back to article Fairphone goes on sale to all

When is a phone PC? When it's a Fairphone, the smartphone “that puts social values first” and has a rather politically-correct (PC) attitude. The Android-powered mobe went on sale a couple of weeks ago to Fairphone's 17,000-odd email subscribers, around 2,000 of whom pledged €325 to acquire one of the handsets, which promise …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm

    Anyone managed to squeeze FirefoxOS on one of these?

    Jeez, I just looked at the site and saw this:

    undefined

    Phones sold

    21

    days left

    NaN%

    of goal

    Nein danke.

    1. Rukario

      Re: Hmmm

      Weird, it's now showing 2104 phones sold, 22 days left*, 42% of goal

      (* it's still Wednesday here)

  2. Chairo
    Black Helicopters

    conflict-free tin and tantalum from parts the Democratic Republic of the Congo

    Congo and conflict free seems to be some kind of contradiction. Or do they mean they recycle the stuff from bomb debris and destroyed military vehicles?

    Whenever I hear someone claiming political correctness I get goose pimples.

    Still - if it is an honest effort, then I wish them all the best, of course.

    Black helicopter - lots of stuff for recycling...

  3. Christian Berger

    Wait! They are selling it?

    That's a revolutionary new idea for novel mobile phones. For example Nokia successfully tries a "no sale" strategy on their N950 and N9 phones, which much success, the N9 probably still sells more often than all their Windows phones combined.

    So trying to sell it, that could be the new idea for successful mobile phones everyone's been waiting for.

  4. Steven Roper
    WTF?

    What's politically correct about using materials that weren't produced using slave/forced labour (which is what I understand "conflict free" to mean)?

    Political correctness is AFAIK about oversensitive do-gooders getting offended at every stupid little comment where no offence was intended, ruining careers and lives for expressing non-inclusive ideas, seeing racism, misogyny and homophobia around every corner, and biasing social services against white males on the fallacious and hypocritical stereotype that all white males are privileged - none of which have anything to do with not using slave labour in one's products.

    1. Marvin the Martian
      IT Angle

      Not quite.

      No, 'Politically Correct' is an 80s euphemism, from a time when it was par for the course to arrest a man for "walking while black". And closing-time-at-a-dive-pub type ramblings got on national stages under the label of 'humor' and 'bernard manning.

      The fact that it's now generally associated with nannyism and i-dotting officiousness is very encouraging in itself.

      1. Steven Roper

        Re: Not quite.

        Except that, thanks to good intentions going too far the other way, it's now par for the course to arrest a man for "walking while white" and "looking in a woman's general direction." Not to mention that the adherents of political correctness completely lack any sense of humour in any event.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not quite.

          In my experience the kind of person who complains about being harnessed for "walking while white" is in actual fact being harnessed for being a loud mouth, drunken and threatening twat. They just need an excuse so it's not their fault. In the same way that their lack of social skills, empathy and enthusiasm are in no way the reason they can't get a job, must be them immigrant, what else could it be?.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Harness

            Go and put your harness back on, otherwise I will harass you.

      2. Jedit Silver badge
        Facepalm

        "closing-time-at-a-dive-pub type ramblings got on national stages "

        Ah yes, a different time when we didn't have Al Murray and Frankie Boyle.

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: "closing-time-at-a-dive-pub type ramblings got on national stages "

          >What's politically correct about using materials that weren't produced using slave/forced labour (which is what I understand "conflict free" to mean)?

          Not so much about slave labour, its more about the arms which are bought with the proceeds of tantalum.

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    In cynical mode....

    So 4999*325 = 1624 675 euros

    Sorry guys we didn't make the target so we're going to have scrub the plan.

    Why yes that is a copy of the original version of the "The Producers" in my pocket.

    Springtime for Hitler, and Germany. Deutschland is happy and gay..

    1. Arachnoid
      Thumb Down

      conflict-free tin and tantalum

      And no Horse meat in the process.......

  6. Professor Clifton Shallot

    Dual SIM

    Is the most interesting feature for me (um, obviously I care about all the not evil they are doing. I care a lot.)

    They claim that's dual active which would be ideal. Never had a phone that could do that - does anyone have any experience of how that sort of thing works in practice?

    1. Richard Wharram

      re: care a lot

      about disasters, fires, floods and killer bees ?

      1. PsychoHippy
        Mushroom

        Re: re: care a lot

        About the wars we're fighting

        Gee, that looks like fun!

      2. Professor Clifton Shallot

        Re: re: care a lot

        "about disasters, fires, floods and killer bees ?"

        And about the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks.

    2. Rukario
      Thumb Up

      Re: Dual SIM

      Both SIMs are active and you get two signal strength meters. At least on my phone (a Chinese-made LongShengFa 820), an incoming call or text comes up saying what SIM it's coming in on. When sending, I get two send buttons, so I can select which SIM to place the call/send the text on.

    3. Radiodoc
      Happy

      Re: Dual SIM

      "they claim that's dual active which would be ideal. Never had a phone that could do that - does anyone have any experience of how that sort of thing works in practice?"

      Very well indeed - I had a HK$260 dual Sim phone (GBP ~22) which I had one DUAL number on the SIM, one a number in the Philippines so that anyone there could send me a ONE PESO SMS = a few UK pence to anywhere in the world that I was..... and it also included a PAYG Hong Kong Local phone number too.

      The second part of the dual SIM was filled with another PAYG Hong Kong Local phone number - so I had a choice as to which HK number I used... and effectively - a backup if one of the SIM's credit got exhausted.

      A HK$48 Rechargable SIM sell for about 50% of the face value in ShamShuiPo, Kowloon, and I almost always discard the value expired SIM as it costs HK$48 to buy a HK$50 recharge card. The only time I have "recharged" is when I still had a large credit balance left as the SIM was about to "Time-out".

      I've no objection to tossing out my old mobile numbers - they are expendable here.

      I've NO desire to pay vast sums of cash for connections that I seldom need to use.

    4. Dave Lawton

      Re: Dual SIM

      I have one, Samsung B5722, works quite well.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There you go

    There you go Swampy now you can tweet while waiting in line to collect your Giro...

  8. Mr. Anonymous Coward ... thank you!

    Dual Sim

    If this phone really does operate with 'active' dual SIM cards, then I want one.

    1. Z80

      Re: Dual Sim

      "24/May: Sim capability has changed to Dual Stand-by. That basically means that you cannot have two calls active at the same time in both of the SIM cards. Though when in stand-by you can get a call on any of the 2 numbers."

      http://buy-a-phone-start-a-movement.fairphone.com/specs/

      1. Rukario
        WTF?

        Re: Dual Sim

        > you cannot have two calls active at the same time in both of the SIM cards.

        I can't figure out how this would work... how can you carry on two conversations at once on a single phone?

        1. Terry Cloth

          Two calls at once?

          I presume just as you do with a multi-line desk phone: put one of them on hold. What would be really neat would be connecting the two so you get a 3-way conference call.

  9. Terry Cloth

    Fairphone goes on sale to all---for sufficiently restrictive values of ``all''

    They're only taking order from Europe. Here in the U.S., I'm SOL.

    If it's simply a matter of shipping, I'll gladly pay the extra. (Would the VAT refund cover that?) On the other hand, if it's about meeting additional regulations, it may be a while.

    In either case, I'd _really_ hate for them to miss the 5k goal because we outlanders can't buy one.

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