They offer it, but clearly they don’t all have or use one. When I was in the audience of the Fairphone 10 year anniversary I saw many people taking pictures. I mostly saw iPhones. I only spotted one Fairphone by a FP employee that day. Of course that’s just me playing a game “find the Fairphone at Fairphone”. It could also be that the people with a Fairphone didn’t bother to take a picture, because it was too dark for a FP to get a nice picture anyway. But also outside I didn’t see people with a FP, just one person from FP. This is anecdotal of course, I know.
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both options aren’t favourable for fairphone: their employees not using their product or many of them using it but not caring about the bugs and faulty updates. you decide what’s worse…
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I’m just happy that they seem to be doing something about all the issues now.
I’m just sad that it took them nearly 2 years from release to do so.
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I was not there but you talk only once about a FP employee who used a Fairphone and you say people with iPhones so without precising if they were FP employees.
Honestly, it would be great people stop spreading myths like no FP employee uses a Fairphone since some do. Most of you forgot that they don’t all have a so high level of expectations than experts as you, UPPERCASE, but are there mainly for the fair reasons and not for high tech ones.
By the way, now the price of the Pixel 7a is very low, I am surprised you keep suffering of using your FP4.
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I think he’s in the same boat as me. He doesn’t truly want to get another device. He just wants Fairphone to fix their phone so that it stops having major issues. I bought the phone because of them not having slaves in a factory and I would assume he’s the same in that regard as well.
Selling what could be my dream phone after 2 years feels like a defeat if you ask me. Because then he’d be buying a slave phone again.
Personally I was dead set on selling this phone when I heard my workplace offer me a device I can use as if it was my phone, but with them actually acknowledging the major flaws and fixing them I might just stay on Fairphone.
Hopefully the FP5 and onwards will be far superior to the FP4 so that FP will still have a chance. Because I don’t truly want to buy a Pixel. I want to buy a Fairphone next time too. It’s just that I’ve had a beta for two years and at long last we might be getting the version that should have been there on release.
Anyway, isn’t this off topic? There must be a better thread for this discussion.
I don’t have the ghost touch issues so I’m happy. I haven’t noticed any real changes in sensitivity either. Maybe it’s a bit more sensitive on the edges. I dunno.
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That’s why I highlighted that it was just anecdotal ‘evidence’. I also don’t think I’m an expert of Android, I would like to be though. I just spot issues by using their devices in the first few minutes. Now to me that could mean they don’t actually use their devices. Also because it takes a lot of effort to describe some issues to FP support. Which also makes me wonder if they use the same device. Or maybe they just don’t see it as such a big deal, that’s also possible. In both cases it’s not great in my opinion.
I agree that it’s a myth, and I hope I’m wrong. It’s just one reason that could explain what we’re seeing for the past 2 years with the FP4. And to clarify, I do see progress in quality control. Most issues we face are from the initial release and some extra were introduced with the major update to Android 12. Hopefully the upcoming Android 13 will solve those.
Fairness goes both ways in my opinion. As I noted before, if you sell the most sustainable and fairly made clock in the world, but it cannot display an accurate time, then it’s not a usable clock for the user. That’s not really fair or sustainable either, because people will discard such a product sooner. And yes, the FP4 isn’t that bad. It does work mostly and is usable by most people. There just a few near misses in terms of quality.
I personally really want Fairphone to succeed. I really do. And the reason I make so much noise is not to argue because I’m bored or something like that. It’s because I care for Fairphone to succeed. I don’t think it helps to say that by adding one touchscreen issue to fix another is a good idea. It should just be fixed, period. When someone asks about my phone, I’ll tell them it’s great. Except for issue X, Y, Z and they haven’t improved them in the past 2 years or so. Then the costs comes up and that the issues sometimes aren’t even that complex, like the bouncing arrows in the notification bar. Or the typo’s in the settings. They are reported, but not fixed. And then of course the issues that have a bigger impact on the usability of the phone. Updates lag behind as well. The total package is just a hard sell, even when I care for fair trade and sustainability.
