michcia's notes

getting a whimsical phone: a post-mortem

A year ago, almost to the week, I was looking into what smartphone to get. My Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G was reaching end of software updates. At that point I've had it for 3.5 years and it was a ~400 EUR phone, decent spec, nothing I could really complain about. Maybe the camera, but I already had my Instax, and then I took my parents' 2006 bridge camera, and then I got a DSLR, so now I don't exactly care about phone cameras and instead, you know, act all snob about carrying a fucking DSLR with me.

the part where i look for my dream phone

I wrote 1200 words about it, but never finished, because I was in my never-finish-a-blog era, as one does. I'll summarize briefly what I was looking for then:

First, a phone has to be as trustworthy as a laptop, or even more, because it's that much harder to look inside and replace software. Aspect number one: this is the only camera that follows me into the bathroom and I need to believe it will not record me there LMAO. Aspect number two: I had a PinePhone once, a postmarketOS edition, and I spent a whole one day trying to daily drive it, and the dialer app crashed in the middle of a call with my dad while the call continued, impossible to terminate. I also had a Nokia 800 Tough, which knew I had new Facebook messages despite both WiFi and cellular data being disabled. Neither is a good look. I'd say a phone needs to work, and work a long time from its launch, so updates are a must.

This sadly knocks out most of the contestants in the second criterium: a phone shouldn't be huge. A year ago this would make me think of Unihertz, a Chinese manufacturer known for making intentionally small, and I mean like, small small, Android phones. I've heard that modern apps sometimes don't know how to render in such conditions. Now there seems to be a Western competitor in this area releasing this year, Clicks Communicator. I imagine these can be made to work in EU, but will I find someone to service them if they break? Who knows.

Another way to eliminate the entire market would be to ask for a headphone jack. Clicks has one, and I hope we will see a resurgence, somehow, eventually. But when I was looking a year ago, beside the ASUS ROG GAMER PHONE FOR GAMERS WITH ACTIVE EFFIN' COOLING, the only real hope was the Sony Xperia line. There are two Xperias these days, the flagship 1, and the budget 10, and they put an incremental number next to the number to indicate new generations. Both 1s and 10s looked very uninspired, but had headphone jacks, camera shutter buttons, and even SD card slots. This year's 1 VIII even looks a bit more modern. However, the no-bullshit attitude (waning, as shareholders ask for more AI), comes with a >1500 EUR price point. 10 VII is closer to the 400 EUR bracket I wanted, but again, doesn't feel exciting – it's more like what I expect a phone's baseline to be.

the part where i look for just "a" phone

And so, the one year younger me looked to a different idea: if you can't find a good phone, find a whimsical one. An interesting one. I had three candidates here, sort of.

The first was Nothing Phone 3a, or its Pro variant. Looking back on this, 3a was peak Nothing and from there it's going full-speed midcore so far. It still had the "glyph" lights on the back, and a industrial-or-whatever back cover. Pro's circular camera bump looked like it had something going on, in a good way. The device-local AI button was uhhhh maybe not the greatest idea, but hey, device-local is better in my head than cloud. The promised 3 major OS updates is a poor number compared to industry leaders, but maybe I could swallow that?

The second option considered was not a specific phone, but a whole category: flip phones. I really like the concept! There's probably a nostalgic aspect to it, even though I never had a flip phone myself, there was one in the family, but I had a Nokia slider. It is indirectly a smaller phone, because it snaps in half. It's effectively a free fidget toy (uh oh, spoilers?). One big problem was the bloody high price point, at least 2x the Nothing 3a, whether for Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip series (which I think pulled out the stock for Flip6 the moment Flip7 was announced for more money) or the Motorola razr (which neglected to sell the non-Ultra variants in Poland).

The third candidate will have to wait, because exactly then I, somewhat randomly, reconnected with a high school friend, who turned out to have a like-new Z Flip4 in his drawer. Admittedly, we're talking a 3-ish years old phone, which he bought and quickly realized he didn't like (contrary to phones that unfold into tablet-size, which he got interested in), but he was willing to part with it for like 175 EUR. I thought that was a good deal, even if I was only going to use it for a year while its major OS updates support came to the end, which, FUCK, I need to be less prophetic with my words.

Here we go, 800 words, knew I was being too verbose.

the part where i use the phone

I think the truth is already spilt, I am writing this because this phone fucking died on me after, more or less, 1 year. Like, I think most of the internals are probably fine, it was working well, but the foldable screen started blanking on me while I was in Wrocław. Judging from the fact that for a few days I could still get it to light up and work at ~130 degrees open, no more no less, I think it's a failed display connector? I can't really tell, because I didn't take it to repair, for two reasons: 1) I don't know a good repair shop 2) I got this phone for 175 EUR, do I believe it can be fixed for that much and not gain one million other problems?

