The Fairphone 4 and Hiking

Yesterday I spent three hours on a train and hiked for a few hours. I also spent two hours in a museum. During this time I was using the fairphone 4 to listen to an audiobook and streamed media. At the end of the day I think I was at about sixty to seventy percent battery life. The battery has only had three or four cycles so far so you would expect it to last.

What I find more interesting is that when I swapped the battery on the iPhone SE a few months ago the battery was still discharging fast, despite being new. I realise that it is not an Apple battery but I would still expect a new battery to have some stamina.

The other factor is apps, and whether we use the phone or just leave it on a desk or in a pocket. Some apps burn through battery power quickly.

Yesterday’s test was interesting because it was a relatively tame hike, with good network coverage so the phone didn’t need to hunt for signal towers too much. If I had been in the mountains walking from valley to valley then the phone would have discharged faster.

With this phone, in theory I don’t need to walk with a spare battery, or external battery to charge the phone. I can rely on the current battery to last for the day. That’s liberating.

The Appeal of Removable Batteries

I thought that Europe would require phones to have removable batteries by 2025 but now I see that it will be by 2027. If you remove the back from a Fairphone phone the first thing you notice is that it’s like Nokia, Blackberry and other phones. Lift the bottom of the battery and within milliseconds it’s free and within seconds you can slot in the replacement.

With this freedom it allows you to hike with one battery per day for a multiday hike, or replace the battery when you start to see a visible degradation in the amount of charge that the phone can hold. I got a second battery but I haven’t charged it for the first time yet. I prefer not to use the backup battery until there is a clear need for it.

When a battery loses 60 percent of its charge from the moment you unplug it to lunch there is a clear need to swap the battery. When it lasts for the entire day with 60 percent remaining when you go to sleep the battery is healthy. That’s how batteries should be.

It is both old fashioned, and modern to be able to remove batteries once again. The single best trick to making a phone last longer, is to make battery swapping easier.