Hi Eva,
It is very good to read that you kept your phone for so long, whilst having many issues. Reminds me of my laptop wich sometimes takes over 20 mins to start xD
I hope you will enjoy your FP4 and keep it for a long time. One other thing, which is why I am writing this response: maybe you can offer your FP2 here for spare parts, so that parts of your phone will be used even longer 
Have a good day!
Harmen
Well, I wouldn’t call abandoning a five year old defective phone “defeat” - that’s far more usage time than the average 
Mine is four years by now and still doing fine - keep your fingers crossed 
And nice to hear you stick with Fairphone
Hi Eva, I’m in exactly the same boat, just received my FP4 after finally giving up on random-rebooting but otherwise functioning FP2 bought in September 2016. I guess one has to accept change and move on! (On the other hand, our FP1, bought eight years ago, still works.) PS So far I’m delighted with FP4, and I’m about to pack up FP2 for recycling.
I’m about to ditch my FP2 earlier than I hoped to I think. I’ve had a mostly bug-free experience for 6 years and 4 months (I ordered mine in July 2015 and it got delivered in January 2016, I’m proud to be ‘One of the first 17.418’ like the inside of the phone says (that statement does make me loath to recycle it, I have such fond memories of being one of the earlier supporters - not the earliest, that would be a FP1 owner). I was glad my phone didn’t have as many issues as other people reported back then, I guess I was lucky with a stable build. The only irritating thing was the proximity sensor often not working, with the screen reacting to my cheek pressing it when making a call, so sometimes a call got aborted. And I’ve had times when the screen stayed inactive after a call. But that got solved by a recalibration of the sensor.
However, for the last two months I’ve had problems connecting to my provider. The SIM card fails to get recognized, first haphazardly, then it got solved first by having the caches cleaned and then by a total factory reset. But a week after the reset the problem returned and now I can’t make calls nor connect to mobile data at all. I’ve put the SIM in my old Nokia 1100 and my FP2 is a small-sized tablet now, with just WiFi, providing offline maps, music and reading on the road.
I’m still waiting on an answer from the overburdened Fairphone support, but am tempted right now to switch to a Fairphone 4. I dislike it not having a jack, but at the moment there’s an offer for only 2 days more (till the 31th of May) of wireless earbuds worth 99,99 for free and what they offer is noice cancelling, something my current earphones don’t have. Me having autistic spectrum disorder and being very easily overburdened by environmental sounds (especially barking dogs and car and other mechanical engines) it’s very tempting to have noice cancelling on the go.
It feels sad not to continue the use of my Fairphone 2 for longer, but Fairphone stated a phone should last 6 years back then, if I remember well. That was the target they aimed for, if my memory serves well. And with 6 years and 4 months, at least my Fairphone 2 made that target. Not without help though: the backcase has been changed thrice after pieces breaking off, I upgraded the camera, the display module has been replaced once when the display broke down and would show no image no more and I replaced the battery after 5 years of use.
It’s a slow device though, reminding me of the sluggishness of my computers when I still worked with HDD’s as system drives. I thought of opting for the cheaper FP3 with 3,5" jack, but the cpu isn’t that much faster than that of the FP2 and if I get a new phone now, it should last me at least till the end of 2028 (another 6 years and 4 months from now) and my guess is by that time an FP3 will feel really really sluggish. Plus with the FP4 you can get a 5 year warranty. If my old Fairphone 2 had 5 years of warranty, it would have saved me €158,54 of replacements (2 backcover + 1 display module) excluding shipping.
Still, I’m proud to be part of the movement and to continue doing so.
I’ve been cycle touring for a week now together with a friend who owns a FP3. I always considered my phone as one of the “good FP2s” with few problems even after 5.5 years. And I think that’s still true, however we charged our phones through a dynamo powered charger each and while I did that while cycling (avoiding losses through the buffer battery of the charger) my friend only charged from the buffer when standing still (to have a wireless phone for photos etc.). What I noticed was that my charger had to produce much more energy to keep my FP2 alive during that week than the identical charger of my friend for his FP3. He could use his phone more often (for maps etc.) while at the same time losing less battery percentage and producing less heat than my FP2. And on top of this his FP3 operated more smoothly. Looking at what the charger has measured it has delivered around 100 Wh to my phone during that week (I don’t have his data). No videos or games, mainly taking a few photos, messaging, mobile data off often, a little bit of Osmand (not for navigation, only checking the map once or twice a day).
Given the fact that I’m going to go for cycle touring with my family where we’ll do much shorter distances per day I won’t be able to feed this energy-hungry dinosaur with my (already very powerful) dynamo charger anymore. Okay, the battery is 2.5 years old now, software has “evolved” in the meantime, too. But is this phone really so pretty much inefficient while charging (getting warm) and during operation (often hot at the backside) compared to its successors? Lying around and doing nothing seems to be the only state when the phone’s energy consumption is pretty normal. To get to the thread title: I still need to think about this a bit but reasons pile up…
Dear all,
I just received the FP4 and am busy to transfer my data & applications.
It IS a nice device, but I’d have been happy to continue, well, alas, no need to wail and cry endlessly about the same project.
I am also one of the very ancient FP supporters; I had a beautiful FP1 which was, however, to European in its heat endurance; it burned its electronic synapses when being with me on mission in Senegal.
And yes, I’ll put the old FP2 on the marketplace; whoever wants to have it as a reservoir of components is very welcome.
Wish you all the best on our common road towards sustainability in the electronics sector…
Eva
Warranty on the Fairphone 2 battery is 1 year, I guess quite a few batteries didn’t make it to 2.5 years.
Did you consider or did you already try a new one?
I changed the first battery for the current one when the first one was about 2.5 years old, too. At that point in time I had the impression that the effect was not that big. Just now I installed AccuBattery on the phone again to get an impression about the battery health. Usually I try to have the phone as lean as possible wrt. apps that I don’t use regularly. Depending on the outcome I might consider a new one or not.
Keep in mind the iphone is a high end smartphone and the fairphone is midrange. An Iphone might stay faster for longer because of the faster cpu and more memory but making a fair high end smartphone would bring way more challenges I think. Not much you can do if it becomes slow after 5 years at the point the hardware wont be able to keep up anymore with the latest apps
Wrt to random reboots: standard procedure of changing the slim case to a new one seems to have solved it for my FP2. I never would’ve guessed on my own, thank you FP Forum.
I would be happy if anyone has a spare FP2, because I hope to be able to fix my girlfriend’s phone with spare parts!
I am living in the Netherlands.
thanks in advance! André
May be more productive to put in the ‘SEARCH’ section. Here the request will get ‘lost’ in the topic.
As an individual item in the ‘SEARCH’ section is it’s own topic.