Tag: fairphone

Project Ara and the dream of a modular pocket computer

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Google’s Project Ara is no more. The failure of Ara shouldn’t be seen as the inability to make a modular smartphone where users can replace parts (after all, Fairphone seem to be doing rather well with Fairphone 2… I just wish the team would hurry up and get Sailfish running on the Dutch handset). Ara’s cancellation feels like the realisation of Android’s commercial nature. Modular smartphones are not going to be as efficient as custom-built sealed units. The software cannot be tightly optimised around specific hardware, the modular components require connectors to a central spine, they’ll need to be larger

I’m keeping an eye on the Android powered Fairphone

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It’s a €350 Android phone, with a 4.3 inch screen a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 16MB of on-board storage, and 1 MB of Ram. pretty middle of the road specs for an Android 4.2 device. But it’s a ‘fair’ phone… The first-ever Fairphone combines social values with smart, radically open design that considers the full lifecycle of the product. Worker welfare initiatives and conflict-free minerals put people first every step of the way. Transparency is paramount, from materials and production to pricing. One to keep an eye on, not for pricing and tech, but to see if people will go