Call for Beta Testers - Be the first to test a new update!

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Dear Community,

We’re launching updates to the Fairphone 2 every month. But before we bring new updates to thousands of Fairphone 2 owners, we hope to get feedback from our community.

We’re currently beta testing with a dedicated group of Fairphone community members, and their insights are very important for helping us make better, more reliable software. We would like to continue and expand this successful cooperation between our developers and the community. This is an open call to anyone who wants to test and try beta software for the Fairphone 2.

What is the plan?
Every few weeks we release a beta-update through Fairphone Updater app. Beta testers can download and install it on their Fairphone 2. In the days after every release, we hope to receive as much as feedback as possible to can determine whether we can release this new update to everyone or if we need to wait and continue development.

Who is it for?
Anyone can apply, but we are specifically looking for people who:

- Own a Fairphone 2
- Can explain fastboot, ADB and how to restore a Fairphone to their 8-year-old nephew
- Are aware that this update might erase data on their Fairphone and are ok with that
- Want to support Fairphone in their journey to fairer electronics

Want to join?
Send a mail to our developers at beta@fairphone.com with your forum username and explain why you want to join the beta testers group. Once you are approved, you’ll be added to the beta group and will be able to write in that category on the forum.

Update: This call for additional beta tests has ended. Instructions for applying to the beta program can still be found in the original forum post.

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That’s great. Am I obliged to install all coming betas, or can I skip them in certain cases ? The reason I am asking is that I am happy to test, but the phone is one of my main business tools and I do not have the time and resources to get my phone messed up really badly. So there might be times when it’s too risky for me to test a beta and just wait for the next stable release.

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Hey @M_Dammer, updates are not pushed to your phone. You can choose yourself at any time to install the latest beta. Thank you for your interest in joining!

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Is this for fp open os, or the Google type os, or both?

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Hey @lklaus, this is for Fairphone OS only. That is the OS which has all Google Services build in. There is currently no beta program for Fairphone Open and we also do not plan at the moment to start such a program.

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Hi @Douwe.

It could be great if we could have some answers and consideration when we participate to beta tests and give feedback.

Concretely, after 1.6.2 beta, we signaled a new issue just introduced with this version about auto brightness adjustment. No answer. In 1.7.0 beta thread, same issue confirmed,… no answer; i opened a specific thread and many confirmations, but no answer…

I can “work” for you for free, but please Fairphone, respect your community, your testers, take some attention to people who contribute to make the FP2 greater (i.e. trying, without any help from your part to port CM)…

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Dear @alexisju, thank you for your feedback. Sharp and passive-aggressively formulated as always. Well, I guess that makes two of us now. :wink:

Did you see this:

We are very very happy with all the feedback we get from you and other beta-testers. I am sorry you feel left in the dark and I’ll ask the devs to be more responsive.

As in regards to CM: we are unable to assist in that field now. As you have probably seen on the forum and elsewhere, we are working very hard to maintain three OS’s already and hoping we can add Sailfish sometime in the future. A fifth OS is way beyond the capabilities of our small team.

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This is very disappointing and makes me as an FP Open User feel like a second class citizen. Fairphone Open is way behind in terms of bug fixes and updates and could obviously do with more man/women power invested. The whole idea of open source is to involve the community into development, testing and bug fixing.

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Hey @M_Dammer sorry to hear you are disappointed by the work of Fairphone so far. It might be good to remember we are actually a pretty small company working on three OS’s at the moment. For the Fairphone 2 it seems that 95% is currently not using the Fairphone Open OS.

So if we want to relieve stress from our support team and create more time to work on other stuff (Fairphone Open, Sailfish, Expansion Port, new modules) we first have to make sure that amount of issues that 95% of our users have decline.

