So I've had a OnePlus One for somewhere in the region of 18 months. It still gets regular software updates despite not being sold any more, although that may not be much of a useful data point given my phone is running CyanogenMod (as it was when I got it) but new OnePlus devices are shipping with OxygenOS, which is an Android fork controlled by OnePlus directly. The price was very good for the spec, and I understand that's also the case for the newer OnePlus devices, although I can't say I've checked directly.
OnePlus aren't top of the ethical charts; they ran a few dubious advertising campaigns when first starting up, and they have the same ethical issues around smartphone manufacturing that most smartphone companies have, but I don't think they're particularly better or worse than the likes of Samsung or LG. It's a Chinese company, if that makes any difference to you.
If I were looking at buying a new phone now, I think I'd be looking at OnePlus, Fairphone and Google Nexus; I don't trust the bigger brands (other than Google themselves) to give me a competitively priced Android device that'll keep getting updates. Unless the Nexus devices have become considerably cheaper again, it'd probably be a toss up between Fairphone's (debatably) better ethics and OnePlus's better price/spec.
Fairphone make a lot of noise about how they're trying to source ethically mined metals and the like, and I've seen some reports (admittedly some time ago) about how they're better but not really that much better on that front than the major handset manufacturers.
Fairphone also make a lot of noise about their handsets being repairable, and the reports I've seen agree with that; iFixit in particular have sung the Fairphone's praises on this front (see their teardown (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523) if you're really interested). As a simple but illustrative example, loads of the connectors used in the Fairphone are pogo pins rather than simple press connectors – more expensive, but much more reliable if you're going to take your phone apart to make repairs, hack around with the hardware or just to be nosey.
As you say, they're using a Qualcomm SOC and Android, so it's in no way a completely free setup; it is, as ever, a balancing act. Nonetheless I think they're the closest I've seen to a free/libre handset that still has the weight of an active app developer community behind it, though.
The big catch is the price: €530 for 2GB RAM and a Snapdragon 801 SOC, versus (for example) the OnePlus 2 for £250 with 4GB RAM and a Snapdragon 810 SOC.
(I've also, via Wikipedia, just discovered SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/), which claims to be a much more free OS than Android, while including Android libraries to allow it to run Android apps. It doesn't appear to be currently available for the Fairphone, but this blog post (https://www.fairphone.com/2015/10/22/jolla-community-working-on-sailfish-os-for-the-fairphone-2/) implies it's something that the people behind both Sailfish and Fairphone are actively interested in and working on.)
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So I've had a OnePlus One for somewhere in the region of 18 months. It still gets regular software updates despite not being sold any more, although that may not be much of a useful data point given my phone is running CyanogenMod (as it was when I got it) but new OnePlus devices are shipping with OxygenOS, which is an Android fork controlled by OnePlus directly. The price was very good for the spec, and I understand that's also the case for the newer OnePlus devices, although I can't say I've checked directly.
OnePlus aren't top of the ethical charts; they ran a few dubious advertising campaigns when first starting up, and they have the same ethical issues around smartphone manufacturing that most smartphone companies have, but I don't think they're particularly better or worse than the likes of Samsung or LG. It's a Chinese company, if that makes any difference to you.
If I were looking at buying a new phone now, I think I'd be looking at OnePlus, Fairphone and Google Nexus; I don't trust the bigger brands (other than Google themselves) to give me a competitively priced Android device that'll keep getting updates. Unless the Nexus devices have become considerably cheaper again, it'd probably be a toss up between Fairphone's (debatably) better ethics and OnePlus's better price/spec.
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Are there ethical problems with Fairphone beyond their choosing Qualcomm hardware (and so making running a free OS impossible)?
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Fairphone also make a lot of noise about their handsets being repairable, and the reports I've seen agree with that; iFixit in particular have sung the Fairphone's praises on this front (see their teardown (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523) if you're really interested). As a simple but illustrative example, loads of the connectors used in the Fairphone are pogo pins rather than simple press connectors – more expensive, but much more reliable if you're going to take your phone apart to make repairs, hack around with the hardware or just to be nosey.
As you say, they're using a Qualcomm SOC and Android, so it's in no way a completely free setup; it is, as ever, a balancing act. Nonetheless I think they're the closest I've seen to a free/libre handset that still has the weight of an active app developer community behind it, though.
The big catch is the price: €530 for 2GB RAM and a Snapdragon 801 SOC, versus (for example) the OnePlus 2 for £250 with 4GB RAM and a Snapdragon 810 SOC.
(I've also, via Wikipedia, just discovered SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/), which claims to be a much more free OS than Android, while including Android libraries to allow it to run Android apps. It doesn't appear to be currently available for the Fairphone, but this blog post (https://www.fairphone.com/2015/10/22/jolla-community-working-on-sailfish-os-for-the-fairphone-2/) implies it's something that the people behind both Sailfish and Fairphone are actively interested in and working on.)