So, I spent a beautiful one year with it, here's an assortment of thoughts on it:

Z Flip4 is not a flip smartphone as they sell them today. Flip8 just came out with the innovation of, you can now use any app on the cover screen, which people have done on Flip7 with some apps as far as I can tell. This is only possible when said cover screen is meaningfully large. Flip4's is just a small horizontal strip and only supports a small rotation of widgets, almost exactly the same selection as my Galaxy Fit3 smartband. So, music, calendar, timers, weather, steps count? I ended up not using it almost at all.

The main screen was largely alright. The hinge is very perceivable to touch, and often also to eyes. I ended up making, slowly but surely, a very nice scratch across the hinge. The action of opening the hinge is very satisfying. I am probably making up fake memories right now, but it requires quite a lot of force. My most common way of opening the phone with one hand was to block it against my collarbone, though ribs or hips also work if you want to be less ostentatious.

The biggest concern about the screen's usability was that it's too fucking tall and I don't have genetically engineered hyperlong thumbs. This is partially mitigated by an excellent if understated feature, where swiping down on the fingerprint reader pulls down the notifications shelf, and you can swipe down again to get more feature knobs (WiFi/Bluetooth/airplane mode), or you can swipe up to close it. My next phone after that (HAH, she spoils again) doesn't have that and I miss it dearly.

The flippiness is great for mobility, I think my pockets are more okay with a phone twice as thick than they would be with a giant phone. That said, I found no serious examples where the form factor was useful. Flip4 is weighted in such a way that if I leave it half-unfolded and try to interact with the screen, it will be wobbling all the damn time. Apps also don't seem to know what to do with a half-unfolded phone: some go into a special split screen mode, which almost always feels bad. Say, YouTube will dedicate the upper half to the video and the lower half to extra big controls, which kinda sucks if you wanted to browse comments, but also most of the video I watch is not square, so a lot of the screen is wasted. Doing a 50-50 split between two apps also sucks, because inevitably you will open a screen keyboard, and it will stop making sense.

In short, I liked the compactness most of all, and maybe that's what I would enjoy the most about the new flips with a large cover screen, but I don't feel this is worth the 1000-2000 EUR investment. Especially if I'm afraid I will break it within a year, which I did.

the part where i let my hurt drive my search for a phone

Just a few weeks before it happened, I was saying my next phone would not be in a phone form factor, or that I would get a landline phone rather than a new smartphone. Let's just say I am annoyed with what smartphones and social networking sites did to us. Sadly, getting a cable long enough to go to work and back and still be connected to the landline seems unreasonable, so I got another smartphone.

Going back to the Galaxy A52s would be interesting, except uhhh. After I got the Flip4, I flashed Lineage on it, which worked quite well I must say, and I started using it as an iPod-like. In my peak moments, I carried three phones: the Flip, the music player, and the corporate pager. I got quickly bored with that, but not before I watched the back cover of A52s unglue itself for no apparent reason (did it overheat? did last year's heatwave do it? no idea).

So this time, I would like to get a phone to last absolutely as long as possible. If it outlasts the tech industry at its current rate of progress/collapse, even better. So I laser focused on repairability and long term support, and came back to what was the third candidate in the contest for whimsical and interesting phone: The Fairphone (Gen. 6), which, oh god, I refuse to call by its legal name. Fairphone 6.

In last year's blog draft, I wrote:

it's very unexciting – it's just a decent phone, with a slightly better promise of longevity and ethics. 600 EUR is a bit more than I'd like to pay, but for the promise of 5 year physical warranty and 8 year software support, that seems neat. And the (whatever the name was) focus mode button seems decent enough.

And that still seems right?

This phone fails most of the tests I set out. The 6.31 inch screen is smaller than my parents' (ancient by my standards) Realme phones or the A52s, but it's still huge compared to, say, Nexus 4. There is no headphone jack, though I got used to maining Bluetooth over the year. The software support is not getting any longer just because I waited a year, the 2033 deadline is not moving. And Fairphone is not a major manufacturer, who's to say what will happen to them in 7 years? I'm not sure I know any Fairphone user, maybe there is one that I forgot about; I do recall and managed to find fedi posts on one story where spare parts ran out and Fairphone took a long time to restock them, even if the final conclusion was okay.

That said, they are more than 10 years in this business, and this seems like the best path I can take right now (as always, this is my opinion and not necessarily that of my employer, who is also in the phone business, as well as most other business I might have an opinion on).

the part where i have a new phone again and it's green (colour)

I got my Fairphone 6 this last Wednesday, I think the exact day big rumours for Fairphone 6+ started popping up. I did my best to ignore them, but it really seems the 6+ is coming out next week. But I'm not sure I mind, cause 6 is a fine phone.

That's about all I have in mind after 4.5 days with it. I do wonder if I will have more to say later. Or maybe it will be, finally, an uneventful phone? I'll pray for that.