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It started with notebooks, but that wasn’t the master plan.
Please just nail laptops and get where they are in stock and new parts keep being released before you spread yourself too thin.
Honestly? Yea. There’s so much potential revenue selling to businesses that they haven’t even begun tapping into yet.
not to mention they are still way more expensive and impossible to obtain outside the us and europe. it would be nice if they showed us first if they really can support a modular product like this in the actual long term.
My employer bought a bunch of Framework laptops for events, but is struggling to get them in a way that they can be provided as employee laptops.
I would love to see them make modular and repairable:
- Phones
- Tablets
- 2-in-1s
- Televisions
- Monitors
- Cameras
- WiFi routers
- Printers (copier, scanner)
Those things so often end up in the dump just because one small part fails, or gets too outdated. Think about all the parts in a wifi router that work just fine, but get thrown away anyway, because the radio module doesn’t support the shiny new WiFi version.
Average people really don’t care about newest wifi version, so I’d say routers are one of the longest living electronics in most households, unless they are rented out from your ISP who might be interested in updating it often to justify the rent.
And if built it right it could last even longer than that, just upgrade the asics for the new standards instead of getting a whole new unit.
ISPs buy the cheapest reasonable equipment they can. When I have had equipment killed by lightning, the ISP’s VDSL router has always been among the dead
It especially sucks that the ISP isn’t following whatever standards there are, so other VDSL modems can’t connect
ISPs buy the cheapest reasonable equipment they can. When I have had equipment killed by lightning, the ISP’s VDSL router has always been among the dead
It especially sucks that the ISP isn’t following whatever standards there are, so other VDSL modems can’t connect
ISPs buy the cheapest reasonable equipment they can. When I have had equipment killed by lightning, the ISP’s VDSL router has always been among the dead
It especially sucks that the ISP isn’t following whatever standards there are, so other VDSL modems can’t connect
Printers. God that market sucks right now. I had to break down and get one recently and just feel dirty. I know I’m fucked when its eol
Brother laser printer
The only maintenance it needs is scraping the layers of dust off it occasionally 😂
I as far as I know the best OpenWRT AP’s / Routers you can buy right now is the Banana Pi R64, R3, R4(Still in development). Open source firmware with a long support life of updates and security patches and a nice metal casing.
I say as far as I know because I have not bought one yet as I don’t have the funds for that right now. It is my next AP replacement though.
Music players (though I’ve preordered a Tangara, so hopefully that will be covered).
I hope not phones. Fairphone has the repairable market, and that would take away from Framework as well as Framework taking away from Fairphone, making both weaker.
Maybe tablets would make sense, if you could reuse components from the laptops.
Fairphone has the repairable market
In Europe.
Framework sells their products in more markets, including North America, which adds another 600 million potential customers.
This says you have been able to buy a Fairphone in the US since July last year, unless I’ve misunderstood?
That’s a third party who installs their own version of android on Fairphones and then sells them.
I’m in Canada, and they don’t ship here. If I place an order as an American, all versions and variants are on backorder and there’s no mention of parts availability.
So, no. They don’t officially sell or support the North American market.
Options and competition are good things for consumers. Not sure why you would be against that.
When you have a small market niche, competition can kill both companies. I’m not worried about options, I’m worried that soon both companies won’t exist.
I think the only way it makes sense for Framework to get into the phone market is to follow the footsteps of Pine64 trying to create Linux phones. There’s no point making a phone at an inherently higher cost to make it more durable and repairable with a “closed SDK” SoC that has a fixed EoL date. I made a more detailed comment about this in the main thread.
After five years building laptops, what might Framework add to the portfolio? Patel won’t say — I only get the barest hints, no matter how many different ways I ask.
Thanks for the nothing burger?
Tablet?
I would think they’d do a phone first given the market for phones is way bigger.
Isn’t that basically what Fairphone is?
It’s very similar but with a different philosophy. Fairphone is about sustainability and being ethical. Framework is about repairability and upgradability(which the fairphone isn’t).
Sustainability is a large part of Framework’s mission as well. The CEO has explicitly said that one of their goals is that none of their laptops should end up in a landfill.
That’s definitely true. There’s definitely a lot of overlap but, my point was that Fairphone specialized in making “ethical” electronics beyond just being repairable in a way afaik Framework does not. And I’m assuming that a Framework phone would be upgradable and the Fairphone is not.
People looking to buy one would also look to at the other as an alternative though.
There’s room for an American ethical phone maker. There’s room for far more than two such companies in the world
FairPhone is definitely about repairability. But yes, I keep waiting for a FairPhone that isn’t a total redesign from the previous so we can finally get yearly upgrades without needing a new phone. But the truth is, before the FP4 the design was still catching up to the competition.
In my opinion Fairphone makes dodgy decisions, like removing a headphone jack and supplementing that with their own Fairbuds
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They already work with Cooler Master. I believe they designed the cooling for the laptops and this case.. And why would Cooler Master work on a tablet and not a phone, phones need cooling to lol?
