I understand the cynicism, but it's worth looking at the details. This is not the most powerful phone on the market, but it looks very good. The price is reasonable. It is easier and less expensive to repair than anything else on the market and it comes with a much longer warranty. They appear to be serious about both minimizing their environmental impact and being fair to the workers all the way down their supply chain. Those are all significant achievements.
I don't need a new phone right now, but I'm still tempted, just to encourage the effort. We tend to complain about all corporations being basically evil. We should do everything we can to support the ones that really aren't.
Of course not it doesn't even have basic features like audio out (headphone jack) or data out (SD card). This is just another copycat android phone no one will buy.
5 years of hardware support with 8 years of software support is starting to approach desktop class software updates. It would be superb going from android 13 to android 18, 19, and maybe even 20. The snapdragon should easily hold out for at least 5-6 years.
Where? I see this tidbit about a guarantee of 5 years of OS updates until 2031. That means android up to android 18 and perhaps more if possible. Considering, they supported older fairlhone devices out of vendor support. They should be able to.
I don't care how sustainable it is, if there is no headphone jack or SD card reader then I am not buying it so I guess a company making a product with mixing key features that consumers don't purchase is the most sustainable model of all.
What matters is whether the majority of the market cares. Some of the most popular phones today don't have the Headphone Jack or SD card. I doubt the Fairphone business is going to live or die by the headphone jack, it will be things live price and consumer interest in their mission, which I think is probably low, sadly.