I can't believe some of the points Linus made against the Fairphone, especially given he's onboard with the same compromises for the Framework laptop. 🤭

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[+] 201 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (25 children)
  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I think their point about framework laptops is actually a stupid one. The fairphone is not a modular device (although they always seem to be trying to claim that), which the framework laptops are. The fact you have to remove the battery to do anything kind of proves that it's not modular, we've seen modular phones so we know what they look like and they don't look like this.

    So it just seems a weird comparison to have made. The fairphone is easier to repair than your average smartphone, but it's still a lot less repairable than phones from the early 2000s. It's not a simple repair unless you're talking about a battery replacement. It doesn't have swappable buttons, It doesn't have swappable chassis. Basically it's a cheap Android phone that costs more money than it is really worth with the justification of environmentalism. I would take a truly modular and easy to repair phone over this any day of the week if one existed, and since one doesn't yeah I think i'll go for a Pixel.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    For a customer who wants the best phone for their money, the Fairphone is objectively worse

    Objectivity worse in performance, sure. Some people consider more things than just being a fastest bang for the buck. Unethical mining, forced labour, e-waste, data mining, and lots of other things. If you care at all, that is.

    If you want to compare that to a product made by a billion dollar company, no one is stopping anyone. There is cost associated with doing things ethically. Small companies aren't financed to eat those costs to gain the market. It speaks more about principles than anything else.

    I don't disagree with Linus' suggestion at the end: even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone

    is it? The person who sold the phone is most definitely going to buy a new phone and if they sold the phone released last year they will most likely do so every year. The reason there's a second hand market with a year old phones is because people obsessively buy new phones. How exactly is that environmentally friendly than starting to use a phone made by a company with higher ethics? Surely the later stacks higher in being environmentally and morally friendly?

    Duchebag is spouting capitalists "trickle down" economics. Rather than fix the cause, find the flex tape to hide it. Rich people buy new phones, less rich buy phones from the rich, and so on. No one needs to look past the marketing into ethics in how they were made and companies keep profiting in billions by exploitation of the poor. So so environmentally friendly.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago

    People are going to buy new phones regardless. You not buying used phones is not going to change that.

    Buying used or refurbished keeps the devices they‘d throw away (or keep in a drawer for 10 years, then throw away), if they couldn’t sell them, from landfills.

    Also, I know plenty of people who are well off that buy second hand phones and even more people who couldn’t even afford a Fairphone (which starts at almost 500€ for a 4 and 650€ for a 5) that buy a brand new 200-300€ phone every two years.

    And those low end phones are the least environmentally friendly because they‘re definitely unethically made they most likely break more quickly than higher end options, they usually don’t get updates for very long, if at all, and there’s no noteworthy second hand market for them because people just throw them away (or into a drawer) if the phone stops working or when they feel like getting a new one, because who buys a 2 year old low end phone second hand?

    Buying used instead is a great option. You get a higher end device for cheaper without anything new having to be made for you. It‘ll still last you years and you’ll have a better experience than with a cheap new phone.

    Yes, it would be better if all phones were ethically produced, easy to repair and would last a long time. Especially if there are ethically phones in the sub 300€ market. Won’t be easy to achieve, if at all, and wouldn’t stop blind consumerism but it would make for an even better second hand market. Because, you know what’s better than a fairphone? A second hand fairphone.

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  • [–] [S] 17 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    but half the battery life in video decode means charging your phone twice as often even if you don't watch Youtube all day

    Most of the power goes into the screen. The Pixel 8 has a ridiculously power efficient screen. I have one. It also costs $300 to replace. The Fairphone's is $100.

    other phones have sliders or slots that will let you live swap either card without even taking the back off

    Slots and sliders inevitably weaken the phone frame making it easier to break. They also cost more to machine.

    even the fairest phone is environmentally costlier than rescuing an old second hand phone.

    Replacing a battery to rescue a Pixel will run you $100-200.

    Many design choices make a lot of sense when looked through the repairability, durability and cost of repairability lenses.

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    [–] 129 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Eh, I stopped paying attention to Linus after the whole debacle last year.

    Hmm, no, actually I think I stopped paying attention to him quite a long while ago. I think once they went all in on the clickbaity titles and just non-content, algorithm filler.

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  • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (32 children)

    I first reevaluated my perception of him (shall we say) after that AWFUL “let’s try Linux” series, and it didn’t exactly get better from there.

    The Microsoft ball gargling is ridiculous on its own

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  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    The Linux series was one of the best, because it showed what would happen if someone who didn’t know what they were doing tried to move to Linux. Linux shills have been preaching “it’s the year of the Linux desktop” forever now, but since it’s so different from windows and macOS there’s a massive learning curve that only shows up once you’ve switched.

