I’m considering of buying a Fairphone, but have some general questions about the the phone which I haven’t been able to find here on the website:
What are the phone’s measurements (width, height, weight)?
Does the phone (second batch) have 3G only or does it also have 4G?
What’s your general opinion about the phone and its performance? When I read what people have written here on the forum, it seems like the phone has several problems, particularly with quality of pictures, GPS and wifi connection.
I know the answer for the third question is highly individual, but do you think the phone is worth its price? I don’t mind paying for a “clean” phone, but I still want to have a phone that functions well without many odd problems.
It doesnt have 4g. I have it just 3 days and only problemas was a “no command” thing and it was fixed fast, thanks to this forum. I have no problemas with WiFi, even when signal is weak. It catches WiFi same of iPhone.
When you notice the number of problems people report here at the forum, you must of course remember that owners whose phones work perfectly won’t bother writing a post to report this. My own phone (1st batch, delivered Jan. 2014) has never caused me any trouble. Getting a GPS fix takes some time now and then (1 minute or so) but I’ve never lost GPS when using it as navigator in my car.
Dimensions are 12663.510 mm. (more specs at http://shop.fairphone.com/specs-page.html )
4G is not supported.
Overall, it’s a middle range model, there are other phones with better cameras, better audio quality, faster processors, bigger screen, and so on. So whether you’ll be disappointed or not depends on your preferences. For me, switching from an old HTC running Android 1.6, I still enjoy the improvement. And it’s just as good as my wife’s Galaxy SIII (although a bit clumsier)
Fairphone (2nd batch) is my first smartphone ever, and it never caused me any trouble. I guess when you check fora / reviews of other phones you probably find a lot of issues too. There is a thread on this forum where people post pics they made, and the quality is totally acceptable I find! Pictures gallery - Oh yeah FP1(U) camera has potential!
There are cheaper phones, yes, but I think it is really worth its price.
First smartphone for me as well. I experienced minor issues, some of them because I’m not used to using a smartphone (so my fault, not the phone’s fault). For the other issues I found answers here. Overall I’m really happy with it, both happy to have a smartphone at all, and very proud of having this one in particular.
I used a Samsung S2 before. Charging every day… After 2 years GPS stopped working at all.
Sometimes it went “crazy” without any changes in config, p.e. downloaded all my emails every minute. It used half a GB during some hours and became really hot.
Another problem which became increasing are system freezes - once or twice a day. When this happens, a caller gets the connection signal but you don’t get the ring and you never get to know that somebody wanted to call you. Just google “samsung system freeze” and you see that it happens to many customers.
Now I have a FP. No freezes, charging every 2 days, GPS works… Of course, there happen minor problems, but no K.O. yet. I’m quite sure smart phones will never be as safe and error free as the big cable phones we used in our childhood. And they will never replace a real photo camera. The photo app is just an addon to document a car parking on a bicycle lane etc.
So for me the criteria to order FP were
fairer trade than others
exchangeable parts
The price for that is: a little more expensive and a bit heavier than the one-million-sold phones.