Fairphone 3, and the latest Fairphone 5

hi there…

it would be great to read a detailed review of the Fairphone 3…

thanks for you consideration…!

twobebz

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Hi @twobebz, Welcome to the community.

In relation to Fairphone 3, it is a phone currently only available in the UK and European markets. While it can be bought online and shipped to Australia, this website indicates that it is bought for use on the Australian 5G network, it won’t work as it isn’t 5G compatible.

It may be one to wait until such time a model is released for the Australian market, and available within Australia. It is unlikely Choice will review the Fairphone 3 unless it becomes readily available as a mobile phone in Australia.

There are reviews from tech and media outlets online, should you be interested in finding our further information on these phones. Just internet search ‘fairphone 3 reviews’.

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Never mind 5G. As the review linked notes, it won’t even be any good in many areas in rural Australia on 4G.

If you can decide on a specific mobile network operator in an approximate region of Australia then you could at least confirm whether a given phone is suitable for your intended use. Otherwise, as the review notes

the ideal thing is that the [phone] has all the frequencies for all networks, that are used in Australia

If you do a bit of travelling then even better is that the phone has all 4G bands.

In the foreseeable future, if you don’t have the needed 4G bands then you won’t even be able to make phone calls, as carriers move towards VoLTE (doing voice calls over the 4G data network, rather than as voice calls).

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thanks for your help… i won’t be importing one in that case, and wait least until there’s an australian release… and i’m guess that won’t be anytime soon… cheers…

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One of those could be really great products we are unlikely to see sold directly in Australia. It does show what can be done. Most notably looking to support the same model for 8-10 years. Also comes with a vanilla install of Android and removable battery.

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