In the end it is all about priorities: we can’t do everything now. Just as we ‘only’ have four value-chains mapped so far, just as we have ‘only’ created one worker welfare fund thus far, we are in a process of opening our soft- and hardware. Step-by-step we get closer to a fairer phone. Sorry if this does not go as fast as you want…

By the way, I do not think this is true. Fixes from GMS make it into Fairphone Open pretty quick. For instance; the proximity sensor calibration tool that was introduces in GMS in 1.6.2 in august is in the latest Open update. Also all latest Android fixes are in there.

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I think it makes sense to start a beta program also for Fairphone Open OS as there are some Open-OS-only bugs reported here in the forum.

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@Douwe thanks for your quick reply. I am aware of the situation of your small company as far as I read it in these forums. And in the same way as I can understand your problems, I do hope you are aware that the 5% who do use OpenOS are still paying customers - mainly indirectly through our phone contracts. And many of us (talking from my experience in the “open source scene”) would prefer to contribute actively instead of waiting.

While this is true, there are showstopper bugs in the Open version that have not been fixed yet, while attention has been paid to stuff that I would see as lower priority. For example the “clock reset” bug might seem unimportant and low priority to your developers, but the truth is that a missed alarm can have dire consequences to a persons life in the form of a missed meeting or taking your medication regularly (important to me at the moment). Looking at the latest 16.08 release I’d rather live with an unstable USB-OTG system, but have a reliable timing system in my phone.

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Hi,
@Douwe: I understand Fairphone’s strategy and I think that it is a good idea to focus on some priorities and not to try to resolve all the problems at once. I think that FPOOS is clearly a plus for the user and it’s important to have a choice, so thank you for making it possible.
As a user, you always think that updates aren’t fast enough if you want a problem to be resolved. I guess that what @M_Dammer and @TobiasF feel (or at least what I feel) is that even if there are only 5% of FP users with open OS, the community is quite strong and ready to help. It doesn’t mean that we want to give you more work, but if we can report the bugs and give a feedback in advance, it could help you in the work that you are doing anyway. Maybe what we miss here is that it takes too much effort and time for you to organize a beta tester group and that you would loose more time in the end.
Anyway, it was an appeal to help and it shows that the community is involved, which is a good sign!

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There are two bugs specific to Open OS and both have workarounds (delete a system app and put your phone in airplane mode over night).

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Airplane mode cannot be seen as a workaround for the clock-bug: If a reboot happens for example over night (some people are experiencing them, me luckily not), the phone won’t sync it’s clock with the network and your alarm won’t go off.

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I think @M_Dammer implied the Google bug fix release… While 1.7.0 is already on September baseline, the newly released 16.08 is “only” August…

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Given the size of the team and what they are already providing, I think we can live without a beta program for OpenOS. It’s already a very good thing that we (users) can speak directly to the fairphone team. That’s usually not possible and should be appreciated :slight_smile:

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I think a lot of FP2 Open OS users can explain fastboot and adb. I also think, there is a lot of beta community power behind the open os version.
I personally stay on the open os version and give every time forum feedback to open os related bugs.

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Hey all,

Thank you for your responses and thinking with us. I want to make clear that all feedback on FPOOS here on the forum is read and taken into account when making the next update.

So although there is no official beta program every new release is better because of the excellent and continuous feedback here on the forum.

We are also working to get more formal methods of bug tracking into place and make the whole feedback, reporting and fixing process more transparent.

Thank you all for caring as much as we do about an Open version of Fairphone OS!

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Hey all,

We listened to your questions and I am happy to tell you that there will be early releases of Fairphone Open posted in the beta section of this forum from now on.

@anon36364121 just released the first one.
If you want to join beta testing of this OS, please follow instructions in the first post.

Best,
Douwe

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Hi Douwe.
I want to join the betatester group. I wrote alredy an email to the devs

We found an critical bug in the Fairphone Open 16.08 / 16.09
Ambient light sensor bug was solved, but now the phone is prevented to go to the deep sleep.
This bug is very critical because the battery drains in 6-8h !

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