WEBVTT

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before you grab your pitchforks I am going to keep the fairphone 5 around I

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am a big believer in their mission to build more repairable more sustainable

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and more ethically sourced phones and with software updates planned all the

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way through 2031 there is plenty of time

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for improvements which is good because of things like this what is this to be

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fair to fairphone according to a January email the two handsets that were

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delivered to us on August 31st 2023 are

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final prototypes and not part of the retail production run that started

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shipping to customers 2 weeks later fairphone revealed that in the ramp up

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to full production they turned up some cases of bad soldering mic failures and

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antenna issues that were solved for the mass production run so the units we

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evaluated aren't technically mass production units but none of the changes

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that fairphone disclosed were likely to impact our experience with the device

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anyway with that grain of salt out of the way let's just rip the Band-Aid off

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and tell you about our sponsor melric their allnew boob 75 is a fully

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mean use your cool keyboard just listen to how good it

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sounds right out of the box I was immediately enamored with the optional

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transparent back it looks so cool it's

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plastic so you don't have to worry about it shattering and it effortlessly pops

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off so you can get to the battery and the rest of the guts it's like a little

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trick back in time but in a really good way migration to the fairphone was

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painless and I love the fingerprint sensor being built into the power button

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on the side okay that's the oldfashioned way of doing things but it is so much

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faster than an unders screen sensor especially the one I was using on the LG

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Wing speaking of oldfashioned though there is a lot going going on here

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that's less oh quaint and more what year

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is it for instance peering through the transparent back I found no obvious

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signs of wireless charging and while it's not the kind of thing that I use

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that often it still feels like a bit of a bummer and I feel the same way about

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the placement of the nano SIM and micro SD slots they are under the battery I

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mean don't get me wrong I'm grateful they're included at all and the battery

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is not glued in making it super easy to remove but why do I need to power down

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my phone in order to pop in an SD card flipping things over the display is fine

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I guess I noticed a yellow tint to it when it's off AIS more than I'm used to

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seeing on a modern OLED and just like the fairphone 4 the bezels are as large

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as they are nonuniform with the top and bottom having at least an extra SE of

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thickness compared to the sides though

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that is nothing compared to the profile view of this B bad boy damn boy damn boy

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it's about on par with my wife's s23 Ultra and that's with a dbrand

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protective case installed on it and it comes with a weight to match 212 G are

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about 7 and 1 half Freedom ounces at least we accounted for that when we

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designed our new LT lounge pants so comfy and available now at LTT Store.com

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you know what else feels like time travel I can't remember the last time I

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did a phone review and I felt like I needed to have a performance and

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responsiveness section I mean maybe I've been spoiled by more premium devices but

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the fairphone 5 really did feel more like my ancient note 9 than a modern

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phone we conducted our Labs testing alongside both a pixel 8 which was

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chosen for its comparable price and a Galaxy Note 5 that had a new battery and

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a fresh install of lineage OS in order to put the performance of the fairphone

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in the appropriate context and that is a exactly as

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flattering as it sounds we're going to have all three phones linked down below

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honestly I think our biggest surprise was the Note 5 not in every way mind you

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its gaming performance wasn't amazing it's 8 years old and doesn't even

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support all the latest and greatest Graphics extensions but for General

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phone chat browser use it's pretty darn

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responsive about on par with the fairphone 5 to the untrained Observer at

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least if you don't turn the 90 HZ display on on the fairphone 5 though

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there are some reasons that we wouldn't do that and we'll talk about those later

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now of course the fairphone did beat out the note in more of our controlled tests

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but not by as much as you'd expect and

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against contemporary competition the fair phone

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fars even worse not only did the pixel 8

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outperform it in all but one of our tests the one test where it didn't lose

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was the time to fully charge the battery and even then it was a tie also once

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charged the pixel lasted twice as long

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before it was fully discharged Ah that's

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why 90 HZ is off by default this probably comes down to fairphone's

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Unorthodox choice of s so they went with the Qualcomm qcm 6490 which tldr is not

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a phone chip rather it's optimized for long-term Industrial and Commercial iot

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applications it's a cool chip it supports an impressive list of Wireless

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Technologies including Wi-Fi 6E with 8

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by8 multi-user mimo which is absolutely unheard of in a phone and crucially it

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will enjoy long-term support from qualcom enabling fairphone to continue

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to provide updates to this thing for years to come unfortunately its cryo 670

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cores are based on older armed designs that just can't compete with modern

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chips though to be honest with you the raw performance was far from my only

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issue with this thing remember that fingerprint sensor that I started out

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loving both it and the volume buttons are not actually proud enough to be