You really don’t have to be a power user/expert to care about these things. A smartphone is in general our most used device throughout the day, something that’s part of our daily workflow in both a professional and personal context. If things don’t work well, people will notice and care. Not everyone would go to a forum or contact support. I bet some would just return it or sell it through a 3rd party.
The situation at the moment is like this. At my workplace they want to improve their sustainability. So we’re testing the Framework laptop. In the past they did a test with the Fairphone 3, but that didn’t pass their requirements (details were not documented). I saw an internal blog article that the Fairphone 4 will be tested, so I contacted the project team here at my work. I’m involved in the project now and the plan is that I’ll get the Fairphone 5, that’s rumored to be in development as we see in the news. I’ll test it for a few months, together with some other random colleagues. If that turns out to be a success, then we’ll adopt the FP5 as an option next to the iPhone and a Samsung. So I really care. But there are limits in how much you can promote Fairphone. At the end of the day the devices have to work as well.
Now, in case the FP5 is not to my liking, then yes, in that case I’ve already decided to get a Pixel. So then you guys have some more peace 
But I have high hopes that Fairphone will nail it with the FP5. And no, a Pixel isn’t perfect either. No replaceable battery and the in display fingerprint scanner is a nightmare. But their QA of their software and camera/microphones are top notch.
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thanks for your thoughts which I absolutely support.
Some people might feel good about having more peace in this forum in case people like you and myself and others stop criticizing certain behaviours of Fairphone. I however am convinced that our pressure will eventually help the entire project to be successful. And that’s what we want.
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@UPPERCASE
I think your expertise would much more useful in a beta team than in this forum. Why do I say this ? Because it is better to correct bugs before their release than after.
As I already said, I am a beta tester of the FP3 and some of Fairphone employees belong to it and they are active since they report some bugs. There is a bug in the Android 13 for FP3 I was the only one to get in the beta and that nobody complained about since the official release so it is possible that Fairphone employees use a Fairphone phone and don’t have your bugs for many reasons (different batches, different uses, different network, …).
Why do I insist on this ? Because people nowadays have the very bad tendency to simplify everything and so what stays is nobody or only one person at Fairphone really uses their own phones. I find it unfair for them.
I think your choice of waiting for the FP5 instead of making the company goes for the FP4 is certainly a good one 
I would like so much my company to be as active as yours in sustainability and fair trade.
@facetto The problem is not to complain since there are bugs and they should have been corrected for a part of them a long time ago. It is more the attacks at people or company trying to do their best and being denigrated all the time that bothers people like me.
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I considered joining the beta. But I simply can’t risk it. I really need my phone for work and personal reasons to always work, and the stable releases already feel a bit like beta-like. I don’t want to sound like that guy all the time that complains. But that’s the reason I’m not signing up for the beta.
I did sign up for the telemetry though, to send debug/crash info for analysis. But since Android 12 they don’t offer a Linux installer anymore. I can tinker around and extract the required stuff from the Windows installer, but I haven’t spend time on that. So, I’m willing to contribute and I do. But the beta option is a step too far for me, for now.
I also promote FP this way, this ribbon is on my backpack. I’m definitely on team Fairphone. But that doesn’t mean I should fanboy everything about it. If things are not that great, then I speak up.
@Trolli has a point though, some discussions have become repetitive.
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I see a huge difference between being a blind fan and let people say wrong things. And since some keep repeating the same accusations without proof, of course there will be the same useless conversations again and again.
By the way, if you don’t answer my comment about Fairphone employees using the smartphone built by the company they work for, we would not be here again.
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I wouldn’t mind joining the beta test with focus on Phonak hearing aid users.
But only if I can use a degoogled OS.
Is there a beta test without the FP OS?
I doubt that FP will do any beta testing on degoogled OSes. To my knowledge their only officially supported product is the FP OS that is shipped. While other OSes can profit from the downstream releases, I doubt that they can beta-test the same fixes at the same (development) time as the FP developers.
