It’s more than just a grading system, there’s some hardware minimums for battery life/durability etc. and a clause for repairs regardless of the grade:
They must also ensure that spare parts are available for up to seven years after the product has been sold, offer at least five years of software support and provide professional technicians with non-discriminatory access to repair software.
I wonder where something like Unihertz phones could be. Recently a teardown video of one of those surprised me, and it seems they do quite a few phones that way. They have a bunch of rugged phones, and at least some of them appear to be screwed together rather than glued.
Honestly, I haven’t even considered that was a possibility nowadays. Otherwise I’d probably get one of those over Ulefone. Based on videos I’ve seen, my Armor 24 is virtually irreparable. You have to enter through the screen which uses very strong glue and is recessed into the body. Disassembly thus basically requires destroying the screen.
There are 2 Possibilities to this:
Either every phone gets an F-, or they set the bar so low that the Fairphone is 6 ranks above S tier
It’s more than just a grading system, there’s some hardware minimums for battery life/durability etc. and a clause for repairs regardless of the grade:
I wonder where something like Unihertz phones could be. Recently a teardown video of one of those surprised me, and it seems they do quite a few phones that way. They have a bunch of rugged phones, and at least some of them appear to be screwed together rather than glued.
Honestly, I haven’t even considered that was a possibility nowadays. Otherwise I’d probably get one of those over Ulefone. Based on videos I’ve seen, my Armor 24 is virtually irreparable. You have to enter through the screen which uses very strong glue and is recessed into the body. Disassembly thus basically requires destroying the screen.
Unihertz never updates their phones. It’s amazing, fairly repairable hardware, but software support is terrible.
It’s sad. They could let the community handle it, but they won’t.
This. I was going to buy one on kickstarter, but their reply on planned updates wasn’t reassuring.