    I would bet 8/10 people who have used windows/macOS for 30+ years would have many of the same problems as Linus did. I know I’ve made many of the same mistakes that were made by Linus/Luke in that series, including accidentally nuking my DE.

    Linux sucks as a desktop if you aren’t already familiar with Linux from the terminal. There’s a few edge cases, but for the most part it’s not a good experience if you do anything more than web browsing.

    I’m no Linus shill, though I do enjoy their content for the most part. He’s not a tech god like people make him out to be, he’s just a slightly above average tech nerd who’s a good presenter. And that’s the audience that the Linux shills are trying to push the OS onto.

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    [–] 102 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Who cares what linus thinks he is a youtube shill.

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    [–] 87 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Whenever I see Linus I feel like everything is rushed and not thought through. He barely knows what he is holding. He just doesn't care; he has 20 more reviews he has to record today. Or something like that.

    "Deal breaker! It doesn't even do my laundry."

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's honestly my biggest problem with him as well. He makes such a big thing about having 900 videos a week or whatever that it just makes you think that he can't possibly put any real effort into any of them, it's literally not possible. Why not reduce the number videos and actually produce better quality content.

    Part of the problem is that he has to be in every video or almost every video the channel producers. If you look at something like Corridor Digital they have a number of people who are regularly on camera so individuals don't have to do a bunch of videos one after another. So each individual video gets more focus.

    What's the point in putting out a badly informed review, all it does is weaken your brand.

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    [–] 83 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I don't think Linus Sebastian is worth watching during the NCIX days because he always seem like someone who would spend the least amount of effort and say whatever is popular to get the most amount of views. As you can see in this video, a lot of the criticism he made on the Fairphone are really nitpicking and isn't fair (heh) at all.

    For example, the phone thickness, which he measured with a caliper as a point, is not a metric most people outside of reviewers would care about, especially since most people puts a beefy case on their phone immediately anyways, and size is usually the main tradeoff with modularity.

    Or their point about using a Qualcomm industrial chip instead of a Snapdragon chip as a point against Fairphone, when they have previously stated that it is to get a longer time of support.

    That being said, having a long, uncut and unfiltered reaction video towards criticism by having the co-founder improv on the spot was not the smartest thing to do on Fairphone's part. He came off as defensive and completely unprepared in the video and failed to address the criticism effectively (with some easy rebuttals if he was given even a little time to prepare) effectively, which is not great for PR.

    The video could be much more effective if they cut it down to half the length with an actual script. It's a YouTube video, there's no reason to do it completely live and unscripted.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago

    For the last part: I'm pretty sure it's just his thing to do "real" things, instead of scripting, cutting it down, watching it before or anything.

    I also very much got the feeling that he acted in a defensive and hurt way, but it's his real emotion and I can understand it since Linus is bashing the phone much more than "necessary".

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  • [–] 67 points 2 years ago

    Linus is full of shit in a lot of videos

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  • [+] 66 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)
  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    Yeah. He took flack. It was more about the completeness and accuracy of the reviews rather than being unfair.... at least from what I recall.

    They did a whole show of the matter, suspended uploads for a week or so, did some internal restructuring, hired a new CEO. Linus is now chief vision officer or some such nonsense.

    Bluntly, I liked LTT videos more when they were a scrappy bunch of nerds working out of a house, putting out a couple videos a week...

    You knew the information wasn't perfect and that was fine. It was enough to give you an impression of what to expect. They did a recent comparison that confirmed something I already knew, by taking a smattering of the "same" CPU and testing them against eachother. They found that some were quantifiably better than others. To me this was proof that all reviews are skewed. You never know which way they'll be skewed, and it really doesn't matter. The fact remains that all tech reviews are going to be different than personal experience. They're also going to differ from reviewer to reviewer since, even if they're using the "same" hardware, that hardware might be slightly faster or slower than other reviewers by a small margin. Once upon a time the hardware was so similar and the differences were so small you could effectively ignore this variance. Modern hardware is so fast that even a small variance can make a pretty significant difference to benchmark performance.

    So you have to take literally everything posted as a review with a grain of salt. It's not accurate to what you would experience buying the exact same stuff off a shelf. As lithography gets smaller and smaller the relatively minor variance will have a larger and larger impact to the final products performance.

    It's the way of things. All things. Whether it's a car or a computer, some just roll off the line different.

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  • [+] 48 points 2 years ago
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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago* (8 children)

    When they ditched the headphone jack fairphone ditched environmentalism.

