I’ve had FPs for ~4 years now, and on balance I’d still recommend it. Yes it may be a bit slow, the camera isn’t great (I’ve not upgraded to the latest one yet), but apart from the ethical choice it is very convenient to have two SIM slots (not many phones support this).
I got an FP1U around 2013-2014 which worked fine for 18 months, then in the middle of taking a video it just died. Apparently something failed on the motherboard and it was beyond rescue. The google photos sync I had set up had apparently stopped working months ago (unrelated I’m sure), so a few months’ worth of photos were lost (fortunately no special moments), but generally no great loss. After that I went retro with an iPhone4 I had lying around, but that was of course being made more and more obsolescent by Apple.
My current FP2 I’ve had since early 2016, and so far there’s only been one breakdown: a dead zone screen fault which arose for no apparent reason, and required sending the phone to the retailer who in turn sent it to FP for fixing. That took about a month, which was tedious given that there isn’t a ‘courtesy mobile’ service, but at least they fixed it under guarantee. Otherwise the FP2 does the job quite adequately, running any apps that I’ve needed, even if it’s slow compared to others on the market.
We all have our experiences and it’s hardly a good guide for anyone with a thread of “It’s great” “I hate it” “I love it” “It broke, sucks”… Anyway, here’s mine “It’s pretty good!”
I have two FP2, one bought for work with FP Open that’s always with me and one with FP OS that I bought second hand that I plan to use for Sailfish experiments but right now is used to run the last few apps that require google play services. I shut it down when I don’t feel like having google with me.
Both have been abused and both serve me well! I’ve had a camera with bad connector (reseated, now ok) and a broken microphone but beyond that no big issues. In general impressed with the openness and software updates.
I’m over thirty and have very little time to spare. That hasn’t stopped me from buying and using Fairphone for my mobile computing needs to good success! And today I got an OTA to Android 7.1.2. Hopefully it’ll get even better from here.
All my smartphones were Fairphones, so I honestly don’t know: do you have any experience what other companies ask for a repair of a core “module” outside the warranty period (if they offer that at all)?
repairing is always a risk and I already have a FP2 and don’t know waht to do, but I think there are many repairshop that would repair it for you, so you can sell it after that if you still don’t like the FP2
