Discussion: Improving the software of FP3

Yeah, it is, but I’m not sure it always randomizes it, or only when scanning, or not when scanning, or if that was true in certain versions. I forgot. There was some caveat though.

(FWIW, on macOS 10.15, Apple managed to break randomized MAC addresses. Probably unintentional, as they implemented it in iOS.)

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Thanks for this list, these are exactly the things that I noticed / missed compared to my previous Android phone!

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Another really minor thing i’ve noticed from changing from the G5…

charging

The charging/battery icon.

Top = slow charge
bottom = fast charge

The FF3 does inform you of slow/fast charge on the lock screen, but only there, a different charging icon would be an improvement :slight_smile:

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I’d like the app icons to be in shapes other than a circle. At the moment any app that has a non-circular icon, the phone shows as a white circle with the icon inside it.

Is anyone else bothered by it?

@RuthiB just use a custom launcher app that supports this - so no, doesn’t bother me. No need to bloat the stock launcher. Also I’d rather like to see Fairphone devs working on bug fixes (first).

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This.
If you need some inspiration, here are some screenshots …

Thanks, and to @linusg too. But I’m really not into playing around with software too much. I’m using Fairphone cause it’s sustainable and, well - fair :slight_smile: (in the sense that you can easily fix the phone physically rather than buying a new one - and I do love that there’s such a helpful and clever support community here and so can sort out some software issues by myself. But I draw the line at running the phone with any non-FP software :slight_smile:

besides, I don’t think that having non-circular icons should be too much of a challenge, should it? I mean FP2, and more or less every other smart phone I’ve seen in recent years, manages to do it

Fairphone’s concept is to take Android from Google as is and change as little as possible to keep maintenance and delivering updates as easy as possible. I would be very surprised to see them bother with something like this.

The launcher the phone comes with is the stock Android 9 launcher as delivered by Google.
It’s one of the points of Android that you can easily replace it with a launcher you like more, be it to tweak some minor things like the icon shape, or be it to even have a radically different layout on your home screen.

If it’s your choice to refuse doing just that to improve your own experience with the phone, then it’s not on Fairphone to do something about that.
And Google has moved on to Android 10, I wouldn’t count on them adding options to their older launcher.

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Thanks for explaining. See, I didn’t even know what a launcher is. I mean, I can imagine from it’s name, but as far as I - and I imagine the vast, vast majority of phone users - am concerned, I just turn on the phone and it works. It never occurred to me that the home screen layout and general look is operated by something separate from the rest of the phone software.

I still don’t understand why Google would create a launcher that doesn’t work properly with basic icons, but I take your word for it that it is not a Fairphone issue.

Maybe, when I have a little more time I will “choose” to spend it searching for a better launcher, make sure I install it correctly, make sure I know where I need to go for support if something isn’t working well, or it just needs an upgrade, etc. Until then, since I have a smart phone to make my life easier, rather than as a time-sink, I will indeed manage with the icons as they are.

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Thx!!
I love this, as it is sooo true and should really be quoted more often. :smile:

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2nd part of the movie. These guys are able to make it possible to install Linux on the device with Android preinstalled with a firmware update. Without having to flash anything with a computer. They even allow you to partition Linux/Android 0/120 GB, 30/90 GB, 60/60 GB, 90/30 GB, or 120/0 GB. That is supercool. Imagine such with a Fairphone. I know, it is a stretch really… but still… :slight_smile:

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It would be nice if the volume menu that popped up when the buttons are pressed could be expanded with the other volume functions like ring, notification, media, alarm, etc.

I thought this was implemented really well in Lineage 16.

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I just saw PowerShare in action for the first time. Of course the FP3 doesn’t have an induction charger, but could the hardware in the USB port be used to PowerShare? Could it be something that can be added through software alone?

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Just to re-iterate this point, the more i use the device the more i’m now finding this a major issue… Treating the fingerprint sensor as essentially unusable at the moment now…

Getting to the point where i’ll ignore the sensor and use the pattern unlock as the fingerprint is locked out taking the phone out of my pocket half the time, and the chain-incorrect-reads in seconds burn through the rest of the tries…

For me it’s actually the opposite. The more I use the phone the more I get used to the placement of the finger print sensor. Now I only rarely run into this issue anymore.

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Problem is now when it is edited, it does not get bumped, due to a bug in the forum software.

I added a WLAN bug where toggling WLAN in airplane mode does not work with unencrypted WLAN (while encrypted works), and the wish for having easy partitioning + multiboot as outlined above. Feel free to reword it better, review, etc.

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That’s, why I had the idea of a wiki and another thread for discussing.
Maybe you could split the thread and move the discussion to a new thread.

A few weeks ago I finally received my FP3 and after a while of playing around with it I have a few findings/issues to share (none of which I could find already mentioned/discussed here in the forums). Maybe someone can confirm them and, if so, add them to the post that’s gathering all the hardware and software issues:

  1. Most annoyingly, the phone doesn’t seem to turn itself on when there’s an alarm set. For me, the alarm only seems to ring when the phone is either turned on or off but charging.

  2. There’s a nice “auto-activate WiFi when close to good-quality networks” in Android. With FP3, this doesn’t seem to work for 5 GHz networks. At home I have both a 2.4 and 5 GHz network. If I just save the 5 GHz network in my phone’s network profiles, the WiFi is >never< turned on automatically when I’m at home. If I replace the 5 GHz with the 2.4 one, it always works and connects to this network. Assuming I save both networks, it works but connects first to 2.4, then after a while switches to the 5 GHz network… Very strange behavior.

  3. Why doesn’t FP3 support the “adaptive battery” feature of Android 9? Even when I go to the “Device Health Services” app in the Google Play store, which I think is used by “adaptive battery”, it says m device isn’t compatible with this version. Why?

  4. When the battery saver is on, some apps (like the dialer) switch to dark mode. Assume you have a light theme by default, then battery saver turns on and at some point you switch off your phone and charge it. When you unplug it and switch it on again, then apps still are in dark mode. Even toggling the theme setting in the setting app doesn’t help. The only thing that helps is to turn battery saver on and off again.

My Motorola phone switches the torch light on (and off again) when I shake it twice like a tomahawk. At night, that is very convenient, as I don’t have to look for a switch or even open a menu.

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