Ever since I learned about the Fairphone, I keep trying to figure out when they’ll release the Fairphone 5.
Further, I keep wondering whether it’ll be usable easily and realistically by Verizon, since there’s some complications with Fairphone being based in the Netherlands, but I believe generally supported across Europe since so much of their website is in English.
Just about anything I find over on Reddit seems to be outdated, speculating and guessing, or otherwise unreliable.
Anybody know many details about when it might come out, and whether it’ll be supported here in the US??
Good looking out. And thanks for explaining all that! There’s lots of stuff with the security and platform that’s still currently beyond my depth of understanding (it doesn’t help that tech and cybersecurity are screaming ahead so fast that it’s one of those Red Queen “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place” fields where I can’t seem to catch up or stay anywhere close to current)
Mine is currently a Pixel 4a, and, ironically enough to your feelings about the headphone jack, which my Pixel 4a does have, one of my personal/primary gripes related to capitalist consumerism and spending, is that it doesn’t have a removable microSD card slot, and I personally prefer to keep and backup my photos and files and everything on the local microSD card that I can switch out to whatever, rather than being forced to pay for Google’s additional cloud storage.
So it sounds as if we have similar reasons behind the
I wish I could just pick and choose a company and device that’s not massive, that does have a microSD slot (and ideally a second one for a dual SIM), not un-fixable and un-updatable, and reasonably eco-friendly. And I can’t help but see flagship models now of major companies soaring upwards of $2,000 USD, which is just fucked. Ugh, le sigh
Yeah the trend is more compute power more price more screen real estate, less features. Clearly the phones are not competing on user choice, they’re competing on a few big metrics. So we look to a small market entrant, to come to our privacy and option niche, to satisfy us. Fair phone felt like that company.
I see a future not too far off, where people don’t own laptops, desktops, even tablets. It’s all going to be some portable phone like device. The computing power is there. It’s all going to be defined by the interfaces. I hope that future includes lots of optionality. And not locked down
I often also wonder about when we’ll shift towards some combination of like Google Glass types of vision wearables, communicating seamlessly with some form of headphones (or ear pods, since those seem to be so goddamn popular, even tho I see somebody lose one of their two every dang day it seems…) and communicating seamlessly with the FitBit-style watches that so many people sell their souls to
But I’m still also personally really a fan of big screens, hence why I really love seeing the foldable technologies like Samsung’s Z Flip and/or Z Fold
…and then there’s the part of me that keeps wondering how long it’ll be until there’s secure (encrypted?) ways for someone to just like 2FA-verify that they’re the owner of a car and use like the Near-Field Communication/NFC or Bluetooth or something of their phone/wearables to unlock and drive their car, or, far more importantly and bringing cybersecurity into question, being able to like “AirDrop” like a 2-hour limited usership to a friend or family member that needs to pick something up or borrow it.
Like, I envision some way to use tech to share driveability of a car digitally to friends or family, but I’m sure that all the layers to make it so it’s not like the Kia hotwiring problem are gonna take several years, and be a cat-and-mouse continued struggle.
IDK man, I’m just rambling
So the interface to the computer is your first point. I see a future where wearable glasses, dockable phones: so you can use a big monitor when you’re at home, some sort of projection, e-ink displays, are going to become much more usable.
Identity, either through a phone or some other mechanism. Phones can’t really guarantee identity, they can take factors that are hard to duplicate, to indicate identity but they can’t guarantee it. So fingerprint is a good example, the phone knows your fingerprint, you apply your finger to the fingerprint reader, and you validate to the phone you’re probably the person registered.
Access Management, once you have established identity then you want to delegate access in your example for a few hours to a car, or some other mechanism. Given that most computers are network nowadays, if you’re reasonably happy with the identity provided by a phone, access management of a car is trivial. We could probably set something up today that does what you want.
Heck Toro the Airbnb for cars does something like it already. Your phone unlocks the car and etc etc etc
I think I had seen something about Toro a while ago, but couldn’t figure out what the heck they are/were, but I didn’t bother looking into it since I actively try to minimize my consuming. I totally wouldn’t have guessed “AirBnB for cars,” but assumed finance, since that seems to be like half the dang companies that advertise somehow