairphone
It's because Fairphone doesn't fulfil GOS's hardware requirements. If Fairphone addresses that, there's no reason for GOS to not support a Fairphone device.
I don't understand the issue. If Fairphone wants GOS can't they just compile it themselves with whatever unsupported hardware based security features disabled? Ditto for any given end user. It's not as though we're talking about a device with hardware specs locked behind an NDA and drivers that only support outdated kernel versions.
Simple. Fairphone doesn't want GOS.
Forking GOS and porting it to a new device is a huge and unreasonable ask for an individual user. Even less so when you include the fact that you'll need to keep it up to date.
I understand that bringing AOSP to an unsupported device is a huge endeavor. But fairphone already has the driver situation sorted out. What's the complexity here? (Genuine question, I'd like to correct any misconceptions about the android ecosystem that I have.)
Why? Because of drivers? Don’t they already have Linux drivers for the fairphone?
I wonder if fable or astra could wire everything up.
As a company that often lies, they won’t spend a single penny on this.
Yes, they can, but they have promoted /e/OS, and they have no ability to develop Android.
Yep. Gos isn't the only mfg in town if you have or want a fairphone.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
I would imagine the cross section of people who seek out GOS but would settle for Postmarket OS is nearly non existent.
Then you have poor imagination. People seek Graphene OS for many many reasons.
"mfg"? They don't manufacture anything.
A distribution of software? Saas are people too!!!
Given the state of Fairphone hardware, software and business, it is not surprising.
For those of us out of the loop, could someone summarize the situation?
They replaced their own non-GMS Fairphone OS with a dramatically less secure /e/OS
it sounds like they are saying that /e/OS is less secure than fairphone's own OS. with all criticism against /e/OS taken into account, i highly doubt that fairphone would have been able to make their own version of android more secure than /e/OS when they are not even interested in working on that.
One of the reasons I haven't switched to Graphene is this kind of drama. I wish there was more middle ground. I don't think the post is in any way constructive and will lead to fairphone to consider adding a secure element.
I don't see their post as 'drama' or nonconstructive at all. It's simply a list of well-founded criticisms of Fairphone's extremely lax position on security that is incompatible with Graphene's. If being critiqued for it doesn't lead to them considering adding a secure element, that's a problem on Fairphone's side imo.
Imo i think actually naming the problems is a lot more productive than walking around them
I would throw serious money at them both if this collaboration happened.
Every fairphone I've seen to far the camera was kinda ass. Did it improve? Pixel phones usually have old Samsung sensors which are pretty damn decent.
The sensor of the Fairphone camera is good enough, the software processing is what's lacking. Imo, owner of an FP4.