Hi! Recently my Fairphone 4 got lost so I need to replace it.

I’ve been quite happy with Fairphone not only because I’m clumsy as hell and in the year I had it, I already replaced the screen once, but also because I don’t really want to support anything that’s not sustainable.

But in the other hand, I’m for now using my previous phone, the Cat S42, another device I was really happy and only changed it when the specs started to be so outdated that opening any app was taking several minutes and when it was crucial to read QR codes in the pandemic, with that crappy camera was pretty much impossible.

So now I’m debating between getting a Fairphone 5 vs a Cat s75. My main focus is sustainability, followed by memory and battery.

For how I see it, Fairphone has the big pro of having more “consumer friendly” specs, including the memory, but it’s a bit pricy and in the end making it modular doesn’t means it will last more, but that you’ll need to pay less if something breaks. And it feels I’m paying some fee just to say I’m an eco guy.

In the other hand, Cat might be a bit less consumer friendly, but it’s really built to last and I’ll not need to spend a penny if it just simply never breaks, plus living in Finland makes the temperature resistance quite an interesting thing as in a bad winter we can reach -30 (and for my own experience, it’s not fun when it’s -20 and the battery starts to drain super fast and you need your phone for google maps/bus ticket/etc). And is slightly cheaper.

To say so, I need to pick between 2 phones I loved, so it seems a bit like with Fairphone I’m paying too much branding and with Cat I’m paying too much for “military specs” that become irrelevant when the GPU can’t handle the software anymore.

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