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Not sure which question I didn’t answer. But maybe PM me, since it becomes a one on one discussion anyway.
It’s not an accusation, at least, not from me. It’s a suspicion that they don’t use these devices themselves that much. Things might work fine in a controlled test environment, but to me it seems they don’t really explore the phone by hand after a new update is finalized. Or use the phone on a day to day basis. Otherwise I would’ve expected different responses from FP support.
Also I suspect many are iPhone users based on how the phone is designed in terms of notifications. Out of the box the notification bar has the carrier name, like an iPhone, without any space for notifications. Also no always on display or LED for notifications. Just light up the screen for a few seconds and that’s it, like an iPhone. Anyway, these are theories I have as a user to make sense of the product. I wasn’t the one who brought it up in the update thread though, but I’ll try to tone it down. 
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It‘s like most Pixel phones too, no notification LED and no always on screen. On the other hand, there are iPhones with AOD.
That‘s what Aliain_Guillet expressed: A lot of accusations and assumptions from your side. There‘s not much positive feedback, only nagging, flooding the forum with posts and new threads for every small inconvenience you can find on a Fairphone product.
That‘s at least the impression you are giving. We all know, that Fairphones have issues, even the Fairphone employees know, and most people here are aware, that the communication was bad and is only now getting better. But hearing all that from you on a daily basis, like a thread mill is very exhausting.
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This is not true. All Pixels have had an (AMO)LED screen, also the ‘a’ series.
Those are iPhones that are released after the FP4. So these arguments are not really valid.
There is a lot of positive feedback, but definitely not on a daily basis. I’m testing the Fairbuds XL and before I have to return it I reported some issues. Bluetooth issues and wind noise even in the smallest proportions are really not small issues for a 250 euro device.
Then there are some old FP4 topics that are still alive because those issues are not fixed. But I’m not updating those topics on a daily basis. Then there are the Fairphone OS update threads, which is just once a month (if we’re lucky). And yes, sometimes a discussion pops up. I’m trying to explain my reasoning, because the replies give me the idea that my point is not understood. People don’t have to agree, but if the point I’m trying to make is not understood then I’ll try to explain it in another way.
But yes. This thread is definitely going on for too long. Note that I didn’t start it, so please don’t single me out here. But definitely it’s time to leave this thread. Please DM me if anything pops up.
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Actually you started it by this
And thats what @Alain_Guillet meant “if you would not have answerd…” when he said above
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The top comment is not mine. But yes, I did got involved, but no I didn’t bring it up. Alain was already in the discussion. Apparently I didn’t read that comment from Alain correctly, I thought he meant something else. If your point is that I’m too present in this thread then I agree. Life is indeed too short for this
You are right, I really didn’t know that my Pixel 4a has an AOD. As I didn’t had that with any previous phone I didn’t realized, that I can activate that in the settings. Now, as it is at the end of its lifetime, it got its last update a view weeks ago, I found a new function .
Maybe, I didn’t check that, will do later.
Your reports completely filled the first page of the forum. For every little bit you didn’t like, you started a thread, that was really annoying.
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I was socialized in a work environment where our customers complain about issues. and if we don’t react, they will increase pressure until we solve the issue. i often was heading such troubleshooting projects in the past. that was not too funny in many cases. now in my current position I am something like a product manager for the stuff we improved in the past solely due to customer pressure. and today often enough I am very happy that our customers pushed us so hard because that’s the reason why now our products are better than the ones of competitors.
why i am telling you this? because i am convinced that without annoying customers like myself, many companies will not have enough “motivation” for continuous improvement which is mandatory for success. And success is what I want FP to have.
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While I do agree that it was sort of annoying and looks like a lot of complaining at first, I can absolutely see the point of doing it anyway as it provides the best open bug tracker we have for those issues at this time. The posts have since vanished from the front page and don’t annoy anyone any more. But instead of mixing all the various problems in one thread, we can now track their progress much more neatly.
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