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easily found by touch and I was constantly pressing one when I meant to

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press the other the vibration is inexcusably weak compared to our

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Challengers making it easy to miss a phone call when it's sitting in my

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pocket and compounding this issue while the maximum ringer volume of 87 DB is

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right on par with the comparison phones the fairphone 5's minimum ringer volume

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is 71 DB that is about 15 DB higher than

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the competition which is perceived as almost three times as

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loud that is really really

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loud so my options were to either miss

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my calls by having it on vibrate or

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annoy the heck out of everyone around me now admittedly I can be a bit of a

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special case at least that's what my mom says but guys I can't be the only one

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who needs to know when someone is trying to get a hold of me and this alone was

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enough to be a deal breaker while we're talking about special me I've been daily

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driving Samsung phones for a long time and I have developed a bit of a

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preference for how Samsung does things which led to my next deal breaker on the

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fair phone I cannot move the back button

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over to the right side I'm sorry but without that this lands squarely in the

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neat phones that will never be my daily driver pile making matters worse I can't

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even move the stock Google widget up and down without using a custom launcher

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really and guys I am just getting started on the skin a long press doesn't

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present an uninstall option for an app just app info I missed call screening on

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this thing a lot screenshot editing and sharing sucks and Plex would just stop

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responding entirely very regularly though admittedly that could be Plex

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just being a steaming pile of garbage and this is just a pet peeve of mine I

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couldn't find any way to have it automatically proceed when the correct

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pin is entered I gu get it pressing okay is a security feature but I don't like

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the extra keystrokes on top of all that I experienced a significant amount of

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just downright buggy Behavior with the worst being audio problems I think what

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was happening was that even though the fairphone lost its headphone jack in the

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great Bluetooth War it would sometimes experience Phantom headphone jack

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syndrome making it so that both the speaker and the earpiece would stay

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silent it was really bizarre like on a phone call I could get it to work in

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speaker and then if I was watching a YouTube video I would get no audio at

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all so the hardware is working fairphone

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told us this was an issue that they saw in early devices but then every time I

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experienced it a reboot would clear it up which indicates to me that it's a

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software issue let us know in the comments by the way if you've run into

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this with your fairphone 5 uh let's see what else uh oh the screen brightness

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bounced around like my kids at a birthday party from our testing it looks

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like pair phone doesn't do anything to smooth out the sensor data or the

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transitions between their brightness levels and they also use a fairly small

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variable to store the ambient brightness reading compared to other phones the

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result is very distracting especially

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when you're watching content in a dimly lit room where the light from the

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phone's own screen bouncing around the room and hitting the sensor will cause

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it to constantly change as it switches from one scene to the

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next uh camera didn't use it a ton when

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I did the results were oversaturated oversharpened and generally

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overprocessed I mean don't get me wrong it's a lot better than my ancient note 9

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as far as rear camera quality goes but if you put it up against anything modern

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like the pixel or an s23 ultra there's just no comparison I also found that the

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dynamic range and auto exposure of the selfie camera especially for shooting

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videos was not amazing it's just it's the kind of thing that tier ones spend a

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lot of time and money on and I feel like we just kind of take for granted until

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we don't have it to be clear there were positives too the running apps

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notification in the shade kind of

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nice okay I kid there there are there are more of them the repairability

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legitimately really cool and they've obviously put considerable effort into

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making things as straightforward as possible if you need to replace a part

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but if I'm being honest I feel like they've almost overshot the mark and

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they've made some unnecessary compromises compared to our humble Note

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5 for example other than the initial hassle of removing the back it's not

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actually that much harder to work on I mean you need to give it a bit of a

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drink of isopropyl alcohol to release the adhesive on the battery but after

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that it's a pretty easy swap you got the same ribbon cables the same tiny screws

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tiny plugs they're all the same size but

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Samsung did it without turning their phone into a freaking weapon

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for that you had to wait for the Note 7 heyo ancient Zing Samsung it kind of

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seems to me that by going the extra mile and turning everything into modules

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fairphone has solved some problems but they've also created some new ones

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leaving them with a device that is in their own words a fair phone not a great

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phone and unless you desperately want to support their mission or your needs are

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extremely basic and you just like spending more money I don't know how to

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craft a recommendation for this thing I mean maybe if they turned the S so RAM

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and storage into a module as well so you could swap that out and upgrade it but

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even then a part of me would feel so much better just steering you toward

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rescuing an old Note 5 from the shelter rather than adopting a brand new one of

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if you guys enjoyed this video the fairphone 5 isn't available in North

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America yet so hey why not check out our review of the last Gen fairphone 4