Fairphone 1: Still going strong after 13 years
The Fairphone team talk through two examples of where the original Fairphone 1 from back in 2013 are "still very much in use", but I think this post is a little disingenuous.
I saw this post on Mastodon, and clicked on it as the title and intro both read like there's people still using their original Fairphone 1 as a daily driver, after more than a decade. This surprised me as Fairphone clearly states that their phones are supported for 7 years, and according to this site the Fairphone 1 went end of life in July 2017 (that's 4 years of support for those who are counting).
Reading the post it's clear that neither example is using their phone as a daily driver. One is sat on shelf, providing spare CPU capacity for scientific research, and the other is being used as a glorified MP3 player.
The post irks me a little as it feels disingenuous. A phone having hardware that's able to turn on and function after 13 years is nothing special. I've just pulled a Blackberry Priv and Wileyfox Swift, both from 2015 out of the drawer and both still work after a few years of daily use.
So having a decade old phone that's running, but not being used as a daily driver, is really nothing special.
For the record, I like what Fairphone are doing - I've seriously considered getting one myself a few times, but this post missed the mark for me. Maybe I'm being unfair here?
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