With completely wireless earbuds, the rule is: when the battery fails, they have to be disposed of. Not so with the Fairbuds, that allow you to replace batteries in just a few seconds. Combined with a repairable design, the earbuds should therefore have an extremely long lifetime.
Is there app open source?
Their website has a page that says they “embrace open source”
I couldn’t find the source code specifically for their app. Maybe this?
https://github.com/fairphone/android_device_fairphone_FP5
Honestly have no clue what I’m looking at there. There seems to be no iOS equivalent, so who knows.
Otherwise, their app permissions seem pretty reasonable:
• discover and pair nearby Bluetooth devices
• Access Bluetooth settings
• Pair with Bluetooth devices
• connect to paired Bluetooth devices
But yeah, if no open source, that can definitely be a deal-breaker for the market they seem to be targeting.
FairPhone’s is not really the open source crowd though?
They proclaim to value open source and it seems they’ve tried to do some stuff in the past. I think software freedom is a natural conclusion of hardware repairability but it seems their priority is instead on being green and workers up the chain getting a fair pay.
This seems like part of their android os for FP5, TWRP is a common open source android recovery image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWRP_(software)
Probably a attempt to open source the component they can, in the release note, they list the components that are not working.