    The fairphone 3+ was their last fair phone.

    It's just another cheap phone now. Made in the same place from the same stuff as other makers, with maybe a year of extra security updates.

    They started by doing stuff differently, now they do things the same as everyone else and want to pretend they're different.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    It's still a modular, repairable phone. That's objectively different to a regular phone. Not to mention the broad support for ROMs.

    I still wouldn't buy one because of the cost, reduced performance, reduced battery life, and worse screen than other phones. It's not worth it even if it's upgradable as it can't be upgraded enough to stay relevant forever anyway unlike a framework where you can plop in a new motherboard.

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    [–] 42 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ew, who still watches LTT?

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    Linus simply isn't the target audience for this phone. He says he's onboard with their mission and everything, but then makes points that aren't relevant to their mission. Also, if a company as dedicated to their mission as FairPhone (or so they claim, I haven't personally checked) can make a phone like this, then probably the reason other companies make better phones is really because they don't care about ethics and morals but cold hard cash.

    CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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    [–] 36 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The only LTT review I'm interested in is a review of the culture in the workplace.

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    [+] 31 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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    [–] 31 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Fuck Lingus. Who cares what he thinks about anything?

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    [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I agree with a lot of the points LTT had, I was pretty excited for this video when I saw it. But the response was just complaing and excuses instead of just being nice and simple "here's the issue you had, We can either fix it, or can't for these reasons..."

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I was expecting something like "Yeah, this is an issue, we know. It's that way because we had to make a trade-off to enable ..." but it was mostly just lame excuses or just talking about something entirely unrelated to the point being made.

    Like the thickness of the device and bezels. Just accept it, the FP is thicc. It's a conscious trade-off you made. Be open about it. Don't whine about measuring with the camera bump included (if anything, measuring from the bump gives the FP an advantage since its bump isn't as thic as others?). If the bezels are a little thicker than the competition, just state why that is (i.e. to make it easier to replace).

    Had to stop watching after that or I would have died of cringe.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    ITT people mad at Linus for pointing out all the reasons the phone wouldn’t appeal to a mass market audience

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    [–] 24 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    5 years later

    This phone sucks, the display looks moderate at 1° viewing angle, isn't as powerful as my desktop PC, and we think all resources should be mined in the most unethical ways so we can have 20 more hours of tiktok on a single charge.

    Tech channels go further and further from the mark of "good". I'm not playing AAA games on my phone, I don't watch YouTube for 20 hours straight, I prefer larger bezels (even if slightly uneven) because I tend to touch the screen accidentally if they're too small, and I prefer more responsible resources even if it means less battery life or performance.

    I don't need a PC in my pocket and Linus is just going too far into the techbro headspace for me to trust him for anything .

    This video is how so many tech reviewers are now, credit to MeatCanyon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GsoZOpw8aE

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    [–] 23 points 2 years ago

    Fuck Linus "Tech Tips"

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Whatever you wanna say about the fairphone, LTT shouldn't have any say in the review industry after their back-to-back lying to the public AND sexual harassment debacles. They've been sleazy for years, taking money from companies they claim to review impartially, and twisting everything into a meme factory instead of putting the tiniest amount of effort into quality reviews and tech journalism.

    Linus is absolutely the last guy you should be listening to on anything unless he's explaining how he managed to salvage his reputation after covering up toxic and predatory workplace behaviour and still coming out the other side a multimillionaire.

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    [–] 23 points 2 years ago

    Tbh both have fair points from their side of bias.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The framework laptop is not handicapped in terms of performance nearly as much and has a much more reasonable price for what you get idk what you're talking about

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    [–] 20 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I don't care what fairphone or Linus says. They got rid of the headphone jack. A "modular" phone my ass.

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    [–] 20 points 2 years ago (23 children)

    he's an investor in framework btw

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    [+] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
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    [–] 19 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Phones don't use much energy. I'm not getting the "efficiency" thing for wireless charging. Even new standards are basically the same.

    This CEO sounds like he has no idea what he's talking about

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  • [–] [S] 28 points 2 years ago (15 children)

    Energy lost as heat during the power transmission. It's what makes the phones warm during wireless charging. That heat decreases the lifespan of the battery and makes the phone uncomfortable to use, which is why wireless charging speed is limited once the phone reaches a certain temperature. I specifically avoid using wireless charging on my Pixel to extend its battery lifespan since it will live for 7 years and battery replacement is expensive. New wireless charging standards could probably play with frequency and other parameters in order to reduce energy lost as heat, similar to how increasing the voltage in a circuit decreases loss to heat for the same cables.

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