That’s my take on phones in general. It’s a “pick one” situation. You can either have fancy hardware features or you can have freedom in software, not both.
Hopefully my current phone holds out long enough for there to be a compelling choice that somehow has both.
As things are right now, it’ll either be a Fairphone 5 for the freedom it brings, Pixel as a compromise, or Samsung Galaxy for the features.
I hate the fact that none of the big names support CalDAV natively. DAVx5 is cool and all, but app developers really need to step up their shit and support CalDAV already. Not just Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar but CalDAV as well. It’s not like they need to rebuild their apps from scratch.
At this point you might just be better served using a web app instead of a native mobile app. Maybe K-9 Mail transformation into Thunderbird Mobile might bring some good news, but I’m not holding high hopes.
Maybe we should, under the EU’s DMA, force anyone that bundles a calendar/note app with their phone OS to support CalDAV as well as any proprietary protocol of their choice.
There is valid criticism as well though. Mostly on the topic of software support duration and scope vs. consumer expectations. But there are also some realiability and hardware failure rate concerns.
It’s important to view those critiques in the context of Fairphone being an underdog company with a relatively small production volume onto which we project the same expectations we have of Apple and Samsung.
Ultimately it is viability of the business case determines how good of a value proposition the Fairphones will be long term. Which is a shame, because Fairphone’s vision is almost exactly what I want in a mobile device. It all leads to this catch-22 situation where the Fairphone is not quite the undisputed best choice it should be, and the only way for them to get there is that everyone pretends it is. It should be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but consumers don’t want to make concessions.