Fairphone

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Does the Fairphone 2 improve the user experience, regarding GPS, remote control headphones and camera quality?

remote
Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fefbd729728>
#1

I love my fairphone (1st Ed.), but there are a number of things that I would like to be improved, and I cannot read them from the specs:

What I like about FP1:

  • the fairness concept
  • the dual sim
  • the replaceable battery
  • the solid construction

What I dislike:
1/ very poor GPS : it does not work if you do not turn on WIFI or mobile network support (at least it doesn’t if you travel far, it cannot get your initial position).
2/ Poor Sound: I did not find any decent headphones with remote control: with my apple or Sennheiser headphones (with remote), I hear a distinct tic tic tic sound which is very annoying.
3/ camera quality: the color rendering is the one of a 10 years old digital camera. this could be improved by a firmware update, but these kind of optimisation need to be sensor-lens specific (I used to be a colour scientist). There has been quite some discussion on the forum about this topic, but when I look at the posted picture, they still look to me coming from an old camera.

So my question is: will the FP2 have

  • good gps, which works standalone
  • headphones with remote, where you could control the sound volume, stop and go and forward backward skip (like on the iphone). or at least a list of recommended headphone which have this functionality
  • better colours on the camera ?
#2

This doesn’t answer your questions concerning the next Fairphone, but:

I know that ‘tic tic tic’ noise you’re talking about. For me, the Xiaomi Piston 3 were the solution.
They’re usually shipped directly from China. Many people on the internet consider them a bargain, but apparently one has to make sure to buy from a legitimate seller as there have been reports of fakes.
Three-button remote control works fine for me with the music player I use (it offers options to assign actions to each button). Mic works too.

Cheers

#3

the bad gps definitely is a thing that has to be improved on a 500 € phone!! with wifi it was working but you actually don’t need gps when you have wifi anyway!!!
I don’t care to much about the picture quality but it would be really good if the camera would take the photo much quicker.
What I would also find interesting would be a exchangeable back cover to order right from the beginning. since it’s designed to be exchanged anyway it would be great to be able to choose from different colors.
what also would be cool would be a charger for a second battery. then one could charge it while using the phone and take it along on a longer trip.
what I also realized were dots on or inside the screen disposed in a grid-like-style. you just see them from a specific angle but it was something with the built quality.

and a nice thing would be fairphone stickers coming with the phone to promote the idea of a fairer phone with putting the fairphone logo everywhere :wink:

#4

Good thing Fairphone 2 keeps all those and even improves on them.

Yes, that is an issue. I hope and expect it to be improved in FP2 since it also uses Glonass satellites.

About the other two issues, I don’t know much about.

#5

All of these questions can only be answered when the first FP2s are reviewed.

Regarding the headset: The FP2 support the “CTIA” standard, which should allow remote control with compatible headsets:

Headset Jack
3.5 mm
Headset Jack configuration
CTIA-Standard (TRRS: LH/RH/GND/MIC)
http://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone2.html#technical-specifications

#6

I don’t know of course, but I believe - like with many other things - the FP1 GPS problem was a mediatek problem and the FP2 will be mediatek-free AFAIK.

This could have to do with the fact that FP1 was built on a pre-existing Chinese Phone. Fairphone was building the second model themselves and I am confident that they made sure that it will be compatible with standard European headphones.

I like the idea and added it to the modules wishlist

#7

hey,

Thanks for the headphones suggestion, I will try it.

Best, Dd

closed #8