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I did read it, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here?
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You can tell me how the quote from the article connects to what I said and what led you to believe I didn’t already read it.
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Yes
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Do electric cars next. No AI bullshit. Just modular, repairable, customizable vehicles.
Their 18M investment is missing a few zeroes to do that.
Well maybe they need a…
000 18M investment!
Jk, how about electric bikes then?
Already a crowded and fairly repairable market.
I was hearing the ECUs in the market were fineky to repair from a friend. I know there us a certain diy support for them, but more prosumer seeming then full right to repair.
framework p r i n t e r
Please, do phones! Not only are far too many millions of phones being discarded every year, but it’s such a large consumer base (literally everyone) and the current offerings really offer nothing sustainable. It’s also a product category that’s perfect for modularity!
Yes, ok, Fairphone. They don’t sell them anywhere outside of Europe.
Other products like printers, tablets, monitors, TVs, etc. just have too long of a product life cycle to consider them as their next project. I can’t see a huge customer base of people wanting to repair their monitor or printer (no real upgrade path for Framework to offer here).
Yes, ok, Fairphone. They don’t sell them anywhere outside of Europe.
It used to be the case, but it seems like it no longer is:
https://murena.com/america/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairphone-4/
Another person mentioned that company, but they aren’t Fairphone.
They seem to buy the phones, add their own custom ROM and then resell the phones. Not in Canada, either. And no mention of where to get parts.
Also out of stock on all variants, and they don’t sell the latest model, so it’s not really an option.
An ergo mechanical keyboard. There are already several that are good and repairable, but the more the merrier.
More serious phone competitors welcome as well!
Oh, and a Bluetooth speaker with a replaceable battery.
I feel like people who care about mechanical keyboards already have too many highly repairable, highly upgradable keyboards
I know I have enough that I have two plugged into the one machine for super easy switching
Better niche: ergo electrostatic capacitive switch keyboard
Literally no one sells them, & I hear many folks stick to mechanical because there are ergo options
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I wish they would just ship big ass screen that you can connect to raspeberry pi. or something similar with a lot more io ports. I don:t care what the current trend is, i want those hdmi port. I want to have wii, ps3, laptop and amplifier in it
I’ve wanted to updated my TV’s for a while, but hate most offerings. I would love that. Honestly same with cell phone. My Galaxy S9+ battery isn’t what it used to be and there’s no patches anymore
Framework tackling phones is useless if they go the mainstream SoC route (Qualcomm, Mediatek) as they don’t have the software team needed to make those work properly (I would argue alot of handset manufactures don’t either). From what I hear you need a hell of software team to “fix” the garbage Android SDK released for those chips. Most importantly is if they go the closed mainstream SoC route which have EoL SDK support dates then what’s the point of building a durable repairable phone at a higher price point when you have to throw it out at the same as everyone else?
I want to see Framework enter the Linux phone market using “open” chips like Rockchip alongside Pine64’s Pinephone (Pro) and the Librem 5 as I think they would more likely have the funds, dev time and community support to help bring say PostmarketOS into a usable state then have to rework the SDK. This way the phone’s EoL date would be determined be the local phone infrastructure shutdowns. A much longer amount of time.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That’s one of the biggest reasons it just raised another $18 million in funding — it wants to expand beyond the laptop into “additional product categories.”
Framework CEO Nirav Patel tells me that has always been the plan and that the company originally had other viable ideas beyond laptops, too.
Framework might choose an “equally difficult” category or might instead try something “a bit smaller and simpler to execute, streamlined now that we have all this infrastructure.”
(Patel recently suggested to Jason Carman that Framework might adapt its marketing to reach more everyday audiences.)
The company’s $9 million seed round paid for the original 13-inch laptop design, which has carried on for three generations of components.
Today, Framework has about 50 employees, and it plans to expand to 60 before the end of the year, with “a bit of additional team growth” in 2025.
The original article contains 653 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Please god revive project Ara, maybe using the GPU connector for all the modular pieces.
As someone who has been there and done that a few times (Worked at Apple with the first touchpad, Blackbird, laptop, the transition to PowerPC, the Apple Newton, Jawbone headsets and speakers, Leap Frog educational toys, Palm Pre mobile phone, Maker stuff at Intel, and more… sorry for the humble brag), I am salivating at the possibilities for more open (or maybe just open) hardware, forward thinking and innovative, and hackable, like the good ol´ days perhaps.
Maybe our tech can become less black box (especially to the up-and-comers who learn javascript and how to comment out the stuff that doesn´t work) and more inspirational.
If there is a one word label to tag the difference, I will go with Woz over Jobs…
Go Framework, Go!
Honestly I had considered buying a framework but with that article… I think a thinkpad will do for the next 4 years at least Lenovo had figured out how to not get bankrupt.
I don’t think that will end well. Don’t start good things and drive it into a wall please :(
