Wanted:
- large screen
- good battery life
- great camera
- long device lifetime, i.e. repairability, software and security updates, swappable battery, …
- enough RAM (8GB) and built-in storage (256GB)
- SD card slot and 3.5mm won’t hurt (but we use wireless headphones all the time)
The competition are (from my POV):
- Samsung S23+ (or similar)
- Motorola Edge 40 Pro (or similar)
- Google Pixel 8 Pro
I ruled out all other vendors due to disappointing update promises. Motorola with 4 years security updates promised (out of which the first year has already passed if the model is not brand new) is the minimum.
All phones are stretching the budget; must be really good to justify the expense. Benchmark for “great” is better than the previous generation (S10).
Really? Is it that bad? I can see, it’s behind flagship phones, but low-to-mid, really? How do you justify this?
I can sort-of understand your point looking a the benchmarks, e.g. https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=12540&idPhone2=12083&idPhone3=12070
Not that great
Mid-tier or any tier loosely defines a few components. Perhaps the most important being CPU performance, GPU performance, camera performance and screen quality.
There’s probably 1% of use cases that I subjectively encounter in my daily life that hit a CPU bottleneck on my old Pixel 6. If you’re like me, then CPU performance has stopped being important a few years ago. CPU power efficiency on the other hand is important because it’s reflected in battery life.
If you’re like me and don’t play 3D games on your phone, then GPU performance isn’t important either.
Camera performance on the other hand is a big one for me and the Fairphone is definitely not top-tier there.
Personally I don’t care much about the screen so long as its color calibration is decent. I use my Pixel in 1080p, 60Hz to save on power and I don’t see the difference in pixel density between 1080p and 1440p or larger resolution screens in the 6" size band.
I was comparing the Fairphone 5 to the Pixel 8 prior to buying a phone this year and went with a Pixel 8 specifically because of its camera performance advantage. If I didn’t care that much about that, I’d have bought an FP5. Both of these devices are going to be used for 5-7 years and the FP5’s maintenance cost is significantly lower.
I have a Pixel 7 Pro and I absolutely see a difference. Maybe I’m just used to it, but setting it from 1440x3120 with 120 hz to 1080x2340 with 60 all animations feel like they “stutter” and the text quality is noticeably worse.
On a TV screen a few meters away from me I couldn’t care less. But the phone screen is less than an an arm’s length away from my eyes.
Oh I can see the refresh rate difference too. I can’t see the pixel density difference.
Yeah, the individual pixels are just too small to count, but for me the overall look is worse when setting the reduced resolution.
I agree it’s a low-to-mid tier phone but as I’m only using my FP4 for calls, discord, email, browsing, youtube etc it’s perfectly fine. Most people don’t need a top tier phone these days.
Based on the specs, the build quality (according to data sheets stating its plastic), and some of the features (especially the low-res screen) and the software and components (e.g. the outdated UFS, no WiFi 7, the old BT standard, the small battery, etc.)
We live in different universe. You are not wrong, their are mid-tier phones that match the Fairphone specs, but low-res?
1224 x 2700 pixels (~459 ppi density)
Sounds pretty high-res to me and on-par with high-end phones. Wasn’t the first Retina display 200-something ppi? And that was good.
I read something about 1080p on the Fairphone. Mmmh, so the resolution is better, but still not for me.
I don’t say the device is bad, I just don’t consider it as a modern phone. If you want to support their idea, go for it. But for that price tag you can get better hardware.
460ppi low-res? You got some proper eagle eyes, dang
Edit: Just saw your other comment, didn’t know you could bump down the resolution on a Pixel 7. But scaling down to 1080 on a 1440 display won’t look as good as native 1080, I reckon