It's not expected to see a phone manufacturer reply to a video review of their product, but Fairphone co-founder just did that. Linus Tech Tips recently reviewed the Fairphone 5 (the phone I've been using for a few months now). There is a good summary of that video on the Fairphone community topic: Thoughts on the Linus Tech Tips Review? To my surprise, the company's co-founder and the product manager of Fairphone 5 did a reaction video to Linus' review: Linus reviewed (roasted) our phone | Fairphone reacts.
I think that most of Linus' criticism is subjective and ignores the market proposition of Fairphone. Fairphone's response addresses some of them; apparently, they are working on fixing them. This is good to hear and confirms what I expected. I switched to Fairphone 4 almost 2 years ago, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the improvements it gets with software updates given its age (it was already one year old when I bought mine). Even today, after the Fairphone 5 was released, it still gets massive software improvements (Here’s what’s new about the Fairphone 4 - Big Camera Update).
There are a few things I noticed in the react video that I would like to point out:
The stance on wireless charging seems to have changed a bit, and I'm hoping we'll finally get a Fairphone with wireless charging. In the past, they said it was not efficient. The rhetoric seems to have changed slightly, and now it sounds like "it is not efficient enough," and hard to make it repairable. This makes me think it was hard to do in a reparable way and less about efficiency.
Fairphone 4 had the NFC antennas on the back cover. The antenna made contact with some pogo pin connectors on the back of the phone. It doesn't seem difficult to offer a different back cover (eventually thicker) that supports wireless charging. In the Fairphone 5, the NFC antenna is part of the battery, and I'm not sure I like that decision. I would buy a back cover with wireless charging instantly, even from a 3rd party.
Second, they don't seem to acknowledge the weak vibration issue. It's either something inconsistent, so I should probably try to replace mine and hope to get a better module. Or they missed that in the reviews so far...
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