The Fairphone (Gen. 6) was just announced, and I have some thoughts. I'm still debating whether I should upgrade from my Fairphone 5 or not.
Highlights
- The new naming scheme is frustrating. I prefer consistency "Fairphone 6" sounds way nicer than "The Fairphone (Gen. 6)". This feels like unnecessary marketing fluff from a team trying to justify their existence. Pointless and annoying.
- It's slightly smaller in size and lighter, but still quite bulky, with the same thickness as before.
- The screen is definitely an improvement: brighter, better colours and better battery. I don't mind it being smaller in size and resolution.
- It remains to be seen whether the new camera setup is actually better. They reduced the resolution of the wide and selfie camera. The previous setup wasn’t great, so maybe this will improve it (Megapixel count isn’t the best indicator of quality.). The bigger pixels might help a bit with low-light situations.
- The switch on the side to limit the phone to only a few apps is a gimmick that adds development overhead with little practical benefit.
- A slightly bigger battery with a consumer chip (vs. an enterprise/industrial chip used in the previous version) could potentially improve battery life.
Things that are missing
Wireless charging.
Additionally, there are no contact points under the back cover to facilitate a DIY implementation. You'd likely need to modify the battery too if you go this route. This is a big personal disappointment, since I've been waiting for this since I switched to Fairphone (gen 4).
Popular mounts support
Active users will likely be familiar with the mounts from Peak Design, Quad Lock, SP Connect and many others. All of them come with cases for most popular brands, but if you are a Fairphone user, you’re left gluing a universal mount on the back of your phone. This is a missed opportunity given the modular back. Fairphone should have tried to collaborate with at least one of these brands to provide a custom back for their mounts.
These systems also offer a variety of mounts for desks, nightstands, walls, and cars, among others. You can even get mounts with built-in wireless chargers. It would’ve been incredibly convenient to have such a system available. I don’t even care which brand—just give me one.
I’d trade that custom switch any day for that.
Conclusion
Overall, this update feels underwhelming. There were more important things to improve than renaming or adding a gimmicky button.
The software team is already barely keeping up. Updates are released regularly, but bug fixes are rare. This button just adds extra work for developers, with minimal user value.
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